Weekly Shonen Jump March 19, 2018 Featured Columns 

This Week in Shonen Jump: March 19, 2018

By and | March 21st, 2018
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Welcome to This Week in Shonen Jump, in which a rotating duo of Multiversity staffers take a look at two stories contained in each installment of Viz Media’s Weekly Shonen Jump. For the uninitiated, Weekly Shonen Jump is an anthology that delivers more than 200 pages of manga of all varieties. We hope that you’ll join us in exploring the world of Weekly Shonen Jump each week. If you are unfamiliar, you can read sample chapters and subscribe at Viz.com.

This week, Rowan and Matt check in with “Dr. Stone” and “Ziga.” If you have any thoughts on these titles, or “One Piece,” “We Never Learn,” “Black Clover,” “Robot X Laserbeam,” “The Promised Neverland,” “My Hero Academia,” “Jujutsu Kaisen,” “Noah’s Notes,” “Food Wars,” “Black Clover,” or “Hunter X Hunter,” let us know in the comments!

Dr Stone Chapter 50
Written by Riichiro Inagaki
Illustrated by Boichi
Reviewed by Rowan Grover

Things start to heat up as Senku and Tsukasa start to move their plans forward for war. I love that we’re shown increasingly more of Tsukasa’s side, with Inagaki writing him more and more sympathetically and with a relatable desire. It creates more of a tension for the reader as they become unsure about either one’s plight and have to look at the morality of both sides, neither of which are strictly good or bad. What’s fun though is how Senku’s side seems to be directly ignoring the prophetic damning of technology on Tsukasa’s side, by literally coming up with the means to create a cellphone to give an edge to their side in the war. It’s logical, but conveyed in the best, silliest way as he pitches the recreation of smartphones as being ‘humanity’s greatest weapon’.

Like any good Shonen manga, however, Inagaki continues to feed the readers with mystery and intrigue. The character Hyoga is still a wonderful wildcard to watch adjust within Tsukasa’s society, with his unmatched fighting ability and scarily cheerful disposition. The fact that he’s being treated as a giant as much as Tsukasa is implies his importance within the society, making his mysterious origin and personality even more of a feed. On top of that, near the end we get to see the reappearance of crowd favourite, stereotypical SJ hero, Taiju, as being a productive ‘mole’ for Senku’s side. I find it interesting to see him still contributing in the story, even with his overly positive go-getting attitude, and look forward to seeing how he contributes in the war.

Boichi’s artwork still manages to be one of the most eye-popping works in the SJ anthology as of late. His smooth, thick inking lines work well at establishing the haunting tone of the first section with Tsukasa. Especially as we see the page spread of Hyoga standing triumphant over his enemies, there’s a good use of focalisation on Hyoga with Boichi’s clean and intentful linework, leaving the rest of the environment as mere support cast. This use of depth to convey tone carries on to the next page as well, where Boichi skillfully uses change in ink thickness to convey the spiralling and immense scale of Tsukasa’s fortress, poised at an angle that makes it look intimidating yet full of potential, as Boichi renders many cheerful denizens within it.

It’s just as fun to see the opposite occuring on Senku’s side of the story, with Boichi choosing to use white panel borders as opposed to thick blacks, and injecting each panel with a little more humour. It’s something that might lean the readers more to Senku’s side of the war, which has naturally been the case over the course of the story, but also makes the technological advancements Senku makes a little insidious as the story hides behind overly cheerful visuals. I cackled along with Senku as he proudly announced that, ‘for better or worse’, they were essentially advanced to modern technology standards, and could build cellphones. The next page Boichi comedically has Senku in his ‘wise’ look as generations of cellphones spiral out from behind him, in a bold spread that has the reactions of Senku’s folk underneath him. It’s a great way to subtly convince readers as to picking a side, blending comedy in an otherwise bleak story, but also hiding potentially sinister undertones.
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“Dr. Stone” still manages to be a creative, moody yet comedic addition in the Shonen Jump line. With both sides prepped for war and both having compelling arguments to live their way of life, Inagaki and Boichi succeed in telling a story that’s morally complex and creative.

Final Score: 8.4 – A fun advancement to Senku’s story that still carries the grimness of Tsukasa’s to balance it into something morally complex.

Ziga Chapter 1
Written by Rokurou Sano
Illustrated by Kentarou Hidano
Reviewed by Matt Lune

With Godzilla being one of the biggest (literally) and best movie monsters of all time, and the rise of films like Pacific Rim and the burgeoning King Kong/Godzilla shared universe, you would think there would be more Kaiju manga. There’s “Neon Genesis Evangelion” which, if you ask in the right circles, you’d hear is the spiritual inspiration for Pacific Rim. Aside from that though, you’d be hard pressed to find any. Which seems completely bonkers when there are thriving subgenres of manga based around everything from playing golf to throwing balls at digital animals in order to make them fight other digital animals.

Thankfully, “Ziga” is here to right that grievous wrong. In the tradition of many Shonen manga that have come before it, “Ziga” centers on a young man burdened with incredible purpose, destined to be so much more. Ko Hachigane is suffering from nightmares of a giant Kaiju terrorising him every evening. He puts it down to being exhausted, and all it takes is the reassurance of his friend Seira Amagi for him to put it out of his mind completely. It’s obviously not going to end there, however, and before long Ko is approached by a mysterious stranger, who reveals that Ko’s nightmares are actually prophetic dreams of a very real monster called Ziga, and Ko is a sort of highly skilled Super Soldier destined to join the fight against the beast.

As opening chapters go, this is pretty great. There’s a lighthearted humor to the first half, as Ko awkwardly navigates his social landscape, coping with the fact that he’s inexplicably skilled at everything he turns his hand at. This, along with the insistence that Amagi is Ko’s rock and capable of focusing his thoughts in an invaluable way, is clear foreshadowing for what’s to come, but there’s a charm to these early scenes that is effectively disarming. It’s this charm, however, that ultimately serves to lead the reader into a false sense of security, as when the Kaiju inevitably attacks, it draws to a devastating conclusion which hits that much harder because of the work put in earlier on.

Kentarou Hidano’s linework deftly switches between clean and sharp in the lighter scenes, to heavy and ragged during the Kaiju attack. The pacing throughout the chapter is thoughtful too. One of the things that a lot of Kaiju fiction stumbles on is the right balance between the human scenes and the big stompy action scenes, but “Ziga” manages to weight its debut chapter well, starting with an introductory splash of Ko’s nightmare, then leaving that to simmer in the background throughout until the final pages, where all hell breaks loose.

While the whole chapter is enjoyable, it’s this latter half where “Ziga” truly shines. The titular monster is seen in slim panels, not fully revealed until the page turn, where a full double splash shows an extreme close-up of the Kaiju’s face as he roars above the smoke-filled devastation. This giant silhouette signifies the start of a tense, frantic action sequence filled with confusion and demolition, expertly handled by Hidano. The frenetic mixture of large panels (that take in the scope of the action), and small panels (that speed up your reading speed), serve to add to the sense of confusion and chaos felt by the characters.

“Ziga” chapter 1 is the start of a long-awaited Kaiju manga that so far lives up to the legacy left by giants of the genre like Godzilla. The characters are engaging and likeable and the human drama is weighted well against the monster action. As a unit of story this chapter is strong, but between the myriad of unanswered questions regarding the shadowy recruiter and that gut-punch of a cliffhanger, there’s plenty here to bring you back for the next installment.

Final Verdict: 8.8 – A brilliant start to a surprisingly dark Kaiju Shonen adventure.


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Rowan Grover

Rowan is from Sydney, Australia! Rowan writes about comics and reads the heck out of them, too. Talk to them on Twitter at @rowan_grover. You might just spur an insightful rant on what they're currently reading, but most likely, you'll just be interrupting a heated and intimate eating session.

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Matt Lune

Born and raised in Birmingham, England, when Matt's not reading comics he's writing about them and hosting podcasts about them. From reading The Beano and The Dandy as a child, he first discovered American comics with Marvel's Heroes Reborn and, despite that questionable start, still fell in love and has never looked back. You can find him on Twitter @MattLune

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