Welcome to This Week in Shonen Jump, our weekly check in on Viz’s various Shonen Jump series. Viz has recently changed their release format, but our format will mostly remain the same. We will still review the newest chapters of one title a week, now with even more options at our disposal. The big change for our readers is that, even without a Shonen Jump subscription, you can read these most recent chapters for free at Viz.com or using their app.
This week, Brian checks in with “Kill Blue.” If you have thoughts on this or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Kill Blue, Chapter 1
Written and Illustrated by Tadatoshi Fujimaki
Translated by Casey Loe
Lettered by Steve Dutro
Reviewed by Brian Salvatore
When the opening pages of a manga show a middle-aged assassin taking out a room full of targets, one can be forgiven for not realizing that the overarching theme of the title is ‘education is magnificent.’ But that’s exactly what “Kill Blue” eventually comes around to: school is awesome.
The story is one of a hitman, Ogami, who is stung by a wasp that turns him into a middle schooler again. Then, his boss assigns him to a middle school he is thinking of sending his daughter to, and Ogami is to be undercover there and suss out its value. Only, instead of just toiling through, Ogami, who only has a grade school education, falls in love with learning. The idea is a wild one, and one that doesn’t have a natural order of how it should proceed. Because of that, the story can feel a little unwieldy at times, but there is a baseline level of excitement and propulsion to the story.
Tadatoshi Fujimaki really shifts the tone of the series once the magical element comes into play, and that could have been a jarring transition. Fujimaki instead starts a visual transformation after the first, action-heavy, sequence. The pages, once dense with black lines and detail, begin to appear more open and airy as the transition takes place. Even after the change, darkness only really appears in the abstract, like in the background of a panel or occasionally on an article of clothing. The disconnect in the older hitman and the younger student is amplified by different hair color, facial structure, and overall disposition. This is not a Big situation, where the adult and child versions are simpatico; this is more like a character shedding all of the baggage of adulthood and being left with just a core of inquisitiveness and kindness.
Of course, the specter of Ogami’s former profession is still there, and when a pervert breaks into the school with the express purpose of exposing himself to kids, Ogami is able to take care of matters due to his years of beating people up. This piece of the story is a little gross and, even if that’s the idea, the normalizing of stories about people showing their junk to kids is something that, just maybe, should be avoided.
Final Verdict: 7.0 – A solid start to a story with so many unusual pieces.
