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, Rowan checks in with “Nue’s Exorcist.” If you have thoughts on this or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Nue’s Exorcist, Chapter 2
Written and Illustrated by Kota Kawae
Reviewed by Rowan Grover
The new Shonen Jump series “Nue’s Exorcist” started with some interesting visual quirks, and a wild approach to power scaling, but came off a bit vapid and trope-y. Does newcomer mangaka Kota Kawae have the ability to shift things drastically enough to maintain my interest by the second chapter? For the most part… no. But let’s focus on the positives first. Kawae takes an interesting approach to story and character development in this series. The second issue gives most of its real estate to having its main characters Nue and Gakuro hang out and play card games. This laid-back approach to unraveling Nue’s intentions is very cozy and gives the whole series an inviting tone.
Kawae also has a solid go at injecting some tension and horror into this story. When we see the immediacy of how the possessed school teacher reacts to Nue, it’s alarming. Having him go from a flaccid, zombie-like state to yelling with bursting forehead veins in a few panels adds a good bit of stress to an otherwise very chill story.
The art has some solid design elements too! I enjoy the look of the spirits in their most protean form. Kawae draws them with swirling, mist-like bodies that are chock full of weird skin-teeth and inky eyeballs. Having their mist harden and fold with wrinkles near their facial features is a weirdly off-putting visual touch that works well, too.
The rest of the book, unfortunately, fares from forgettable to annoying. There’s a tonne of the telling/showing fallacy at play here. While that can work for more experienced storytellers, it falls pretty hard here. Two out of two issues of this series have been told about “exorcists” and how much power and influence they have over this world. Yet everything they’ve done has either been off-panel or regarded to be in passing. We don’t even get a juicy silhouette or any visual signifier to tease us with! They feel like a very nebulous concept and I shouldn’t be glazing over this hard two chapters into a series.
Kawae also has the most boring levels of fanservice. While not everyone, especially newcomers to manga culture, can appreciate this trope, I do think it can be done with taste and add a real element of sex appeal to a story! Kawae, alas again, does not have mastery in this aspect of storytelling, and makes the trope feel as stale as a cracker left out on a cheese platter overnight. Any other female characters that are drawn into this story are literally faceless. On top of this, about a third of the issue is relegated to Gakuro’s pals getting unbelievably horny over Nue. Nue herself is relegated to the most boring schoolgirl uniform, barely earning the unassailable gaze these weird little boys throw at her. There’s some decent humor about Nue posing as Gakuro’s “non-blood related sister” but the context is too uncomfortable to make it enjoyable.
Final Score: 5.9 – Decent design quirks and interesting vibes aren’t enough to elevate this trite manga above “meh” status.
