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 “Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade.” If you have thoughts on this or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade, Chapter 15
Written by Mikiyasu Kamada
Illustrated by Ashibi Fukui
Translated by Camellia Nieh
Lettered by Snir Aharon
Reviewed by Brian Salvatore
The one critique that really hits with “Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade” is that we are 15 chapters in, and have yet to see much real baseball action. This isn’t a sports manga in the way that “Blue Box” is, where it takes the shape of a sports manga but is really a love story or a teenage friendship book. This is as straight of a sports manga as you can get, but without the action that typically populates the genre. Last chapter was about as close as we’ve seen to ‘real’ action, but this chapter returns the team to the drawing board for a new strategy.
But it was in reading this chapter that I’ve begun to see the title as something different than a sports manga. It is a fantasy sports manga, and then it clicked perfectly. This is a sports manga for the folks who spend a half hour before work tweaking their fantasy baseball lineup or who have in-person NFL drafts with their friends. And so, if you’re not looking at the lack of action as a problem, but rather as the point of the manga, it becomes something totally different.
All credit goes to Ashibi Fukui who manages to present a story that is still interesting, visually, when the majority of it is people speaking about baseball. Fukui does this by making sure that the primary characters are all have incredibly expressive faces, all of which get played up at the slightest hint of drama or conflict. But the visuals still manage to feel understated despite the eye-bulging, mouth agape stance many of these characters take at each turn.
The last few chapters have also established clear villains in the series, whereas initially, the villain was the perception of the team. Mikiyasu Kamada did a fine job of establishing the team as a reaction to the status quo, and while ‘man versus perception of him’ is a relatively unique situation, it likely helps a somewhat esoteric manga to have a more concrete antagonist at its core.
All of that said, we are approaching a shift into, what should be, a more traditional status quo with the spring season beginning next week. It’s going to be interesting to see how the tone shifts when more action is introduced, but it seems logical that the analytical heart of the story will remain, as Azukida will likely continue to strategize and plan. But much of the heavy lifting will likely be able to shift from Kamada’s scripts to Fukui’s art, as struggle and success can much more easily be displayed by showing the results of individual pitches, at-bats, and games.
Final Verdict: 7.1 – A full installment that looks to be a fulcrum point between the opening act and the full-on action of the baseball season.
