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 “Just Listen to the Song.” If you have thoughts on this or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Just Listen to the Song
Written by Tatsuki Fujimoto
Illustrated by Oto Toda
Translated by Amanda Haley
Lettered by Snir Aharon
Reviewed by Brian Salvatore
Tatsuki Fujimoto has been spending some of the time during the “Chainsaw Man” hiatus to do some one-shots. The most recent of which, called “Just Listen to the Song,” is a blend of romance, mystery, cringe comedy, and cultural commentary. While the strip has a lot going for it, the biggest strike against it is that, absolutely unfairly, it doesn’t compare too well to “Goodbye, Eri” or “Look Back,” two of the recent one-shots that Fujimoto has published. This is a totally different beast, however, mainly in that it is a purposely short story at only 20 pages.
But in these pages, Fujimoto and Ota Toda (“To Strip the Flesh”) tell a story about people searching for meaning in art. It’s a touchy thing for any creative person to talk about, because there is, of course, a differentiation between what an artist creates and how the public interprets it. Is this Fujimoto’s commentary about how some folks interpret his work? Or is it just a story about a lovesick kid who is trying to get a date?
Toda’s art splits the difference of those two areas. Because of the static nature of comics, all the ‘secret’ messages/images in the video our unnamed narrator uploads to YouTube are hidden to us, and therefore, the experience of the viewer, in the manga, is totally foreign to the reader. And so this isn’t a story that the reader can interpret in the same way that the characters viewing the video can. We have to, instead, interpret their interpretation, and see whether we believe in the messages that they are finding. Because we can’t see them ourselves, and because of the reader’s access to the video-maker, the initial answer “of course these are bullshit.”
But Fujimoto and Toda give us ‘evidence’ throughout, and so it’s not quite as cut and dry as it may seem. And that is why this manga succeeds so well; it is taking a short, relatively one-note story and, through the way in which it is told, asks the reader to do a fair amount of work. If it is read as a straightforward tale, “Just Listen to the Song” is clever, if potentially slight. But if taken as commentary on fan reaction, the story grows in depth.
Final Verdict: 8.3 – All too frequently art tells you exactly what to think. It is refreshing to be encouraged to make your own opinion.
