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 two titles 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, Vince and Zach check in on “Ghost Reaper Girl” and “Me & Roboco.” If you have thoughts on these or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Ghost Reaper Girl – Chapter 6: Code Name
Written & Illustrated by Akissa Saiké
Review by Vince J Ostrowski
There’s a bit of controversy surrounding the sexually suggestive content of the early chapters of “Ghost Reaper Girl”, which was uncomfortable enough to almost turn me off from the series. As the early chapters went on, there were signs that it was pivoting away from its more overly perverted (and in the case of a self-professed lolicon character, morally reprehensible) situations and transitioning into a fantasy harem manga that might be worth sticking with. Chapter 6 begins with a setup that tricks you into thinking our heroine, Chloe Love, is actually walking into another skeevy perv trap, but this ends up being a light-hearted joke. I was relieved, because it’s not the presence of perverted jokes that are necessarily the problem in stories like these (hell, perv humor is a longstanding tradition in shonen stories), but this series did feel like it was crossing a line a little early on.
What unfolds instead is a scene full of exposition about demons that are escaping from the bowels of Hell and need to be “exterminated” by Chloe, who is now an official member of the “Arkham Bullet” (a ghost extermination bureau) and has earned the code name “Ghost Reaper Girl.” Having received her code name and her officially sanctioned smartphone, the heroes begin their spirit busting adventure. And honestly, not much more happens than that. This manga is short. 13 pages short, to be exact. And with such little happening, I was looking for more from these characters. Earlier chapters feature Chloe and her “harem” playing off one another a little more. Chloe herself is something of a stock blank slate character, for whom a new exciting world is potentially forming around, but she has little personality herself at this point. The other characters fare better, but aside from the aforementioned gag at the beginning of the chapter, nobody else really gets to shine in this one either. The series has been better than this review indicates, but this chapter felt like fluff, as giving Chloe a code name (which is already the title of the manga) and hinting at a potentially sinister secret behind one of the members of Arkham Bullet isn’t enough to sustain a chapter. In fact, it’s pretty much stock “chapter 1” material, so this manga is feeling a little decompressed for my tastes.
I will say that it’s a nice manga to look at. Saiké hasn’t lost their artistic touch, as the characters are given playful, memorable visuals. The backgrounds are especially gorgeous, as some aspects (like the foliage and the cityscapes) look almost too realistic to be hand-rendered. If they are, it’s impressive stuff. If they’re not, if there’s some digital element to them, it’s an impressive use of that technique too. Nothing sticks out as unnatural or foreign, or an obvious mash-up of 2 techniques that don’t work well together. So all that said, the world-building is nice to look at, I just wish there was more going on in this series.
Final Verdict: 5.9 – This chapter of “Ghost Reaper Girl” was passable, but there’s so little happening at this point and little recognizable character work for the series to hang its hat on that there isn’t much distinguishing it from other entries in the genre
Me & Roboco Chapter 10
Written and illustrated by Shuei Miyazaki
Continued below
Translated by Paul Starr
Lettered by Jin Chan Yum Wai
Reviewed by Zach Wilkerson
“Me & Roboco” is a terrific gag manga that has already become notable for its clever references to other manga properties such as “Dragon Ball” and “Promised Neverland.” In the latest chapter, “Cooking and Roboco,” we get the most direct parody to date with a delightful send up of the beloved cooking manga “Food Wars.”
Many of the series’s gags thus far have centered around Roboco’s obvious differences and shortcomings compared to other, more traditional OrderMaids. This chapter revisits a gag from the very first chapter; Roboco’s absolute ineptitude at cooking. Spurred on by Meico’s enchanting French cuisine, Roboco takes it upon herself to improve her culinary aptitude to hilarious results.
Roboco’s alternatives to traditional French cuisine are a hoot, but a good manga relies on more than just witty dialogue for its laughs. The series’s visual gags are just as important, if not more so, and “Me & Roboco” has them in spades. Miyazaki-san’s pencils have a certain comforting charm to them. The work would feel just as welcome in an American newspaper strip as it does in Shonen Jump. The issue’s culmination, a take on the iconic “disrobing” of “Food Wars,” is played fantastically thanks to some clever self-censorship and subversion of the concept as yet another gag from a previous chapter is woven in.
On that note, the cast members and their respective gags, are a great strength of “Me & Roboco.” It’s impressive this early in the series to have characters like Gachigorilla, Madoka, and Bondo’s Mom, each with their own distinctive gags that can be repackaged and repurposed in different situations without losing any of the humor. Miyazaki wisely continues to tweak and escalate the gags in ways that remain fresh and “laugh out loud” funny. The series is still quite early and it’s always possible the jokes could start to wear thin. The series’s truncated page length works in its favor and lends credence to brevity being the soul of wit. Thankfully, Miyazaki shows no signs of faltering soon.
Final Verdict: 8.5 – Wholesome, clever, and wonderfully illustrated, “Me & Roboco” is genuinely hilarious and a welcome addition to the Shonen Jump library.
