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 “Sho-Ha Shoten!.” If you have thoughts on this or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Sho-Ha Shoten! Chapters 1+ 2
Written by Akinari Asakura
Illustrated by Takeshi Obata
Lettered by James Gaubatz
Translated by Stephen Paul
Reviewed by Brian Salvatore
Laughing is a reflex that cannot be planned. Sure, you can fake a laugh, but when something is really funny, you can’t help yourself. That works both ways; you can make the sound of a laugh, but you can’t actually force a true laugh. This obviously makes comedy hard, but it is even harder when you’re trying to tell a story that, inherently, isn’t funny, but is highlighting something that is supposed to be funny. If you ever tried to watch Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, you will know exactly what I’m talking about. Typically, when non-comedians try to intellectually break down why comedy works, it doesn’t work.
All of that is preamble to say that, by far, the worst part of “Sho-Ha Shoten!” is when Akinari Asakura attempts to write a comedy bit. These have so much working against them in addition to the ‘non-comedic commentary on comedy’ concept: a language barrier, trying to write out text for a physical performance, and trying to make it also serve the plot and not just be a standalone skit. Across these two chapters, there are two scenes of Taiyo and Azemichi performing, and neither one is funny nor particularly easy to read, despite Takeshi Obata’s valiant attempt to make these not just be bricks of text but have some movement and flow to them.
At its heart, much like recent Shonen Jump addition “PPPPPP,” “Sho-Ha Shoten!” is a sports manga about something other than a sport. The comedy here is handled as something that can be mastered if worked out enough, the way a jumpshot can be drilled, or a scale can be played. And while that is certainly true to a degree, it’s a lot harder to show someone mastering timing or the art of writing a great sketch than it is to show someone attempting to break off a curveball.
In the second chapter, Obata does a great job of illustrating Azemichi’s thought process of making his family laugh, and it is the closest this story comes to blending the story with the more analytical approach. It is also a sequence that seems like it would likely be difficult to pull off more than once, though I’m interested in seeing just how similar setups will be handled in the future.
The second chapter also gives a little more insight into Azemichi’s family and, specifically, why his father is so down on him pursuing his dreams. The revelation that his father is a failed creative himself is not shocking, but is handled well, and sets up his father as someone other than, as he calls himself in the text, the ‘stubborn, cruel villain’ of a manga. Like a lot of this story thus far, it’s not exactly groundbreaking, but it is solid enough.
Final Verdict: 6.2 – A good start to a story, but one that suffers from trying to explain comedy.
