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, Kerry and Rowan check in with “Yui Kamio Lets Loose” and “Samurai 8.” If you have thoughts on these or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Yui Kamio Lets Loose Chapter 35
Written and Illustrated by Hiroshi Shiibashi
Reviewed by Kerry Erlanger
Let’s not beat around the bush: off the top of my head, this is the weirdest, darkest love confession I’ve read in a manga series. Well, maybe not darkest, but definitely weirdest.
Let’s back up a bit.
It’s been pretty obvious since day one that Kiito and Yui were going to be an item eventually. As someone who likes her manga with a side of battle partner romance, I was all for this and pleased when it actually seemed to be developing outside of my head. Plus, Kiito having to grapple with his attraction to both Yui in Black and Yui in White added a fun extra layer that made it moderately more interesting than it would have been otherwise. Who would he choose?? Would he have to choose??
It ends up the answer is no, because in chapter 35 Kiito lets Yui know, very clearly despite having just been disemboweled and ripped to pieces (more on that in a minute), that he loves both sides of her, black and white. And really, isn’t that what true love is? It’s actually kind of a sweet moment despite the cliche and the fact that we’ve seen this coming from a mile off. Also despite the fact that Yui’s reaction to this confession is to dazedly lift Kiito’s bleeding torso off the ground to stare wide-eyed into his face, caressing his cheek as blood drips down to the floor, thoughts of destroying the world now replaced with thoughts of him. It’s kind of romantic in a dark humor sort of way? At least I laughed. That might not have been what Hiroshi Shiibashi intended, but oh well. Isn’t half the value of art based on your interpretation of it, anyway?
Speaking of which, the art really stands out this chapter, albeit in a disgusting zombie horror sort of way, which is a far cry from the early chapter school days. There are so many amazing panels of Kiito’s bloodied body parts that I can’t land on just one that was more memorable than the rest, although the love confession was particularly great in its juxtapositioning the horror with romance. It does help make the moment more dramatic. Yui had thought that Kiito was dead, her grief so unexpectedly deep that it transformed her from white to black in an instant. Kiito had thought he was dead too until he realized that despite missing half his face and all the rest of his body (thanks, Himiko), he was still having functional thoughts. That’s the power of the mushi, baby! He’s able to recall his tongue from wherever it landed on the ground when he got exploded simply by using the power of his brain (is this The Secret?) and delivers his words of encouragement/love confession, bloodied, scattered body parts and all.
The one lingering question in my mind is whether this love confession, coupled with what feels very much like a final boss battle against Himiko, is the death knell for this series. It appears as if Shiibashi is wrapping up a lot of loose ends and given the way that Shonen Jump loves to cycle through series, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised. I’m not sure whether “Yui Kamio” has ever managed to build itself a big enough following given the sort of genre jumping its been doing while trying to figure out exactly what it wants to be. It’s a shame if that’s the case, because I’ve enjoyed this series. Is it one of my favorites? No, but it’s one that I look forward to reading and has been consistently enjoyable. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what’s next.
Continued belowFinal Verdict:8.0 — Love! Action! Drama! Disembodied heads! This chapter has it all, so it’s too bad it might be nearing the end of the road.
Samurai 8 Chapter 27
Written by Masashi Kishimoto
Illustrated by Akira Okubo
Reviewed by Rowan Grover
The battle against Ben the Key-Hunter continues in this issue of “Samurai 8”. The narrative deals with the battle with a weird amount of separation that can make the scene transitions a bit jarring for readers. The issue starts off relatively relaxed and slow-paced as we see Hachimaru and the gang putting cuffs on the now-revealed criminal Kotsuga. The latter’s character gets developed somewhat more as we reveal his all-too-human reasonings for siding with Ben, yet he still comes off as unlikeable. What readers might have forgotten, however, is that there’s still a battle being waged in space between Daruma and Ben, and Kishimoto doesn’t hesitate to suddenly drag readers out of their relaxed comfort zone and into the harried pace of this battle between high-powered samurai. It’s not a bad way to start off an issue; the problem lies in the fact that these shifts happen multiple times throughout, making the narrative a little hard to follow. We move from space, back to the ground, with some flashbacks to Daruma’s pre-cat life peppered within that transition just as sharply.
The fight, however, is a lot of fun in the typical Shonen manner. We get a couple of transformations and reveals this issue that serves to increase the stakes for readers and show just how powerful these characters can get. Ben’s ‘Four Fighting Styles’ transformation is narratively exciting because it includes plenty of little easter eggs to other samurai that intuitive readers might have picked up on. Daruma picks this style apart fairly quickly, finding the fatal flaw in his power rather than simply powering up to beat him like other fighting manga from the past. We get another power-up display from Ben, but the real pay-off here is Daruma using a gift from his former master Yasha to revert him to his original body temporarily, giving us one of the most well-built-up moments of the series thus far. Who doesn’t like seeing the wise-old mentor finally cut loose?
Akira Okubo gets to do some smaller and larger scale conflicts particularly well in this issue. The sequence that the issue opens on is one of the best in terms of emotional acting. Kotsuga feels like more than just a pity character here than what he did the last issue as he continues to get excited for every little transformation Ben undertakes, and we see this in subtle facial changes like smile twitches. This is counterbalanced nicely with the regret and disbelief that is shown whenever talking to Hachimaru, which makes him feel more introspective and interesting than all his bravado suggests.
The action is were Okuba cuts loose on beautifully weird design elements and large scale attacks. The character Ben is such a good villain design as he’s just a really big dude physically (with shaved Hellboy-esque horns to boot!), and embodies a lot of final boss energy in this matter. Having him armor up with his four fighting styles technique makes him even more visually interesting yet he still doesn’t feel overcluttered due to the sheer mass of his design. The two guns and polearm contrast well against his costume which is mostly designed out of simple circular shapes. His summoned creature, Oniwaka-maru may not be exciting narratively, but he looks stunning, with clear Kaiju-inspirations visually mixed with the floating limb style Okubo tends to go for. On the flip side again, Daruma’s transformation is simplistic, perhaps being a little less exciting because of his ‘pure’ nature but it does look a little underwhelming when looked at compared to Ben’s transformations.
“Samurai 8” continues to be a worthy sci-fi/samurai mashup series, with awe-striking fights and transformations aplenty in this issue. Lesser characters are fleshed out somewhat, whilst older series stalwarts finally get the payoff they’ve been building since the beginning.
Final Score: 7.0 – A fun fight issue that’s a little oddly paced yet still packs some great fanservice.
