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, Rowan checks in with “Fabricant 100.” If you have thoughts on this or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Fabricant 100 Chapter 9
Written and illustrated by Daisuke Enoshima
Reviewed by Rowan Grover
MILD SPOILERS IN PARAGRAPHS THREE AND FIVE!
Chapter 9 of “Fabricant 100” is where the series evolves from an attractive, technical action premise to an emotional yet simultaneously shockingly cold tale of humanity. The latest story is a test for the protagonist Ashibi, presenting the moral difficulty of having to deal with a Human/Fabricant relationship like his own. Enoshima tugs the heartstrings hard in showing readers the origin of the relationship between Roxy and her Fabricant. It’s no small feat when an author makes me feel sympathy for a privileged rich kid.
Roxy is portrayed as a tragic figure in very simple terms: from childhood, she has wanted to sing, and in theory, her wealthy family should be able to provide the training and means to succeed in this field. Yet, she’s pronounced deaf from a young age: the immovable object that makes it so difficult to achieve something that should be accessible to everyone. Enoshima portrays the finality and frustration of this development exceptionally, with short and punchy dialogue and storytelling, giving Roxy barely a moment to reconcile with this news throughout her youth.
Until she meets her Fabricant companion, of course. Enoshima builds up their relationship with the most real estate in this chapter. Roxy and the Fabricant grow up together like childhood friends, with Roxy helping her Fabricant adopt a more human appearance, even getting matching hairclips to cement their bond. All this emotional groundwork makes it that much more brutal when Roxy is betrayed by the Fabricant who literally stabs her in the back after catching the smell of Ashibi’s “elite” blood. Enoshima here is giving us the first big show of how brutally single-minded the Fabricants are about achieving human perfection. We’d seen hints of it in 100’s behavior before, but never full-blown betrayal and murder, shifting the tone of the series into much darker territory. It’s a classic storytelling trick, but to have the emotional backstory and betrayal so immediately close to each other makes the punch hit that much harder.
“Fabricant 100” has never come off as the most intricate or visually detailed manga, but Enoshima makes up for that by coming up with great action and expressive characters. Roxy, who could’ve easily been drawn as a J-Pop idol/bimbo with a flat expression, feels like a much more layered character than her screen time grants her any right to be. We see her go through a cold, detached shock as a child when told about her hearing loss, which morphs into melancholic open-mouthed awe when she meets the singing Fabricant. We see this awe turn into a fierce protectiveness as an adult, when Roxy takes any moment of the fight to protect her supposed friend from harm, even standing in the way of 100’s deadly stance, with a look of determination spread across her face.
What I really want to talk about, however, is the double-page spread of the Fabricant stabbing Roxy through the chest. It’s a deceptively simple shot, yet composed so perfectly that despite being laid out on one page it feels like a sequential, moving shot. The page opens on the top right with 100’s shocked visage meeting a bloodied blade pointing up diagonally at her (the first denouement). From there, our eyes naturally follow the blade down to Roxy’s impaled body spread out in defense (the victim revealed) and the Fabricant holding the murder weapon low in the bottom left of the panel (the killer hiding in the shadows). Interestingly, this effect worked even better when reading on mobile, as I had to scroll across and take this page piece by piece. The bottom panel only accentuates the absurdity of the moment via Roxy’s face, giving us an extra beat to let sink in what has happened before us. It’s good comics, folks!
Final Score: 9.0 – “Fabricant 100” brings its A-game to this chapter. Let’s hope it sticks around for a while.
