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Hyakumanjou Labyrinth caught my attention on a yet another hidden gem hunt I conduct roughly once a season. I'm a big fan of works like Vincenzo Natali's Cube, Tsutomu Nihei's Blame!, and Kuu Tanaka's The Vertical World; I love weird physics-defying worlds, I love ontological mystery in science fiction, I love the feeling of existential dread coming from the dissonance between the real world and the bizarre laws governing whatever realms you see in works like this.

On a surface level, this manga seemed to have fit the bill. Indeed, the two main characters end up trapped in a weird labyrinthine building that resemble the garbage level data (or "secret worlds" as it's often called in the gamer communities) that may be traversable if you manage to glitch out of bounds of a level in a video game: copies of existing objects, broken architecture, empty voids and weird reality-altering triggers are abound. It's not a coincidence that both characters are employed as game testers and use their knowledge of videogame logic and common bugs to navigate and take advantage of the laws of the labyrinth. Hyakumanjou Labyrinth takes this idea and plays with it thoroughly, exploring many concepts familiar to game hackers and speedrunners, as well as adding a sci-fi trope or five for a good measure.

The problem is, well... it's really all that it ever does. It lacks the psychological horror of Cube, the classy art and atmosphere of Blame! or the plot and charismatic characters of The Vertical World. The eponymous labyrinth feels like a playground for the main character, and so is the story—it's more of a sandbox for ideas than an actual complete and self-contained story. Character development is almost an afterthought, there is never a real sense of urgency or danger, visuals feel plain and unimaginative, and conflict can barely be felt.

Don't get me wrong—this is not a *bad* manga by any means; it just doesn't do anything to really distinguish itself despite having a decent premise to build on. In the end, it feels like a proof of concept for something much bigger that could have been done with it, but wasn't. I wouldn't consider it a waste of time per se, but the way it is, it's hard to recommend it to anyone who isn't a big fan of this particular style of sci-fi. But if you like it, be sure to check the three works I've mentioned above which, in my opinion, represent it a lot better.

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Honestly, this is not a review I wanted to write so soon, but I feel a sense of obligation to fulfill to a work that is dear to my heart and has affected me on such a deep emotional level.

Upon its creation, Berserk had immediately spearheaded the genre of dark fantasy and served as one of its most well-known and acclaimed representatives across all media. Meticulously crafted and greatly inspirational, it's been consistently ranked at the top of the lists of greats, gathering accolades all over the world for its story, themes, art, and characters. Even at this site, Berserk has consistently been the #1 manga by rating (by a ridiculous margin, too) pretty much since the very beginning, and there's a good reason why.

Written and illustrated by Kentaro Miura, Berserk tells the story of Guts, the Black Swordsman, the Struggler. The man who was born with nothing and had to fight for his life for as long as he lived. The man who never got to truly enjoy what he had before it was taken away from him by force, time and again: his parents, comrades, family, love, hope. The man who was traumatized and tried his best to overcome his trauma despite the boiling rage pushing him towards self-destruction. The man who set out to take revenge on his arch-nemesis, Griffith.

Griffith, the shining falcon of light whose great ambition lead him to a great downfall. An outstanding swordsman capable of rivaling Guts just on sheer skill. The cunning strategist for whom no sacrifice was too big as long as it got him what he wanted. The traitor who, in a fit of jealous rage, has wronged Casca who adored him so greatly.

Casca, a comrade-in-arms to both Guts and Griffith. A skilled warrior and a talented leader who came through when all hope was lost. A loyal friend who has been betrayed and hurt so deeply it rendered her almost completely helpless. An innocent person with a trauma that will never fully heal.

The premise sounds very oldschool; naturally, Berserk *is* oldschool, and takes pride in being true to the form: it portrays an absolute shithole of a world where decency and compassion are so uncommon they might as well be taken for deception or stupidity. It's an aggressive, tortured, broken place. Such bleak backdrop is expertly used to highlight the development of the characters who evolve both despite and because of the hardships they have to endure. Their background informs their motivations, motivations give rise to feelings, feelings inspire actions, actions bring consequences—without fail. And they move on forward. Chapter after chapter, arc after arc, the characters are subtly altered by their experiences; they feel regret and remorse, overcome their past, learn new things about the world and each other, and find out what their next step is, one step at a time.

The progress of Guts' and Griffith's characters and their juxtaposition in particular have so much nuance they might as well have an entire book written about it—and in a sense, it has been, with YouTubers such as AlexEnterprises, Aleczandxr, Soul, Spirit of Fiction, and others recording numerous high-quality video essays on this and other subjects related to Berserk (among other things), so if you want a more in-depth review of the various themes and the way they are executed in Berserk, that would be a much better place to start. It's unfair and overly reductionist to call Berserk a revenge story, but if there was ever was one to end all revenge stories, Berserk would be it.

Alas, that wasn't meant to be. On May 6, 2021, Miura's life was abruptly ended by an acute vascular condition stemming from his long history of health problems. And the most horrible thing is that this came sudden but wasn't unexpected at all. He's been known for many years as a perfectionist and an obsessive workaholic who just couldn't leave Berserk, the work of his life, alone—let alone in the hands of somebody he couldn't trust. As a result, the manga has been plagued by progressively longer publication hiatuses—to the point where only three or four chapters would be released each year, if any at all. But even during those breaks, day after day, year after year, despite his failing health, Miura kept toiling on every page until it looked like an honest-to-God painting.

Everyone knew this wasn't sustainable, and at that rate Miura would've needed at least 30–40 more years of continuous work. This simply wasn't realistic. So he created an art studio just to train assistants to bring them up to a level he would consider "acceptable" so that they could be trusted with illustrating Berserk—and even then he kept most of the work to himself and had them work on his (not particularly remarkable) side-projects, further prolonging the hiatuses of Berserk... Until Berserk had finally had enough and put its author to rest in the only way it knew how.

As fans, we realized long ago this could happen and had gone so far as to make grim jokes about it. Even then, it still came as a horrible gut punch to everyone. Now, in retrospect, by reading the little quips and comments Miura left behind in his publications, we can piece together just how much he'd sacrificed so that he could continue Guts's story. It's such a cruel irony that in order to tell a believable tale about betrayal, ambition, and sacrifice in a dark fantasy world, its author had turned his own life into a depressingly dark reality, sacrificing everything else for his ambition and ultimately betraying the call for closure. It seems there will be no closure to this story after all.

But... looking on the brighter side of things, Miura has already accomplished more than pretty much anyone could ever hope for. He's brought inspiration and thrill to the heart of the millions. He has created one of the most intricate character studies in popular literature, let alone a specific genre. By all means, he is already a legend. Berserk is already a masterpiece and a monument to an incredible writer and illustrator. Nothing will ever change that.

Rest in peace, dear friend.

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Shingeki no Kyojin, the story that ushered in a new era for the medium and firmly planted anime and manga into the mainstream, has ended. And while I'd love for it to have done so with a loud bang, the sound it produced with the final chapters was more akin to a wet fart.

But first, a little bit of context. The year is 2006, a 19 y.o. amateur manga artist Hajime Isayama submits a one-shot to everyone's favorite Japanese magazine, Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump. The one-shot contains horrible drawings of naked people that later become known as titans, exposing the embarrassing fact that the young man still can't grasp correct human proportions despite studying at an art college. The editorial department tells him the style isn't quite Shonen-y nor Jump-y enough so he has to do something better. The author submits the work to publishing competitor Kodansha instead, where he's given a rookie award, a hearty pat on the back, and a go-ahead for serialization... so long as he actually learns to draw human bodies.

Fast-forward three years: Isayama is finally able to produce passable art, and the manga enters serialization in Kodansha's brand new Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. Fast-forward again to 2013: Shingeki no Kyojin is a money printing machine the likes of which Kodansha hadn't seen since Hajime no Ippo, the anime debuts to a success never seen *ever*, Shueisha editors rip out their last remaining hair and swear they will never turn down a potentially popular one-shot for stylistic disagreements again. Enjoy reading the likes of Chainsaw Man in Jump? Light a candle for your man Isayama who made it possible.

Back to the manga at hand, SnK sure took a few sharp turns over the course of its run, much to the dismay of many fans who were unable to adapt to the change in tone. At first most people thought this was some sort of a high-octane slasher where a named character could die any moment (I mean, who doesn't like those? That's kind of how Game of Thrones got from a niche fantasy book into the mainstream), so they became confused when it suddenly slowed down and dove deeply into politics and psychological thriller territory. Just as the audience had gotten used to that, the series abolished that angle altogether to show an entire arc from the antagonists' point of view which made it feel more like a somber war drama. What was first expected to be the next coming of shonen has turned into a surprisingly thoughtful and impartial treatise on the politics of both civil and international warfare, its social impact, the psychological trauma dealt to those involved, and the moral choices they are forced to make during and after the conflict. The manga was continuously reformulating what it was about, urged the readers to rethink their allegiances and reconsider who the actual bad guys were. This was a feat you wouldn't normally see in the medium, and it made it stand out to those of us who have stuck with it through the genre rollercoaster.

But it had to end with the most messy, haphazardly written, ham-fisted final arc that all but forgot about dozens of previously set up plot points, threw many characters under the bus and made others behave inconsistently, all sprinkled with embarrassingly tone-deaf dialogue and paneling the closer to the ending it got. A literary vomit that could not have come from under the same pen that produced many amazing chapters just a couple years prior. An unfortunate mistake that could've been adequately remedied with perhaps another couple volumes' worth of properly paced content. It would be unfair to say that the series hadn't had problems before the final arc, but what the arc did was effectively exacerbating these problems instead of trying to rectify them. And in doing so, made me feel disgust towards the characters, and they did not deserve it.

So, what went wrong? It's hard to say. Maybe Isayama has buckled under the immense pressure of expectations that drove him so far as to abolish the originally planned ending and go for an overall lighter tone. Maybe all the fame has stressed him out and made him want to do away with the manga sooner rather than later. Maybe he's lost the line of thought that guided his protagonist, or met a dead-end he couldn't resolve in a more concise manner. Maybe it's all of it, I don't know. Unless he does a post-mortem interview addressing the problematic ending, we may never know.

Should you read SnK even knowing that? I'd say yes. Just the themes it ends up exploring and the way it manages to manipulate your perspective on the world alongside the characters' are nothing short of spectacular. The story may have failed in the end, but the overall experience is still strong and worth going through.

Just, uh... ease on the expectations, m'kay?

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A boy is living in a strange world that stretches vertically, resembling an enormous pipe. The boy doesn't know what's above or below the level he resides on or what is outside the walls, how deep is the seemingly bottomless pit next to his dwelling, or how to scale down. But more than anything else, he wants to know. And as he's pondering these thoughts standing on its edge, an unconscious girl is seen falling down the pit from somewhere very far above.

Does he rush to catch her? No—instead, as he watches her vanish into the black abyss, he feels frustrated that she beat him to exploring the unknown. And, without a second thought, lunges after her in an attempt to catch up. With this weird encounter starts their bizarre adventure, transcending time and space to uncover the secrets behind the Vertical World.

But seriously, wow. The Vertical World is the textbook example of a hidden gem, and I couldn't have been more glad to find it in a sea of sheer obscurity. As a matter of fact, while writing this a few days after it finished its run, a grand total of 726 users had it on their list on MAL. Perhaps owing to the lack of punchy art, it is being grossly overlooked even despite being published in Jump+, the online counterpart to the wildly popular Jump series of manga magazines. Astoundingly, this is the case both abroad and at home in Japan, as stated by the author who, fortunately, was given the green light to finish the story as planned despite the poor viewership. And I'll admit to being guilty of negligence myself, as the cover art didn't exactly look inviting by any means and made me hesitant to even start. But as I'd learned shortly afterwards, what lied underneath this humble exterior was a high-octane, deeply emotional, intellectually stimulating story that does a stellar job escalating the stakes and making you hunger for the next chapter the further in you are. Much better than most of the regular Jump manga, in fact! Truth be told, it's been a while since I'd read a work so genuinely captivating, imaginative...

...And at times, utterly confusing! As I've implied earlier, The Vertical World is, among other things, a time-travel adventure—but even that is just the tip of the iceberg. Being a very "soft" sci-fi, the story contains a lot of elements that push the limits of speculative fiction, but rather than hand-waving away the more implausible elements, it attempts to explain everything that sticks out. Furthermore, it does so in a simple, concise manner that enables a solid and surprisingly consistent (even if not very scientifically sound) narrative—while remaining fun. The decision to put it on the softer side of the spectrum pays off handsomely here: instead of confining himself to the most proven of scientific principles, Kuu Tanaka lets his imagination go absolutely wild and spares no effort invoking all sorts of purely theoretical phenomena to enhance the story he is telling and the world he is portraying.

And by gods, what a unique world it is! If you've ever been fascinated by the gargantuan technological megastructures of Blame!, the abstract horror and ontological mystery of Cube (and/or its less accomplished sequel), or the exploration rush of the Metroid series and similar games—and I certainly am—you're probably going to have a blast with it. What it lacks in moody desolate atmosphere, it makes up in weird and creative ways to utilize the setting and scale it up well into the mind screw territory, with layers upon layers of scientific abstraction ranging from pocket universes and wormhole traversal to digitized minds and computer viruses given flesh—all in the span of just 120 short chapters. And no, that list isn't even half of the phenomena you're about to encounter.

The story starts off relatively tame and the early chapters give off a rather cozy, whimsical vibe reminiscent of Kaiba which clearly inspired some of its visual direction. But by around 2/5 of the run it picks the pace up considerably and never slows down from that point. Every time you feel like you're about to finally learn an answer to one of the core mysteries, a previously unconsidered facet emerges, and the path to a more complete understanding becomes more twisted and challenging by the chapter. It's so easy to become overwhelmed by the complex plot weave that even the publisher is inviting us in the short afterword blurb on the last page to re-read it from the beginning in order to put the earlier parts of the story into the context of the later revelations. How often does that even happen? And I'd say it shouldn't be considered a simple recommendation, but rather a part of the actual reading experience—much like with Primer, Memento, and some similar works with a top-heavy narrative structure which opens up like a flower bud once you look at the reasons for every plot turn in retrospect, and hence demands repeated viewings. (Also, having a visual timeline chart definitely wouldn't hurt in this case.)

Now, of course, this way of storytelling is inherently problematic because of how insistently it piles up mysteries and red herrings, making it easy to lose track of what's going on for the reader and the author alike. In this respect, The Vertical World is certainly closer to Twin Peaks than Primer—and although it does give off the impression of careful planning, there still remain many bits and pieces that are hard to reconcile even knowing the full truth, and some creative liberties that look outright silly regardless of context. In particular, the arbitrary magnitude of injury (or the complete lack thereof) characters take from falls or hits, or the ability of certain characters to grab onto smooth wall or cliff sides when falling down—sometimes while *also* holding another person or two. It can become tiring by the end. I get that the world is stretched vertically (duh) and so people are bound to fall *a lot* simply because the premise invites them to, but come on—I have disbelief to suspend here! In general, the physical prowess of the main cast is often overstated for no good reason, and at times that makes the manga look somewhat dumber than it deserves.

It doesn't help either that the art, as I've already mentioned above, can be described as minimally functional at its best—and "kids' doodles" at any other time. It really is on the level of the original One-Punch Man and ONE's other early webcomics. This does give it a certain charm, but if anything, you still need to get used to it. It does get somewhat better over the course of the run (though it would be fair to mention that OPM also does) and at some point starts feeling natural. In either case it does highlight the strength of the writing, as people are reading these works not because but rather *despite* the poor art, and still remain loyal. The fact that pages are elongated and are designed to be scrolled down rather than turned over is definitely a big counterweight to the art deficiencies, and this, along with manhwa publications by Carnby Kim, is one of the best examples of such appropriate usage of the medium.

In any case, fortunately, I'd say none of the problems I've listed are a real deal-breaker. The Vertical World still excels in the most important aspects, remains wildly fun throughout and delivers engaging character interaction without forced interpersonal drama. And it actually nails a flawless ending (a depressively rare occurrence!): not rushed, nor stupid, nor needlessly melodramatic, but Just Right. I don't even remember the last time I was so deeply satisfied by the ending; it's positively cathartic and it reduced me to a sobbing mess for a good few minutes. So if you are willing to look past the sketchy art and the often cartoony approach to human physiology, the experience you'll be met with is best described by a quote from one of the characters:

"I haven't the slightest idea what might've happened... But I can tell you one thing. You've all been on an amazing journey, haven't you?"

Couldn't have said it better.

(P.S. Since this is published in Shonen Jump+, you can read the entire manga for free on Shueisha's official site and mobile app, Manga Plus. There, you have no excuses to postpone reading it anymore.)

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*CAUTION: Contains minor spoilers. Well, not like they matter.*

Remember The Promised Neverland? The manga that was promising in the beginning and did a lot of things right but then methodically squandered every remaining bit of its potential? Yeah, that one. I admit to it becoming a bit of a pet peeve of mine, as it is a textbook example of an awesome premise ruined by inept execution, and the continuous onslaught of supplemental TPN one-shots, short novels, and extra chapters mostly works to add insult to the injury rather than help remedy this situation. It could have been different if all this extra effort was put into making the main story better instead, but alas, that ship has already sailed.

So here comes yet another weak attempt to remind us of the franchise's existence. This time is particularly noteworthy as We Were Born doesn't even have a connection to TPN except in name and a *very* loose similarity in concept. You know how the whole children farm thing was an allegory for vaguely defined real-world cruelty? Well, this one-shot is presented as faux inspiration material for the parent story (calling it a "pilot" chapter is, at best, misguiding) and provides a look at that exact cruelty taking place in the real world. Though somehow just as vaguely defined and painted in similarly broad, comically exaggerated strokes, making it less realistic and impactful than it probably deserved to be if the topic had been taken seriously.

As a result, if you've read/watched TPN, you'll find WWB very predictable. Indeed, it contains all the trademark Shirai pathos, shocking revelations™, and tired story beats like using children as a tradable commodity, kind-looking adults being scumbags in disguise, and edgy thugs pulling heel-turns to save the day. Every twist is telegraphed miles in advance, there is almost no subtlety to storytelling, Posuka Demizu is still clueless about practical aspects of weaponry, characters' reactions to various things make no goddamn sense, and the ending is almost hilariously abrupt and all over the place (again!). That's not even counting the minor things like a character holding his gun in the left hand and then having it in the right on the next panel. Editors become all too busy to perform their primary duties when there is a gravy train to ride.

All that said, WWB's most notable sin—the one it also shares with TPN—is the ever-confusing desire to take a stab at some of the more grim and challenging topics, portray them with all the gory splatter involved, and then *dumb them down* to near-farcical levels, making it unclear who the intended audience for this work even is. The writing is so basic and in-your-face it spells out its entire message in tropes: "WAR IS HELL KILLING IS BAD RICH SCUMBAGS RULE THE WORLD LIFE IS PRECIOUS AND HAS A MEANING" (spoilers, lol!). Forget "show, don't tell"; we're knee-deep in the age of "cut, then paste". I'm utterly confused by the premises required to produce this sort of discrepancy. Does the author consider the audience too dumb to get any point presented in a more nuanced and elegant manner, or do they consider the audience so smart they can make up their own nuance while the author is bombarding them with bare concepts and tropes?

Note that the short length imposed by the publication format has nothing to do with this or any other problem; there are dozens of very accomplished one-shots and single-volume series that do things right without having to piggy-back on something else's fame. Maybe it's because they aren't so annoyingly preachy, maybe it's because they choose to portray interesting characters who behave like people and not walking stereotypes strung along by the plot, maybe it's because they involve compelling situations presented with subtlety and style and not just basic tropes. Hard to say. Surely the problem isn't with the audience, either, as the recent Jump series like Act-age (RIP) and Chainsaw Man exhibited a lot more mature and nuanced storytelling than the usual WSJ fare and were still quite popular during their run (consider the original Act-age one-shot as a good example, too). Even TPN itself was admittedly great at the beginning and could've stayed that way with some more effort on the author's part.

I'd like to find an excuse for WWB being so lazily written, but I just can't. If it weren't forcibly tied into the franchise, it would probably never pass Jump's one-shot screening or amass a following any other way. As much as I rag on Shueisha's editors for their greed and notoriously bad optics for jokes made in poor taste, I know they usually do better in this particular respect. Actually pains me to think that it might have taken the publication slot of an original work possibly more deserving of attention; surely there's no shortage of one-shot submissions that aren't low-effort tie-ins? It's infinitely harder to come up with entirely new stuff instead of occasionally pinging an established fanbase to remind them that their favorite series could use some more money, though from a corporate suit perspective I can see the latter option taking priority. Oh well.

To summarize, I wouldn't call We Were Born outright *horrible*, but by all means it is horribly mediocre and soulless. As is often the case with cookie-cutter spin-offs like this, the one-shot combines all the worst aspects of The Promised Neverland without borrowing anything good from it, let alone adding anything of value on its own, and the result speaks for itself. Unfortunately, it so happens that quality work require effort, and putting effort into something clearly just meant to revitalize printed volume sales is way too much to ask for.

On the brighter side, I'm looking forward to the day Kaiu Shirai goes full Hiroya-Oku-grade tone-deaf shilling and starts producing even longer and more idiotic spin-offs of the once-acclaimed series to drive away in disgust everyone who might so much as suggest there is something wrong with it, until nothing but a pure echo chamber remains. There's a certain radical school of thought proposing that the best way to fix a mess-up, no matter how big, is to double-down on it as much as possible to make it part of your personal style and desensitize the audience. It's not a mistake if it's perceived as deliberate, after all.

But if anything, at least I can still have some fun writing critical reviews of this mess, and hopefully you'll also have fun reading them.

(P.S. The one-shot does manage to cross the "so bad it's good" horizon at the panel where the rich guy's staff, who had supposedly served him for years and stood there helplessly watching him get assaulted, greedily jumps on the theatrically scattered stacks of his cash screaming "Ooh, money!" Genuine good comedy right there, almost made the rest of it worth reading.)

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Act-age was one of the most promising series in Weekly Shonen Jump throughout 2019 and 2020, and one of my personal favorites alongside One Piece and Chainsaw Man.

It really was a head-turner in many ways: a colorful, female-heavy cast, unconventional topic, plenty of quality character drama, unusual art, no forced romance or any sort of physical fights as a means to move the plot forward—and at the same time it dutifully adhered to the basics of the shonen sensibilities, such as rivalry and continuous progress on the path towards fulfilling a grand ambition. It was, to use a term coined in Bakuman, an excellent example of a non-battle battle manga; a rare case of a purely character-driven shonen work that was neither a romcom nor a slice-of-life.

Alas, with the author arrested for the dubious hobby of groping middle-schoolers while passing them on a bike, the manga was promptly axed, and the artist allegedly decided against continuing it on her own, unlike what would normally be expected when one drops out of a writer/illustrator collaboration. A rational, respectable decision on her part, though sad nonetheless, since the story was essentially terminated midways, with no advance notice or even a semblance of a closure. It deserved so much more.

Oh well. If the prospect of reading a promising story that will never be completed does not turn you off, do read it. What we've had up to this day was wonderful.

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Haikyuu is a manga about volleyball. Very much so.

No, really: volleyball is the actual hero of this story, and the only one at that. The enormous cast of colorful, likable characters with all of their ambitions and rivalries are mere canvas for the author Haruichi Furudate to paint his limitless, unrelenting adoration for the sport. Former enemies become rivals, former rivals become teammates; the entire corpus of character dynamics is shown almost exclusively through the lens of their relation to volleyball. Consequently, characters who have none of such relation almost never even enter the frame—that's just how laser-focused Haikyuu is.

I could go on about how Furudate makes a point to make the protagonist short to help break the common stereotype that only tall people are good at spiking the ball, or how Hinata and Kageyama have a strangely captivating yin-yang kind of dynamics between them, but it feels almost pointless to delve into these minor details. Or perhaps it would actually be missing the point, simply because everything takes such a distant backseat to this great overarching goal of spreading the love for volleyball—which is really what Haruichi Furudate wants to express first and foremost. Not some fantasy take on volleyball, but the real thing.

In this respect, I'm sure that after some years Haikyuu will be seen as the second coming of Slam Dunk in terms of its lasting influence on the sport, and it will deserve every bit of praise it gets in this regard. After all, it genuinely lives and breathes volleyball; the way the sport is portrayed is so vivid and enjoyable all by itself that such appreciation becomes contagious. In writing it, Furudate sets out on an evangelical mission to convert as many people as possible into volleyball fans and players, and does so very successfully in my opinion. I don't normally enjoy sports manga, and I used to be completely averse to volleyball, but now I kind of admire it more than some other sports in which I used to dabble as a kid.

All of that aside, Haikyuu is a really by-the-numbers sports manga that follows the typical shounen formula of setting a goal, encountering an obstacle, training, and overcoming the obstacle, and repeats it while throwing in an occasional loss to shake things up until it decides it's done enough. Naturally, there's your usual cheerful spiky-haired underdog-type protagonist to go along with it. The plot can be described as functional; it's really only there to make you follow the games. Their portrayal is somewhat exaggerated for dramatic effect but never leaves the realm of realism and common sense; there are no weird superpowers, misplaced mind games, custom rules, or any other silly shenanigans. There's pretty much no romance, tragedy, or interpersonal conflicts, either: the sport provides all the conflict, and all of it is resolved on the court. The life outside the court is mainly spent recounting the past games and preparing for the next ones. Nothing but volleyball matters.

If you enjoy this sort of simple and sincere sports series, Haikyuu is definitely one of the very finest specimen you can find, and it will take its rightful place in history alongside the likes of Slam Dunk and Captain Tsubasa. But if you prefer to have a deeper character study with sports/games serving as the backdrop instead, I'd rather direct you to Ping Pong or Kaiji.

Do note that the TV adaptation does the series justice and helps greatly in following the dynamics of the matches, which can get a little confusing at times. If you're choosing whether to read or watch it, the anime is a safe choice and the definitive experience in my opinion.

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*CAUTION: Contains minor spoilers. Skip to the last two paragraphs for the summary.*

It is really a twist of cruel irony that The Promised Neverland has lived up to its name in a way I did not expect it to: it continually PROMISED a clever, poignant story but NEVER followed it through. (I'm sorry I couldn't LAND this joke better.)

TPN became an object of hot discussion among the manga-reading crowd already after the first few chapters. For all the good reasons, too: it was, at the time, a competently done psychological thriller, something that Weekly Shonen Jump typically didn't feature, which immediately made it stand out from the endless conveyor of action and sports series, low-brow comedies, and various mixtures thereof. And not just that—right from the beginning TPN had established a gripping conflict with clear stakes, believable balance of power, and an awesome antagonist. Wow, what's not to like?

All of this, combined with Urasawa-esque cliffhangers, made the first arc of TPN one of the tightest pieces of writing to come out in Weekly Jump this entire decade. Not perfect by any means—but damn impressive nonetheless. And more than that, it was a story that really wanted itself to be taken seriously. It was the first manga in many years that took relatively normal characters—without any sort of superpowers or the like—and put them in a relatively realistic setting where actions have intentions, words have meaning, and decisions have consequences.

And then it just... took a bungee-jump off the cliff. Each and every time the plot itself would stretch a helping hand for the author to make a turnaround, they would high-five it and plunge deeper down the abyss of mediocrity. And if I were to identify every little bit that went wrong, you'd probably be reading this all day, so I'll just call out the most glaring, deal-breaking issues.

CORE PROBLEM #1: Emma is far too sterile to be a protagonist.
Don't get me wrong, Emma is not a bad *character* in principle. Her goals are lofty but ultimately agreeable. She is very one-note but could potentially work in a supporting role, considering both Normal and Ray are deeper, more relatable characters with some inner conflict that could work as a premise for a proper character arc. But the way she's written into the story makes the whole thing a farce. She's an overly optimistic Mary Sue with an unshakable conviction and a resilient physique, a set of traits typical of a better half of Jump protagonists of the last three decades at least. What makes this walking pile of cliche much worse, however, is that she is constantly put in charge of decisions based chiefly on her optimism, and this leads to situations where she is (or, by extension, her followers are) put in unnecessary danger or required to make some morally ambiguous choices...

...Thankfully, in *every single one* of those situations she suffers no long-term consequences and never actually *has* to make those morally ambiguous choices herself because others are eager to do it for her. For example, in the second major arc of the story, Emma—who at that point is already averse to all loss of life—needs to pick a weapon for herself, but Ray suddenly picks one for her. Why does he do this? We learn the reason later when she reluctantly has to shoot said weapon to protect herself, and—lo and behold!—it just happens to be the only non-lethal weapon in that entire arsenal, which is something she didn't know about and never gave it a second thought. The enemy was then killed by somebody else, which was totally okay with her! Didn't even deserve a second thought! Isn't it just wonderful when you get to cheat your way out of a situation that challenges your morals?

And the same thing happens every time, really. She plays the card of the goody two-shoes, and the world's logic contorts to her aspiration of never getting her hands dirty. If an enemy has to be killed, they will be killed by someone else; plenty of other characters are conveniently willing to take the fall, and Emma doesn't complain. If she makes a risky or erroneous choice, she never has to deal with the consequences herself, at least not for long—somebody else will, anyway. Her obstinacy never comes into question and never really gets her into trouble... well, unless your definition of trouble is other kids yelling "Emma, you big dummy!" while crying profusely.

What this means, essentially, is that there is no real progress to her character. She starts off as an unrealistically perfect, morally immaculate human being and ends the story in the same exact state. She never changes and never needs to. Her development stops several chapters into the story pretty much completely, and any further attempts at it end up with nothing of consequence. Naturally, even her last big sacrifice, which is already made on unreasonably favorable terms, ends up forgiven (read: cheated away) soon afterwards—because the only semblance of consistency the story has is Emma consistently having her cake and eating it, too. She's got no business being as successful as she is; it simply feels undeserved and fake.

Considering she already starts the story with some pretty high specs—being a top-quality human material and all, already smarter at 11 y.o. than most adults—she fails to serve as a source of inspiration or a role model because the real world is never so overwhelmingly convenient. You don't start out as an overachieving genius with unquestioned leadership qualities, and it clearly isn't enough to just believe in yourself to attain an ambitious goal. In the real world, you won't conveniently have adults and/or helpful cues left by them that would tell you what to do every time you're at a loss. You will often be wrong, and just as often will fail to convince people even if you aren't. You will often find that there are no ready-made solutions for your situation and you will need to come up with new solutions by yourself. You will often find out that your humanity is actively working against you rather than helps. And, in the unfortunate case of having brushed with death, you will find the experience deeply traumatizing. You will need to adapt to circumstances and be flexible. You will need to make hard decisions and be ready to pay the price if you take the hard way out. You know, all these things that could carve a great character out of an amorphous blob of stereotypes. To summarize, Emma's example teaches you nothing that could be realistically applied in the real world because she's cheating at *every single step* of the way and just coasting on her plot armor. You cannot do what Emma does and achieve even similar results, period. It would be the literary equivalent of telling a homeless person who has lived in poverty and misery most of their life to believe in themself and just buy a house because that's clearly how it goes every time.

One might say this is the norm for a shonen protagonist—but no, this is not the case at all! I mean, let's take perhaps the most typical, most Weekly-Jump-esque MC around: Luffy of One Piece (doubly relevant, as TPN's editor Sugita has also worked on it at some point). He is also overly optimistic, is unshakable in his convictions, with a clearly stated end goal and a badass physique. Sounds very similar to Emma on the surface. However, before he got to that point he grew up in a literal lair of bandits, was best friends with trash scavengers who pretty much made him go through an obstacle course every time he wanted to play with them, had one of said friends apparently be killed before his eyes, and trained for years to master his powers before he even got to leave the hometown. His morality is also remarkably grey in that he doesn't explicitly want to do good deeds and doesn't care for anyone who isn't his friend, crewmate, or family. By the D&D alignment system he would be somewhere on a fringe between a Chaotic Neutral and a Chaotic Good. He selfishly puts his crew through dangers for his own dream but also doesn't shirk from taking the hits for them. He makes unfortunate decisions and in many cases pays dearly for it. He is traumatized by personal loss. He's also an actual criminal who has taken from others and made unprovoked attacks on the Navy, and the story does not pretend this will ever be forgiven. He bears the full weight of his sins, knowingly so, and does not expect a happily-ever-after when he's done. Not quite a Gary Stu, is he? Luffy is undoubtedly cartoony, but aside from the fantasy attributes coming from the setting and personal quirks like the narcolepsy and love for meat, he is, for the most part, a surprisingly grounded, fallible, well-balanced and three-dimensional character. His past informs his present, he has good and bad sides, his self-confidence is grounded in the fact that he and his crew are some of the most ambitious and capable people in the world in their respective areas, who have spent their entire lives working their ass off to become better at what they do. I want to underline that at no point this is taken for granted, and both the in-universe characters and the readers know how much pain and trauma they had to go through to get to their level.

In contrast, Emma is a certified Lawful Good who grew up in a sheltered, happy, unproblematic environment with no hardships to strengthen her character, nor choices to make when there's an adult whose job is to decide everything for her, nor facilities to make her into a trained soldier she so very quickly becomes on demand (I'm pretty sure most of us had played outdoors as kids but not everyone grew enough bulk from it to run long distances over deserts and forests with rifles and such). Her self-confidence is based on second-hand knowledge, unreasonable expectations of extrapolating her relatively minor past experience onto the unknown, and her family, well... being good at being family, I guess. How this setting managed to produce such an all-around capable, successful, mentally resilient character, or how she managed to end up less down-to-earth than the protagonist of the high fantasy setting of One Piece is utterly beyond me.

To go on a yet another tangent, most of the other children aren't much better in this regard, with none of them so much as soiling themselves or becoming catatonic after multiple actual near-death experiences. (I mean, this is still presented as a thriller series, right? Act the part sometime.) But all of them would bawl their eyes out every time they have to say goodbye to anyone or have an otherwise emotional scene with forced melodrama, of which there are plenty. How does this even work? This is neither the genre nor the setting where these discrepancies fly well; even if a story is fictional, it still has to be self-consistent and maintain enough realism to suspend disbelief. The way it is, almost the entire cast becomes completely unrelatable and, consequently, unlikable.

CORE PROBLEM #2: Every antagonist after Isabella is a goddamn joke.
It is no secret that many genres of fiction, especially thrillers, live and die by their antagonist. TPN has several major arcs, each having a main antagonist of sorts, for a total of four. For the opening arc, this is Isabella, the "mama" of Grace Field House, and she has been fantastic in this role. Being a human just like the other cast members, she is familiar, which leads the characters—and the audience, by extension—to question that which they think they've known, and this is very cool. Her motivation is also inherently human, and the backstory compelling enough that you don't have to question why she ended up this way. She is, above all, a relatable person, so one ends up accepting her ruthless demeanor not as an act of petty villainy but as a necessary trait for survival in her position. These traits—humanity, relatability, and deceptiveness—are pretty much universally shared between all of the best literary antagonists out there, in manga or otherwise.

But the other three antagonists of TPN are so boring and cartoony you'd have to pay anyone to care about them and their agenda. This will be the shortest section of this review because there's just so little to be said about these guys.

The first one is a psychopathic, prideful, gluttonous, overpowered villain demon that hunts humans for fun and riles them up on purpose so that they come for him with extra bloodlust... so that he feels more thrill killing them. He also has superhuman strength, superhuman speed, superhuman endurance, and his mask is tougher than the rest. (Just typing this up makes me apathetic.) This is also where the "but this is just what we humans do to animals in our world!" metaphor breaks apart, because this guy is a certified criminal who would be charged guilty of animal cruelty and put into a mental institution at the very least if he were real. This is not what "we humans" do to animals—no, in fact, this is something for which we humans *punish other humans*. Naturally, the guy is completely flat and uninteresting, and is disposed of in a very disappointing manner in a lazy shonen shoot-out that is nowhere near as gripping as the mind games of the first arc.

The second one is also a psychopathic, prideful, gluttonous, overpowered villain demon, but with one-tenth the creative budget. She has even more superhuman strength, etc. She's so non-descriptive and uninteresting I don't even know what else to write about her. I couldn't come up with any antagonist more boring and faceless even if I'd tried.

And then there's another human edgelord who would have been the principal antagonist of the entire series if his presence ever amounted to anything but a temporary setback for Emma and her rescue rangers. His personality? Of course, he's psychopathic, prideful... well, you get the idea. They're all cardboard cut-outs made from the same basic stencil, neither engaging nor relatable. This guy in particular dies the most hilarious death. It's so stupid and wonderfully convenient I can't even mock it better than it mocks itself. The whole sequence is completely devoid of logic and reads like satire.

Of course, without good antagonists, the psychological thriller aspect breaks down completely, and all unresolved conflicts become a pile of loosely-connected garbage you don't want to sift through, let alone empathize with protagonists who choose to. There's just no point nor reason to care anymore. But you know who would be a great antagonist? Norman! He's somebody we are inherently invested into, somebody who is smart and relatable, with an ultimately well-meaning motivation that is just a step away from being corrupted by fear and newfound power, and he is close enough to Emma that it would force her to think and make some very hard decisions instead of taking the easy road for the win/win scenarios. Sounds perfect, right? And he's almost set up that way... but nope, we have to deal with these sorry losers instead.

I have no idea who came up with Isabella and Sister Krone, but I find it hard to believe it was Kaiu Shirai, judging by their laughable attempts to write anybody else and always arriving at the *exact same* poor result. The sad part is there have been plenty of opportunities to make actually good antagonists and a more engaging power play if only the author was willing to take some risks with the characters. Unfortunately, herein lies the core problem #3...

CORE PROBLEM #3: Kaiu Shirai is, after all, a weak, risk-averse writer without any clear message to tell.
This is probably the most damning one. The Promised Neverland has a really good premise and would have been an all-time hit if it had played all of its cards right. And make no mistake—there were a *lot* of cards to play. Opportunities to take the story in much more convincing, daring, interesting directions were aplenty. Instead, the author almost always chose to tread by far the safest, most predictable and least controversial paths. Even the brightest plot ideas were beaten into the most trite, cliche-ridden pieces of uninspired shonen action. Furthermore, it would often be muddled even more—and on purpose!—by sudden tonal shifts from completely serious to comedic, as if the author were actually scared that the audience would take the already shaky narrative seriously after setting up such a convincing world that demanded better.

To put the changes in more concrete terms... The horror and mind game aspects from the opening arc evaporate almost entirely along the way and are replaced by dumb action (where the solution is quite literally "bring better guns") and occasional tone-deaf comedy. The ethical dilemmas raised so sharply in the beginning are dodged and resolved in increasingly convenient, low-stake manners—the author would not hesitate to use deus ex machinae if needed. Characters become able to achieve unrealistic feats of hardware and software engineering which are hand-waved by "well, they're geniuses, duh" without ever accounting for the fact that making anything complex or precise requires reference materials and tools that enable that complexity or precision in the first place, and I doubt they would be conveniently lying around in an alien world. The kids' athleticism and control over their body also becomes so comically exaggerated that at one point a girl in her mid-teens can be seen shooting two heavy machineguns, each of them probably half her entire body mass, while standing on a tree branch, unsupported, without any regard for the recoil. So yeah, they basically gain physics-defying superpowers as well.

Naturally, this means that every message, every piece of social commentary that is normal to have in any given story—as either an attempt to put an idea forth or to discuss its implications—falls completely flat in TPN. Even the pro-vegan message that everyone had considered to be on the nose in the beginning ended up nothing more than a red herring in the end. I'm not sure if this was an attempt at subversion or just an admittance of failure to make a convincing point, but either way it went nowhere. Both the premises and the resolution to the conflict between the eaters and the eaten undermined the argument that could be made in favor of veganism, or at least in favor of not engaging in livestock breeding. And I don't even subscribe to any particular side of this or other arguments—I just wanted them to be convincing and self-consistent in their presentation!

There are other themes, concepts, ethical dilemmas, and questions that could have been explored but were only briefly touched, such as:
* The dangers of recklessness (raised but never explored).
* The end justifies the means / the necessary evil (toyed with but snuffed out and forgotten).
* Kill or be killed (invoked multiple times but miraculously averted each time the opponent is human).
* Corruption of power (briefly mentioned but not explored).
* Life fulfillment (briefly mentioned and promptly dealt away with).
* The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (raised multiple times but mostly dodged).
* The ethics of euthanasia (touched upon but never explored).
* Redemption arc (invoked multiple times but is almost comically shallow in every case).
* Forgiveness of willful murder (something Emma and others are all too eager to do for both humans and demons, but it's never discussed).
* Likewise with all of the hinted-at religious undertones and many more aspects that were either never explored or were dealt away with in the most crude and hamfisted manner.

There are tons of other manga that have done these and more; perhaps not at once but in a much more elegant and thoughtful manner, which is more important. Even the blockbuster Attack on Titan, which many people only perceive as a dumb schlocky action romp, has actually addressed many of these concepts quite thoroughly and from a more balanced standpoint.

There is also the issue of overusing cliffhangers and—worse still—exaggerating scenes at the end of a chapter and then retroactively modifying them at the beginning of the next one (such as by inserting extra dialogue or moderating them to be less impactful). To put it in perspective, somebody like Naoki Urasawa executes a cliffhanger by arranging the presentation of events such that the engagement peaks right at the end of a chapter, so the only thing he has to do there is cut the chapter off. When Shirai does a cliffhanger, they're *misrepresenting* the events to be more exciting than they appear in the next chapter, thereby artificially doping the engagement. In other words, "oh, it didn't actually happen like that—that was just me messing with you" is what happens. This deliberate sabotage of narrative consistency between adjacent chapters is a pretty egregious offense by any literary standards. It is such a cheap, aggravating way to engage the audience I'm surprised the editor allowed a continuous abuse of this trick. Right up there with that Shin Sekai Yori's scene where the MC mistakes one character for another *for no reason* other than to rile up the audience's expectations for the next episode. I'm normally against corporal punishment, but public flogging of such authors suddenly starts sound appealing.

But the most baffling part, perhaps, is that the blueprint for the entire story had been completed—get this—*years in advance* while Shirai and their editor were looking for an artist. There was more than enough time to flesh out the narrative and make the characters—particularly Emma—more complex and three-dimensional. Again, the opportunity wasn't taken, and it's all conforming to a consistent trend of being lazy, cowardly, and/or uncreative. At this point I'm fully convinced that the better parts of the story were coined by somebody else entirely; I refuse to believe that an author who could do so well in the beginning and had this much time on their hands to work on the story could ruin it to such an extent. But even if that is actually the case, it only drives home the point that in the end it's not the ideas that matter but their execution.

To summarize, The Promised Neverland is a story that could have been fantastic and had continuously promised to do better but barely managed to escape utter mediocrity by the end of its run. The first arc is a high 8, perhaps even 9 out of 10 on its own, but the rest averages out to a weak 5. So my resulting score is a 6 as a nod to all the squandered goodness. Disappointing, very disappointing.

My advice would be to read the first arc (or, alternatively, watch the first cour of the TV adaptation as it covers the whole arc and does it at least as well as the manga—if not even better). If you notice something in it that annoys you or may become a potential deal-breaker, be sure that from that point on it will only get much worse, so it's best to stop there and treat it as a self-contained story. But if you were perfectly happy with how it went, proceed at your own risk. Some have enjoyed this to the end, after all.

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This short made my entire day. I went in completely blind, and it hit me like an earthquake. And then it hit me again when I started thinking about it, with continuous aftershocks the more I kept thinking about it. That's one telling sign of a good work of art.

In terms of both content and execution, the movie is exactly where it wants to be at any given moment. In the five short minutes of its runtime it takes you on a *wild* ride, building up tension that erupts in a massive pay-off that is both deeply emotional and viciously clever, but it never feels forced or exploitative. Like a good dish, it immediately traps you in and leaves you invigorated and deeply satisfied. Instead of thinking "okay, next", you want to stop there and savor the taste. You've just consumed something delicious; you liked it not because of its nutritional quality, nor because it was small enough not to cause inconvenience—you liked it because it was a quality dish in its own right. Director Tetsuro Kodama is most certainly a chef, and Pianoman is his unique recipe.

All things considered, it's easily one of the best movies I've seen, regardless of the length.

(P.S. You can skip the trailer. It functions as a sort of a prequel, but I don't think it adds anything to the story.)

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Ah, yes. "Dr. Stone Reboob: Who's Byakuya, Again?"

Let me prepend the following by saying no manga is perfect, and the acclaimed Weekly Jump mainstay Dr. Stone is no exception. There's often the classic Jump contrivance ("this will go my way because I'm very determined, dattebayo!"), the omnipresent melodramatism, the use of hyped-up terms for completely unrelated concepts (e.g. calling a radio a "smartphone" just because that's the word modern kids learn first), the occasional out-of-character behavior, and sexualization of characters to an uncalled-for extent. Thankfully, these weaknesses are well-offset by Dr. Stone's numerous strengths.

Where the spin-off comes in is gathering pretty much all of the weakest aspects of the original while adding some of its own in a concentrated cocktail of low-effort pandering and creative bankruptcy without any redeeming qualities other than Boichi's characteristically expressive art. It's a functional equivalent of a summer break episode set in a low Earth orbit. Of course, the decidedly short run and narrow focus played their part in making it worse than it deserved to be, but it didn't *have* to be this short in the first place. That was just an arbitrary decision, presumably on the side of the publisher, Shueisha. Together, we will try to get to the bottom of this myst... er, the reason why it ended up that way.

Feeling dreadful yet? No? Good. Let's move on to the bigger problem, which is the titular character, Byakuya Ishigami himself. The way he was portrayed in the original Dr. Stone made him look like one of the coolest characters, so it was natural that readers had wanted more of him in some form. And at first, this short spin-off seemed like a godsend to everyone who felt Byakuya deserved more screen time. What they received, however, was a mini-series with a disturbing *lack* of Byakuya: in fact, he's totally absent in most of it! To add to the injury, it actually *detracts* from his character in a major way. The moment the disaster hits Earth, every one of Byakuya's decisions becomes based on the notion that it will be Senku who will wake up by himself and save humanity, and this notion is grounded in... neither science nor reason, but a bunch of purely emotion-driven assumptions.

Think about it. He didn't consider even for a moment that somebody else could wake up before Senku. Nor that they should prioritize the assumption that petrification is irreversible and the new civilization has to be able to make it on its own. Nor that Senku's statue could end up lost underground, broken, or eroded beyond repair before depetrification somehow occurs. Nor that he'll be quickly killed by the primitive world even if he does wake up—which would be a reasonable assumption considering he *almost was* killed by a lion! None of these nor any other options are considered even as a passing thought—and frankly, they are all ten billion percent™ more likely than what we got in the canon storyline. Make no mistake: I'm not entirely happy about how this was explained away in the original series, either. Far too many concessions have been made to make the plot pieces conveniently fall into place at the expense of character agency and sensibility. Realistically, for the astronaut team it would've been a far safer bet to repeat most of Senku's initial steps in restoring and preserving primitive technology to ensure long-term survival of the colony and accelerated rate of development. At the very least they could have ensured that the basics are taught and preserved in whatever convenient form to the entire populace, so it doesn't always hinge on the one girl who has to memorize a hundred vague precepts and stay alive and in good enough mental shape to pass them on—because every astronaut has the concept of redundancy drilled into them.

But Senku just had to be the Jump protagonist, AKA the most powerful and plot-armor-coated entity in existence. As a result, Byakuya doesn't even bother coming up with a convincing rationale that would prioritize sensible decisions that *also* happen to work out for Senku if everything was to go as he envisioned. He just goes one step ahead and unashamedly weaves his narrative around ensuring that *only Senku* has everything he needs when he is eventually depetrified, and this is the only right thing to do. Instead of, you know, maximizing the chances of survival of the *entire colony* that is already far too small to take extra risks. Apparently that's the best course of action, least likely to end up in failure—which is, well, the end of all humanity. And I'd be fine with having selfish reasons, but remember that just moments earlier the same guy claimed they had to "save humanity". Not Senku—humanity! But they will somehow do so by helping Senku first, with humanity taking a backseat. What a load of inexcusably hypocritical horseshit this line of thought is.

The other characters are no better for buying into Byakuya's (lack of) reasoning, but I can accept them being too depressed to argue against somebody who's read the Dr. Stone script in advance. I mean I'd probably consider humanity as good as doomed in that scenario anyway, so yeah, why not humor the crazy guy and let him pass away believing he did the right thing? The only one who has the balls to stand up to Byakuya's selfishness is Shamil—who is immediately put in his place for daring to question the father of a Jump protagonist. When called out, Byakuya nearly bullies the opponent into submission by turning this into a fight for authority over the group—which he only has by the virtue of being the Jump dad, despite Yakov being the actual commander for the mission. This self-righteousness born from plot armor and the fact that he gets away with it without much opposition are insulting to intelligence. You know, Senku's primary trait, one for which we love him in the first place.

Honestly, the way Boichi wrote Byakuya here is such a low blow to his character. Not to mention that for a series so preoccupied with the concept of science and making it look cool at all costs, Byakuya sure loves being completely under control of his gut feelings and other cognitive biases, sending the wrong message without ever acknowledging it. There is no love for *actual science* here—just a shocking absence thereof. I understand that he's a loving and loyal father and all, but the characters have to have at least a modicum of self-awareness. Show me the thought process, show me the actual conflict of opinions coming from highly-educated professionals, best people on the job, instead of this limp attempt to use kindergarten-level rhetorics to talk Byakuya out of his obsession. This could have been a good opportunity to open an interesting insight into rational vs. irrational thinking, e.g. whether it's better to follow the brain or the heart in extreme situations—something Interstellar tried to execute (and also failed at it, albeit not as horribly). Or, alternatively, the conflict of a person who is torn between trying to save his son and trying to save the rest of humanity. You know, the poignant psychological motifs that make you think what you'd do in a situation like this. Evidently, Boichi isn't as capable a writer as he is an artist—and this really wasn't a secret, based on his earlier series. But his writing was sufficient for the actual goal at hand—which we'll move on to right now.

Still with me? Impressive resilience. You leave me no choice but to dirty our hands with our main offender and the only conceivable reason this abomination exists. Enter the actual main character, Rei—yet another Star-Wars-esque knockoff robot sidekick with a distinctly Japanese manga personality trait of exhibiting ten billion percent™ more emotional expressiveness than actual people, let alone the Japanese. And of course, being the Jump protagonist for this series, it immediately embodies all the dumbest traits thereof. Right from the start it's introduced as a self-aware AI supercomputer (which, let me remind you, wasn't yet a thing as of the beginning of the main story, and would still be at least a decade or two away, realistically) that Byakuya "helped develop" as his "side-project" which we had no idea about because he was presented as a teacher and a carefree person, not a hard-working genius programmer and/or engineer with deep connections in the industry. Gosh, what a champ this Byakuya is! I bet his other side-projects helped cure cancer, or solve cold fusion, or whatever other exploits that would've easily made him Dr. Stone's version of Elon Musk if whoever came up with this idea gave a crap about making Byakuya a self-consistent character. Doing something amazing offscreen doesn't make a character great; it's the journey, the hardships, and the mindset that drives them that make it interesting. Loving Senku is not a character trait, either, it does not help develop advanced robots. We need to see the why and how of this process: what spurred Byakuya to even start thinking about it, what he struggled with, how he managed to get it done. We don't know remotely enough about him to see how something like Rei would come to exist as a result of his ambitions. We don't even know what sort of ambitions lead to it being a thing in the first place!

But back to Rei. It is introduced very suddenly and unnaturally, as if none of the senior ISS crew knew what cargo they would be receiving, and as if the world's most intelligent AI that is also a supercomputer and the first robot to operate in zero-g was just stuffed in the closet until it was the right time for it to make a dramatic entrance. Normally, everyone would know about this months in advance, and it would attract more media attention than a celebrity space tourist coming to ISS or whatever. Incredible retcon quality right there. Over the course of the manga's nine chapters which cover the span of the entire time Senku and the others had spent petrified, Rei manages increasingly unrealistic endeavors, as is par for the course for the center of the universe any Jump protagonist is—even if it's a protagonist of a short spin-off. These endeavors culminate in it getting a new synthetic body... of a bombshell blonde girl. Because fucking of course. (sigh) And all of this is done in love for dear Byakuya in the same sort of tiresome obsession that Byakuya has for Senku, even though with Rei's already-superhuman intelligence, it certainly must understand that Byakuya is long dead and nobody is returning to the ISS in foreseeable future. I guess even superhuman intelligence can overlook something so simple when it's convenient for the plot. The reason why it was so obsessed with Byakuya is never explained, either. Not that any explanation would make sense...

Honestly, I don't want to keep talking about this character any longer—which is good, I guess, because there simply isn't anything else to say. It's just a dumb mascot for kid readers, doing vaguely "sciencey" things that casually waltz all the way into the realm of high fantasy (with alien dragons and all—no, I'm not joking) and are spiced up by copious amounts of needless melodrama and a cult of character strong enough to make Joseph Stalin feel jealous. And it's also the reason why this spin-off was developed without the involvement of the writer and the science consultant of the main series. They were simply unneeded—the goal was not to create more of bona fide Dr. Stone, after all: it was to create a marketable mascot and trick the buyer into thinking this book was about one of their favorite characters—which it wasn't. It was about Rei, somebody who goes decidedly against what Dr. Stone is about—which is the fun of using real, publicly available, mostly basic science and engineering knowledge to solve actual survival problems, and seeing how a primitive civilization can expand using such knowledge. The fun of making something functional out of sticks and vines and rocks has nothing to do with a nonsensical obsessive robot mining comets and satellites for thousands of years to upgrade itself into a gynoid in a futuristic space station made via recursive additive synthesis. It boggles my mind that people see them on the same level just because both are somehow related to "science" and share the name.

Frankly, the density of cringe and the utter lack of subtlety or sense in the writing of Dr. Stone Reboot: Byakuya are suffocating even compared to the usual Weekly Shonen Jump fare. It began innocuously enough, but already starting with chapter 2 I had just about one question: why was this even necessary? I mean, by the end of the chapter we get to "enjoy" the following gem: as the astronauts are tasked with finding a method of reducing the margin of error in calculating the optimal descent trajectory to safely hit their target, Byakuya has an eureka moment which he immediately discusses with the rest of the crew—who, as we are told in the same chapter, are all PhDs:
"I've got our solution!"
"You figured out how to reduce our margin of error?"
"If it's the atmosphere throwing us off, let's just plug that data into the computer as well!"
Ooh. Oooohhhhhhhhh... So that's what was missing! Gee... We need to put the magic numbers into the magic box which will give us the needed results. Dayum! The pea-brained astronaut peasants, graced by this pearl of heavenly wisdom, then raise their mud-covered faces once more to ask an obvious question as to where the data for the atmospheric model and the required processing power would come from. To which Byakuya tells them not to sweat the small details and presents the end-all solution: Rei. Because it's a supercomputer, duh. Of course, that's what the solution had to be. PhD my ass, I'm genuinely impressed all these characters managed to graduate from high school with this level of critical thinking. I understand that a sci-fi script needs to be dumbed down for kids to make sense of what's going on, but this is knocking it all the way down to a level of a gag parody. A bad one at that.

Before you run to curse at me in private messages for bashing this spin-off so hard, please believe that I have rational reasons for doing so. See, I'm well-aware that normally there is no harm in having some sort of an expanded universe surrounding a popular work of fiction. In many cases it enriches the fictional universe. There are many spin-offs that are no less valuable than the originals, and even some fanfics out there that keep up in terms of depth and character development. All of this is cool by me. But this is one of the few sad cases where it would actually be better if it were never written, because it perverts your perception of the canon characters and setting. It portrays Byakuya as an obsessive, irrational, and myopic person who is far more successful than he deserves to be—a far cry from the initial impression one has of him based on his depiction in Dr. Stone. It portrays the setting as a world where the word "science" is used as an excuse for what is arguably magic—ironic, considering how in the original this is exactly how the primitives were thinking about it. It betrays the very foundations of Dr. Stone's narrative which is predominantly grounded in scientific determinism rather than stringing together assumptions, off-chances, and loads of wishful thinking in a mishmash of whatever-goes.

A spin-off, or a sequel, or some other sort of official expansion that devalues the original work can do harm by simply existing, and it's much worse than having an unrelated standalone work fail. That's a risk writers and producers should realize when expanding their stories, but they almost never care because a good portion of the time even a critical failure can still bring profit in extra sales of merchandise and whatnot if the franchise it piggybacks on has enough drawing power by itself. Pardon me for bringing Star Wars into this again, but the godawful prequels—as laughable as they were in terms of writing, acting, and directing—were still a massive financial success for Lucas because of all the toys and games and clothes and amusement park rides. And that's exactly the kind of soulless thing this is: a vehicle for byproduct sales conceived by a greedy publisher without the involvement of the original creator. No offense to Boichi's art though: it is superb as always. But that's about the only positive thing I can say about this garbage.

In conclusion, let us ponder a bit about what this manga could have been if it were an honest spin-off (or "reboot", as it calls itself) true to Dr. Stone's ideals, storytelling principles, and overall writing quality. First of all, it would be focused on the man himself, Byakuya: how he was developed as a person, how he acquired such an interest in science and passed it on to Senku, and how it affected his own life. A deeper insight into what made him the character we came to know, love, and respect, and how he managed to raise Senku into another character we love. Instead of the one-sided obsession with Senku driving his decisions and the other astronauts playing the role of cardboard yes men, we would see how it was Byakuya's curiosity, charm, wit, and sharp mind that earned him the leadership over the team—not unlike how it was done in Space Brothers (which is excellent, by the way!). We would see how they—a team of five highly trained adults and a somewhat less-trained space tourist—built their own village and how it differed from what Senku and others did. We would see the expanded backstory of the second village. We would follow the team's discussions and arguments on how to ensure that the essential life-preserving knowledge isn't lost over the centuries. We would see Byakuya's ingenuity and determination as he worked to ensure his colony's survival, and the pain of loss as his friends succumbed to injuries and illnesses instead of promptly killing them off almost as a passing notion. In other words, we would see the aspects of him that would make him his own character and not just Senku's dad. And most importantly, there would be no Rei at all—because honestly, fuck that. Let the ISS burn as well; it has no meaningful role in the story, anyway. The last thing Dr. Stone needs is a superhuman AI in the body of a sexy naked anime girl overseeing the world in a lone Evangelion-esque space station as some kind of a postmodern deity. Truly the darkest timeline.

I hope you're satisfied, Shueisha. You've successfully kept up your image as the publisher who does their damnedest to milk and suck everything good out of the properties that end up in their care until they become a dry husk. Readers, too—you have to start developing standards at some point in your life. The earlier, the better. Especially if you're big fans. Don't just blindly accept something as good only because it's related to something you love or panders to your closet interests. Vote for the actual high quality works with your time and your wallets, and let this sad attempt at expanding Dr. Stone's universe sink to where it belongs: in the gutter.

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