#120.5 A Manga about Game Design?! Hakutaku First Impressions

[00:00:00] Welcome to Shonen Flop Chibi, First Impressions mini episode where we talk about the first chapter of the series we'll be covering in depth next week with our guest Monitor Comics. Man, ran out of breath with that one. I'm Jordan and with me today as usual is my lovely co-host David. Say hi, David. Hi, David. And what series are you covering this week, David? Hakutaku, I think. I don't know. That's a weird one. Hakutaku Hakutaku. We're going to see how David avoids saying the name of the series, the episode, next week. And then Jordan, why don't we get into the details about the series?

[00:00:29] Oh boy, yeah. So this was written by Ishikawa Koki and it ran from September 23rd, 2024 to February 2nd, 2025. Recent cancellation as in yesterday as we are recording this. Yeah, fresh off the piss press. We decided to record this before the final chapter was released. Yeah. So we did have a last minute change where Jordan was like, whoa, this series is fucked up. And I was like, all right, let's not do School Judgment 2.0.

[00:00:58] Yeah. Also, like, I remember reading the first chapter, this first chapter of Hakutaku before, like when it first came out. Yeah, you told me you did. Even then I was like, oh, this is a flop. I could just tell. You can just tell from this chapter. It has strong flop aura. Yeah. And it's U19, 18 chapters, two volumes. Yeah. And then Jordan, let's talk about what happened in that first chapter, which is almost 5% of the series. Oh my God. All right.

[00:01:25] Hikama is a student fantasizing about ruining soccer when the school rep Sano approaches and asks him to do his work for him. Hikama agrees because he thinks Sano is his friend. He rushes to hand papers to Mr. Morimoto, interrupting his smoke break in the process. Mr. Morimoto has a suspicion that he's being bullied. But Hikama, who has turned his own exploitation into a game, says that he's having a great time. In the classroom, he runs into Noto, a student who is literally never in class.

[00:01:55] She says she decided to actually show up for once, despite being unable to wake up before one, which like, you know, mood. In programming class that I wish they had when I was in school, the group project is to create a game. Of course, Hikama's group pushes all the work on him and Noto points out that he's being bullied. For some reason, this is the thing that makes him realize, yeah, he's being bullied. Popcorn David. Noto tells Akuma that they're going to start making their own game with blackjack and hookers. You know what? Forget the blackjack, which actually is a game.

[00:02:25] So Jordan said they made their own game that has a game, but I guess it's how Bataro. Or how do you say that game you're addicted to? Slay the Spire? No, the blackjack or the poker game. Oh, Bellatro. Bellatro, yeah. That's how Bellatro got made. I'm going to make a poker game. You know what? Forget the poker. Yeah. Which will show those bullies. They start the crunch. They get Mr. Morimoto in on it and he lets them sleep in the school computer lab because I guess that's what a responsible teacher would say when faced with students needing to sleep on campus to finish a project.

[00:02:52] Hikuma accidentally overhears his bullies, who just don't happen to be talking about how much he sucks and how cool it is to bully him. Hikuma tells Nodo that damn, he really is being bullied and he doesn't know how to fix this bug. Can I just say? Yeah. I don't know how to fix this bug is up there with I keep my scar to look in the mirror every morning to refill my hatred. Hey, listen. That series is actually pretty kino. Yeah, series is actually like not bad. Anyway, it's time for this game to be presented and everyone loves it and it's got a bunch of in-jokes that only the students who would get it.

[00:03:22] I love how he had a diagram about how he had to explain to the listener it's funnier how in-jokes are funnier to the right person. Yeah, and they don't make sense to people out, which is like, oh. It's like that scene in The Office when Michael Scott is like, I love inside jokes, I hope I can be a part of one sometime. I feel kind of bad for this offer because I feel like just the way he writes people, I don't think he had friends. Well, I mean, maybe Hikuma is a self-insert because Hikuma also has no fucking friends.

[00:03:50] This owns the bully somehow, even though they get credit for it and weren't planning on doing any work anyway. The fact that everyone loves this game gives Hikuma an orgasm and he's now officially an indie game dev and he's ready to ruin society. He literally has like a brain gasm. Like, it's weird. It's very weird. Yeah, so what were your first impressions, Jordan? Oh, how does this game own the bullies? They're like, we're going to get revenge on them by making a game. And it's like, how does that? I totally miss that part. Yeah, I don't know.

[00:04:19] What do you think of the art? Yeah. Okay, so like the main thing is this series is very soulless, but I don't understand it because this is not a topic anyone would be like, oh, I want to make a really mainstream success by talking about this topic. But then the author clearly has very little understanding of game development and also doesn't seem to actually care about his topic. I love how he has Hikuma just sitting there fantasizing about how he would improve soccer. And his ideas suck. I have to give him credit, though. I think that's a cool idea. That's what I thought they were going to do.

[00:04:48] So like, here's what I think would have been a really cool approach to the series is every chapter, kind of like Cypher Academy and that I thought it would be like, here's a puzzle you think about week over week. They give you like a game design challenge or like a structure challenge. And you spend the week thinking about, hey, here's how I could have approached the problem. Then you can see how the characters like that soccer thing is a very interesting game design question for like a beginner to say, take a mainstream sport. What's your rule you would change about? Okay, yeah. No, that's fair. Would that have been fun? It's like every week you talk to your friends and be like, oh, here's how I would solve that problem.

[00:05:16] But it's not like a puzzle where there's a certified answer to it. Either that or, hey, let's spend this chapter with them trying to come up with the idea for the game. You know, let's take let's spend this chapter of them going like, oh, well, we need a player character. Well, what can we do in this time frame that we got? Well, we can only make this, you know, like this is essentially a game jam. Take us into the game jam. Show us like what and why they're trying to do like we at the end kind of get that you

[00:05:43] are Morimoto trying to get a smoke break. Yeah, like that's kind of the game. And then there are zombies. Like, what is this game? I didn't really understand. Yeah, it would have been cool. Imagine if this is like a monthly series or something where there was some sort of time where you could play some like really shitty flash game. That was like what he made. Yeah, no, I mean, like, again, just like this is the premise of your manga. I don't really care that this kid's getting bullied in an uninteresting way. This should have been full on edutainment.

[00:06:13] He's so stupid, by the way. Yeah, edutainment. Exactly. This should have been the fucking veggie tales of games. Oh, Christian indoctrination. Ah, yeah, we always forget about that part. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. But no, I mean, the premise of this is game development. Like he learned he was being bullied and then he had to learn he was being bullied again because the author was like, wait, no, the first time wasn't stupid enough.

[00:06:39] Let's have him accidentally overhear them go. Just they just happen to be like how they're playing basketball. It's like, hey, man, aren't isn't it? Doesn't that he come a guy sucks? Yeah. Yeah. I like that. We're bullying him. We can get him to do stuff. He's so stupid. And he's like, oh, oh, that made him realize. This is definitely how someone who's bullied writes their bullies. Yeah. It's like, oh, man, they're assholes. I'm going to do their entire group project for them and they're going to get credit. Yeah, that'll show them.

[00:07:08] That'll fucking show them giving in is how you stop bullying. Yeah. And also, Noto, do you not have a group? He doesn't have friends. Is it going to turn out that she's like his imagination? Like, yeah, that's true. God, like she's theoretically in class as well. So it's like, shouldn't she also have a group for this project? What if it does turn out that she died? She died. This is her ghost. Yeah, they were like she mysteriously disappeared. She like disappeared because she was sick or something. Yeah. Instead of just being lazy.

[00:07:37] I don't even know. And not wanting to come in, which you know what? I get it. No shade. Yeah, I get it, too. She wanted to stop going to school to work on games. Also, circling back on the art. God, this paneling is so crammed. Did you see that picture I posted is one page. Yeah, that's insane. There are so many fucking panels in here and they're all so extraneous and they kind of add nothing like you could take out so many of these. Yeah. And it's just also the paneling has weird continuity. He hits his face on a wall that doesn't seem to exist. Yeah, that's right.

[00:08:07] He hits his face on the wall and then he's laying down. You don't see anything in front of him. Someone said that was the fourth wall, which definitely was not on purpose because the software. That's what it seems like, though. For the different series, I could have seen it. Yeah. If you think about our view of the manga as a camera in this situation, Hikuma walks into the wall and then it looks like the camera is on the wall, like looking at him from the wall. It's like weird. Yeah. So, yeah, Jordan, do you have any other thoughts on the series?

[00:08:36] Man, I wish I had game design classes. What the fuck? Yeah, that's cool. Weren't you working on like your Godot project? I was learning Godot and then other stuff, I guess. Oh, well, I'm too ADHD to keep fucking going on a project, David. It's OK. I have very severe ADHD. I understand. So, Jordan, would you read our 10 chapters of this or something to distract you? Nah, this fucking sucks, man. Yeah. How about you? Yeah, this sucks. And then, Jordan, what do you think will happen next?

[00:09:03] They're going to find an industry vet who's like weirdly encouraging to them for no reason. Yeah. I think Hikuma is going to have to wake Noto up because she overslept. What if Miyamoto is just in it? But yeah, he's got to wake her up even though it means going in the room of David. A girl. And we never meet Hikuma's family. I just, I forget the webcomic, but there was one where it was like two boys are scared by a ghost and she has massive boobs. And one guy's like, and our guy goes.

[00:09:33] Nice. How about you? God, I remember when my comics were funny. Oh, yeah. David, David's favorite webcomic, Control Delete. Yeah. Fuck off. Anyway, I don't think they're going to teach us anything useful about game design. Okay. I think the main character being neurodivergent will come up a lot and probably not be handled well. That's very fair. And I don't mean like explicitly like he has autism, but you're gonna be like he's very clearly autism coded. Like they did with robot in robot laser beam. Yeah. Yeah. Robot laser beam. Yeah. At least that level of like neuro atypical coded. Yeah.

[00:10:02] And then there's going to be some big game design competition. That's like kind of the overarching plot of this whole series. Ah, tournament art. Probably won't have any satisfying conclusion, though. God, what if there's an exam arc somehow? I mean, he is literally in a game class. Is this the exam? Is this an exam? He gets his gaming license. Yeah. Otherwise, he's unlicensed to make games. He gets arrested by the Nintendo police. He gets approached by licensed game designers and he has to fight each one.

[00:10:32] Yeah. I'm John Video Game. John Video Game. It's good. All right. And then Jordan, what's your power? Or gamify because this kid canonically gamifies his own bullying. It's true. And then mine is crunch because God, they really crunch in this series. I also had buggy because the series has weird fucking paneling continuity issues. Hey, not a bug. It's a feature, David. Yeah. But a feature I'm down for is our Q&A. Big shout out to everyone who dropped their questions in the show on Flop Discord. Give priority to those who haven't asked a question before,

[00:11:02] questioning in a long time or are a patron. Starting with Lord Anubis, you have five minutes to hide a paperclip in your house. A detective has 24 hours to find it. And if they don't, you get $10,000. Where are you hiding it? So first I am putting it in another box of paperclips and I'm hiding that box of paperclips in a board game box and putting it on the board game shelf with a bunch of board games. And then I'll put that box inside of another box and I'll smash it with a hammer.

[00:11:32] I like that idea. I would do that, but not include the paperclip in the actual thing of fake paperclips. Yeah. I think what I would do is maybe wrap it around the coils in the oven. So it just looks like it's naturally on or in there. I was thinking of more complex things, but David, you only have five minutes. Yeah. So that, okay, fine. So that's what I would do. If you think you could do that in five minutes, I believe you. All right. I think I could do that. All right. Next from Spook, what series has the tastiest looking food? Food Wars. Yeah, it's Food Wars. It's Food Wars.

[00:12:02] Unless you're talking about a different type of snack. Oh, ho, ho. In which case it's also Food Wars. Then it's still Food Wars. That's literally why I put this question in. Yeah. Front T. Wolfwood, anime has had power systems based on dicks, crafty boys, butts and boobs, Keijo, breathing demon slayer and Jojo, and even Cell Cell at work. What are some weird body parts you'd want to see anime battle shonen to base their powers on? I'm waiting for a Finley Veiled fetish manga that's about feet. Oh, I'm sure that exists, David. It's like called Stomp or something.

[00:12:33] Yeah. Oh, I remember Stomp? The art? No, the 90s phenomenon where like they'd make music with like basketballs and stuff. Yes. Okay. Uh, no, but I was thinking like scalps. Like the stronger you get, like your hair starts to fall out. And then like you have like different markings on the scalp. And the only way you'd find out is like by shaving your head. That would be pretty great. Yeah. About eyebrows. Was that in, um, Fully Cooly or did he just have like...

[00:13:02] He just had... No, his eyebrows were like pieces of seaweed. Yeah. Same voice actor as the anti-spiral. Nice. I think we talked about a series where the power system was broken up by the five tastes. Right. So that might also be cool. I was going to say I also thought about fingernails, but that is also... Okay. In JoJo. Okay, Kira. That is also a JoJo thing. Kira, how about like fucking... I know, part seven. Part seven, yeah. But also, yeah, Kira.

[00:13:30] I also thought about this mention of Demon Slayer made me think about how Demon Slayer probably has the lowest power level of any fantasy action shonen to ever exist or mainstream one. Almost any other action manga character could probably solo the Demon Slayer universe. Like the chapter one Luffy could solo the Demon Slayer universe. I'm going to give that to you because I can't think of anything. This is a shout out to the guy who asked on Demon Slayer, how well would Doomguy do in the Demon Slayer universe? Yeah, he would wipe out everybody.

[00:13:58] Fun fact, the Doom Slayer actually doesn't need guns. He just likes using them. Yeah, it actually slows him down so it takes longer. Yeah, he could tear apart the entire Demon world without... Rip and tear apart. Yeah, rip and tear apart all their huge guts with just his bare hands. You are huge, so you have huge guts. God, what a... We should read that on Patreon sometime. I love that that stupid comic led to the tagline of Doom.

[00:14:27] Yeah, I just love how they semi-made the name Doomguy canon. Yeah. All right, and your last fun fact about Doom is Doom has its own, I think, internet protocol number. It's port 666. It's reserved for Doom. Hell yeah. I don't know if the modern Dooms use it. Probably not. Anyway, moving on to the next question from Spubby. What's your favorite Cartoon Network show? MegasXLR. Next question. God, that's a fucking good one. I always had wanted to have Mother's Basement back on to talk about that. RIP.

[00:14:57] I gotta say, though, I think Samurai Jack is the fucking best. I feel like Samurai Jack is kind of the correct answer. Yeah. But MegasXLR in my heart. You dig giant robots. We dig giant robots. Chicks dig giant robots. Nice. Nice. Nice. God, I wish Cartoon Network didn't write that show off in the taxes. God, yeah. I'm so sad that we can never get more Megas content. Yeah. Anyway, from Riley, how big is a flop backlog?

[00:15:27] So I would say we have, I think me and Maxi V, we probably have at least 30 to 40 series we could discuss. And then really, we have potentially up to 100 or so, especially if we ever do a Manwa again. And there's new ones all the time. Yeah, because we get about six or seven new Shonen Jump series. So I, as far as I'm aware, I don't think we're of any danger of running out of material. No, I think we're all right. Finally, Mr. Davey wants to know, if you were to have someone guess right, a Jojo part, who would you pick?

[00:15:53] This is based on my thought that I feel like Undead Unlocked is if Fujimoto wrote a Jojo part. I would say Hideo Kojima. God, did you see? I was, I tweeted about how Hideo Kojima's writing is so ridiculous. You could have a character. What was it I fucking wrote? Um, I know I'm really calling out my tweets today or not my tweets. What do you call posts on Blue Skies? Skeets. No, I don't think that's true. Someone tell me what you call Blue Skies. The accepted terminology is either skeets or posts.

[00:16:22] But there is a rogue group of perverts who prefer to refer to them as bleets. I said that the magic of Hideo Kojima's writing is that he could have a character named Secret Bad Guy and everyone would still be shocked when he backs out. Right? It's true though. It's true. Secret Bad Guy was behind it all along. What? No. How can that be? You can't, you can't be serious. Most trustworthy. That's the name of the character. Oh God. Not a title. Jojo. My stand is called Take On Me.

[00:16:52] Take On Me. Jordan, I have a coworker that also I think was named by Hideo Kojima. Dylan, please answer. Their name is ****. Are you fucking kidding me? That's actually their name, Dylan. Please censor that. But if you want to leave a comment saying I agree of Jordan, that's a ridiculous name. Are you fucking kidding me? I'm so, I'm so sorry to them. People drop a comment on what you think my coworker's name is. Anyway, that's all the time we have for today. Big thank you to everyone who dropped their question. Jordan, thank you for all your hard work on the show and for making the chibi thumbnails.

[00:17:21] Yeah, no problem. Having fun doing it. Thank you, Dylan, for assistance with editing. You can find his podcast, Anime Out of Context, at animeoutofcontext.com. Thanks to Tucker and Maxi B for assistance with translation, pronunciation, and other miscellaneous research. Thanks to Kalal for being our social media manager. You can find us on Twitter and Blue Sky at ShonenFlopCast, Tumblr, Shonen-Flop, and our website, ShonenFlop.com. Or on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, wherever else you get your podcasts. If you want more weekly David and Jordan content, find us every Friday on the Chainsaw Minute. You can find it at csm.libson.com or wherever you get your dose of ShonenFlop.

[00:17:51] And as mentioned before, join the ShonenFlop discords. Open to everyone. Don't have to be a patron. Hang out with us. Talk about anime games, whatever else is on your mind. We have a manga book club and movie nights. Find a link to it in the show notes or on our site, ShonenFlop.com. If you've been enjoying the podcast and want to help us keep going, subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com slash ShonenFlop. Along with that warm and fuzzy feeling of helping us out, you get access to monthly bonus episodes, including the Shonen Drop, where Jordan and I look back at the previous month's episode and open the mystery box. Jordan, what was our bonus episode this month? And what did we talk about in the mystery box?

[00:18:18] Well, David, we covered the last part of Hentai Comics with Diego of Scoob and Shaq. Hell yeah. Yeah. And our mystery box, David? Well, we're going to figure out the ShonenFlop major arcana. Yeah, this was one of my favorite things to have ever done. I won't say what the context is, but I will say one of my arcana was the Ashop from Black Torch. Nice. Really nice.

[00:18:44] And if that's not enough, other perks include picking a manga for us to cover in a main episode, episodes up to a week in advance, and behind the scenes content like warm up audio or recording notes. I'm also going to read off some of our wonderful patrons. Starting with the Dolphin Dad tier, we have Rachel, my wonderful wife. I'm glad she had a wonderful birthday this weekend. Moving on down to the Ravioli tier, where you get weekly photos of my adorable goblin dog, Ravioli, who is able to triple her weight at will. We have Chris, Eva, Jeanette Davis, Lady T, Matt, Scarlet, T, Tiffany, and Trevor.

[00:19:11] Moving on down to the King of the Force, we have 090Z, Bandit Stoof, my girlfriend, Brad, follow AOC on Blue Sky, Ivan, Jacob, and you know, follow AOC too, you know. Yeah, true. Justin, Kirbymon, Marty, Riley, Sarah, T, and Tommy Boy. And moving on down to our Galactic Ball Federation officers, we have a deep, sexy voice says, relax, mid-sized sedan, ages, Andrew Schnepp, Andy's Islands, Angel, Aura, Viza, Blah Moo Moo, Brandon M, Cole, David A, Dennis James Simone, Don't Dox Me, Drago, Drew, Nigel, Fax, Flash Cartman, Funky Grim Overdrive.

[00:19:39] Hey, Rem, how much for you to gift me Sean? Ian McConnell, Jason Bren, Kalala, Keanu, King Salamander, Kryn, Lot, Lay, Liam, Maddie, Manly P. Hall, Marvin, Matt, Maxie, Mecca Scott, Mike Carpenter. Obscure reference, Jordan, you got any for us today? Oh, man. Um, man, you know, um, that backwards hurdle that Saquon did, that's not an obscure reference at all. Yeah, that's an obscure reference if you're not an Eagles football fan. Go Birds. Go Birds. Rezorware Hammer Nerd, Savia, Sybil, Silly Rookie, Simping for Senpai Ash, Staghorn,

[00:20:09] Taper Clip, Tucker Watley, Wright, Gislin, and ZZ Digital. And a big thank you to our Beast Children as well. Yes, thank you. I love you all. You are all my children. Yes. All right, Jordan, anything else you want to toss in? Let's check out Mission Ignition, you know. All right. Yeah, you should. And thank you so much for listening. Tune in next Monday for our full episode on Hakataku featuring Monitor Comics. Yes, thank you. This has been Jordan. This has been David. And you've been listening to Shonen Flop. David, say it. Keep on flopping, floppers.