#53 Zan (Ft.Manga Historian MaxyBee)

[Transcript by T Root] 

Jordan  0:00  
[Singing the Shonen Flop Theme]

David  0:12  
Welcome to this episode of Shonen Flop where we talk about manga series in Shonen Jump that didn't make it big. I'm David 

Jordan  0:17  
I'm Jordan. 

David  0:18  
And this week we're talking about Zan and we are joined by our guests today: Maxy!

Jordan  0:22  
Whoo!

David  0:22  
 Maxy, thank you so much for joining us.

MaxyBee  0:24  
Thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to do this one.

David  0:27  
I'm hearing that strong um... I was trying to think of, like, a country where it wouldn't be, like, offensive to, like, make a clearly blatant-

Jordan  0:33  
That powerful French accent! You know?

David  0:35  
Dammit! Fuck! I fucked it up. That's what- Yeah. Oh, I forgot making fun of the French.

Jordan  0:39  
I just hear the snails comin' out of your mouth when you're talking man.

David  0:43  
He's actually smoking three cigarettes in a cafe right now, while we're recording.

MaxyBee  0:47  
Frog legs just flowing out of me.

Jordan  0:48  
They're all very thin cigarettes, too.

David  0:51  
Yes, yes. There's cigarillos.

Jordan  0:53  
That's not what a thin cigarette is. [Maxy laughs] Anyway... Yeah no, how can you not get excited about Zan? The most interesting manga I've ever read.

David  1:02  
Jordan I'm starting to think you don't like it. But, I do want to hear a little bit about our guest. So Maxy do you mind intro- Telling the audience who you are?

MaxyBee  1:08  
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm MaxyBee, @MaxyTheBee on Twitter. I'm mostly known as a manga community personality, which is to say that I don't create a lot of stuff right now. But a lot of people seem to know who I am because of the things I do do. [David laughs] Yeah I know, I said "Doo-doo". It's great.

Jordan  1:23  
I was gonna say- Ey!

David  1:25  
Ah, this guy's a fucking legend. He realizes why I laughed.

MaxyBee  1:28  
People mostly know me for doing [Something unintelligible said by David] things like a giant 50 magazine thread, where I told everyone the general vibe of every, like, manga magazine I could think of; An assistant chart that has since been done better by someone else; 

David  1:40  
Mhhm.

MaxyBee  1:40  
And a podcast that existed about a decade ago called "Friendship! Effort! Victory!" 

David  1:45  
Ooh.

Jordan  1:46  
Mmmh. 

MaxyBee  1:46  
People keep wanting me to go back to, but I'm not very good at making myself write(?). 

David  1:50  
Awww!

MaxyBee  1:50  
So one day, maybe. 

Jordan  1:51  
I understand. 

MaxyBee  1:51  
Funny enough: That dealt a lot with canceled manga series so it's uh- You know, it's joint ground.

David  1:57  
I'll give you a tip just don't make a podcast. It's a terrible idea. 

Jordan  2:00  
Yeah, no. The- Only idiots make podcasts. But you know- 

David  2:03  
That's cool about the assistant chart. I think I talked in the Discord, it would be cool to show, like, an influence chart. You know how, like for, instance: Jujutsu Kaisen was very influenced by Hunter x Hunter; Hunter x Hunter on Dragon Ball Z; Or like Chainsaw Man was influenced on Jujutsu Kaisen and just see, like, kind of the family-

Jordan  2:17  
JJK is influenced by Naruto in that it just did Naruto better.

David  2:21  
It's pretty much what if Togashi had made Naruto, is pretty much JJK.

Jordan  2:24  
Yeah, yeah. Tha- That's not super wrong.

MaxyBee  2:27  
I can kind of see that. 

David  2:28  
Right? 

MaxyBee  2:29  
In a way, I feel like that does a disservice to like every series involved in the sentence.

David  2:34  
Okay, listen. I'm rereading YuYu Hakusho and YuYu Hakusho has not aged well. 

MaxyBee  2:39  
Oh, no.

Jordan  2:39  
YuYu Hakusho is very hit or miss. Like I remember going back to the Dark Tournament Saga; Like it starts out with like a fantastic match. The next one is so fucking stupid, and it's just- I don't care about this random group of three dudes and the fucking, like, Frankenstein... Victor Frankenstein-

David  2:39  
Yeah. 

Jordan  2:39  
Dude who controls- Like that sucked. Like, can we move on? But it got way better, of course.

David  3:01  
Here's the thing also; I'm pretty sure the anime is known for fixing a lot of the issues-

Jordan  3:05  
Yes. 

David  3:05  
In the manga. It's to tell you that the anime still has issues shows like- In YuYu Hakusho, like, characters just kind of come out of nowhere, literally. They're like, "Oh, who could this masked fighter that Yusuke recruited to our team be?" when there's literally like three supporting characters in the entire cast that are not currently present. 

Jordan  3:19  
Yeah. But anyway: Hey, listener, if you can't tell- [David laugh] The fact that we're talking about YuYu Hakusho means that we kind of might not want to talk about Zan or something. I don't know? But yeah, why don't we start talking about Zan?

David  3:31  
Oookay, okay. Only if Maxy allows it. Maxy is that okay?

MaxyBee  3:37  
It's not that I want to have you all experience the pain of Zan, but I want the suffering to get worse as we go. So absolutely! Let's- Let's get in it.

Jordan  3:37  
Well you already made us, uh, experience it. So it's too late for that.

MaxyBee  3:38  
"Are You Experienced?"

Oh... 

David  3:43  
That's our one music reference for the episode.

MaxyBee  3:52  
It's like I wanted to send you all back to where I was in 2006, when I got into forums. So I inflicted upon you a bad comic.

That is most comics that I read in 2006. Yeah.

David  3:53  
Oh God. Alright. Well, let's uh- Let's move on to the manga details. Alright, so this manga was created by Sugita Naoya, who, Jordan- This is the second series we've covered by this author. What did he make before this? Or after this, I guess?

Jordan  4:16  
Oh, it certainly is the second series we've covered. Um, the first one is SWOT, which um...

David  4:22  
Yes! 

Jordan  4:23  
Oh! You know what? SWOT still might be worse than Zan. 

David  4:27  
It might actually be. 

Jordan  4:28  
It might be, but that is not even remotely, um, praise for Zan. 

David  4:34  
Yeah. 

Jordan  4:35  
Which should sh- Go to show you the level of quality that this author, uh, produces. 

David  4:39  
Yeah. I read- He's made some other one-shots since. I'm actually kind of surprised he did- Hasn't left the industry based on the fact that he's not very good at making manga. [Jordan laughs] But this ran from July 24th, 2006 to November 27th, 2006. So this is both an old manga and a short lived one, luckily; and it ran for two volumes, 18 chapters, and, actually, we read this because of our guest asking. So Maxy, I'm curious what made you say, "I want to talk about this on Shonen Flop!"?

MaxyBee  5:05  
A big part of it is that you guys did SWOT and when I was, like, first, like, giving your podcast a go, SWOT is the one I- I later went to because it is maybe the Weekly Shonen Jump series that I hate the most. 

Jordan  5:16  
Yeah, that's understandable. 

MaxyBee  5:17  
Yeah. There's maybe like six things I've ever rated one-star from Weekly Shonen Jump, uh, in my very boring and detailed five-star rating system. SWOT: I would give it a zero if I could. 

Jordan  5:26  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  5:27  
It's both nothing and the absolute pits at once. 

Jordan  5:29  
Exactly! 

MaxyBee  5:30  
I don't know how it does both. And Zan is interesting, because I think it's better than SWOT, as we were saying. Like, it's hard to be as bad as SWOT. 

David  5:38  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  5:39  
Because it's more amateurish and actually more crappy? Like the worst thing that happens with, uh, Naoya Sugita is that he learns how to do art, and the more he learns, the more boring his work gets, which is actually worse. Whereas, like, Zan is interesting, because it looks like you could get a 12-year-old to come up with this in, like, the lined pages of a notebook in the back. 

Jordan  5:59  
Yeah.

MaxyBee  5:59  
You know?

David  6:00  
This feels like something that a high schooler made. 

MaxyBee  6:02  
Fascinating! Because it got published in the most popular magazine in all of Japan, like, for comics. 

David  6:07  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  6:09  
Like they went, "Hey, we're the most mainstream publication available. We publish all the greats! We're currently riding on a high with, like, One Piece and Hunter x Hunter; Bleach and Naruto; Time to put Zan into the mix!". And my God, was that a decision they could have made. 

Jordan  6:22  
Oh yeah. 

MaxyBee  6:23  
I really just wanted to let you guys come back to this terrible author and see what came before. 

David  6:28  
Maybe it was like motivation, where it's like, if we're willing to run this dog shit, no one is safe. You know? You can all be replaced.

Jordan  6:36  
My main theory on this, and I've mentioned this to you guys before: I think what might happen, is that Sugita is just really fast at putting these things out.

David  6:45  
Yeah. This man has never missed a deadline in his entire life. You can tell.

Jordan  6:49  
If he missed a single deadline, he would have been fired. But, because it's just like, if you're consistent, and you can just do things really quickly, you'll basically always have a job. You know?

David  6:59  
That was, like, kind of the issue we had with Time Paradox Ghostwriter, where this dude could literally, like, crank out content like twice as fast. And he's like, "Why can't I get a job in the manga industry?" Like that's bullshit! Anyone would hire this dude, if he literally had that work output. They would just, like, tell him what to do. 

Jordan  7:12  
You're really telling me that the manga publication that ran Zan and fucking SWOT is going to turn down this dude's comic, because it's not, like, as good as Dragon Ball Z or One Piece? Which is basically what they said in Time Paradox. 

David  7:28  
Yeah.

Jordan  7:28  
Still love it though!

David  7:29  
Maxy, have you read Time Paradox Ghostwriter?

MaxyBee  7:31  
I have and I think, like, a lot of people, I hit that point early on with it where I was like, "Okay, this is working us. This is secretly really good and has something-

David  7:39  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  7:39  
To say about the nature of plagiarism". And then you get further and then you go, "Oh, no, it's just really bad!"

Jordan  7:44  
Oh we-

David  7:44  
Uh-oh. 

Jordan  7:44  
Completely disagree. We fucking love that manga!

MaxyBee  7:47  
Ooo... 

David  7:47  
So Maxi, actually, if you ever, ever have a chance, I can send you the teir maker where we have a teir for every series we've covered so far. And I'd love to see what your version looks like. 

Jordan  7:55  
Yeah.

MaxyBee  7:55  
I would love to see how it goes, because the- The amount I was, like quietly throwing to myself, hearing you guys, like uh... Dis on Bokke-san, I was like, "Oh man." Like, there were areas we disagree.

Jordan  8:06  
Oh my god! Oh, wow! That's not what I expected.

MaxyBee  8:09  
I am the one fan! I gave it two-stars so it must be good.

David  8:13  
Alrigh. But, I think we are definitely having too much fun talking about things that are not this series.

MaxyBee  8:17  
Oh, with any chance, we get not to talk about it. 

Jordan  8:20  
Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

David  8:20  
I really want to hear Jordan's wonderful plot summary.

Jordan  8:22  
Yes.

David  8:22  
Also, I just want to say before I forget, I want to give a absolute, big thanks to Joey. Joey was a super awesome guest. He introduced us to Cop and Dolphin, one of our favorites. 

Jordan  8:30  
Yeah. 

David  8:30  
And I want to just thank you so much for putting us in touch with Maxy. I can already tell you're gonna be a great guest and you're an awesome member of the Shonen Flop Discord community.

Jordan  8:37  
Yes!

MaxyBee  8:38  
Oh t- Thank you. You're truly flattering me. 

David  8:40  
Yes. And speaking of flattering, let's hear Jordan's attempt to summarize what- Whatever the fuck this manga was about as we go into, "About the Manga." 

Jordan  8:49  
Well, I did my best to make as detailed of a plot summary as possible. 

David  8:54  
I think you did a great job. 

Jordan  8:55  
It's an alternate world where Japan has the Second Amendment, but for swords. So like everyone's obsessed with swords. There's a kid and he's got a really shitty, dull sword that's actually good, if you're a master, but he sucks. Except he doesn't suck. He's actually a master, but he thinks he sucks. He gets a crush on a feminist girl, who's good with swords and wants to prove that girls are strong, by losing fights and being a damsel in distress. The shitty, sword kid then saves her life from an incel and then Feminist Girl immediately falls for him. Popcorn, David.

David  9:23  
Then there's a guy who looks like Ichigo with a scar, who's a cool ninja and he's a bad guy. But he fights Shitty, Sword Kid and realizes he doesn't suck, so they become friends. Then some sort of douchebag kid gets a crush on Feminist Girl and kidnaps her before sicing his bodyguards on them. One of the kids looks Ichigo smoking a joint, and after getting beaten up, he joins the shitty, sword kid and Scar-Ichigo, who looks identical to him because the artist sucks. Popcorn Maxy.

MaxyBee  9:44  
The short guy makes the feminist girl sword fight him, but he gives her a tiny sword. Or as people not in Sword-Land would call it: a dagger! So she's getting fussed a lot. Thankfully, a third faction, that doesn't really matter it's the student council, appears consisting of a teenage girl with big boobs and Sasuke. Like literally just- 

Jordan  10:01  
Literally Sasuke from Naruto! Just Sasuke is in this manga. 

David  10:05  
Yes.

MaxyBee  10:05  
It's like if you've ever seen the Bigger Than Before video with eggs, it's that, but with a person. That's a timely reference. Boob Girl saves Feminist Girl. It's really sad that those terms are perfectly accurate. 

Jordan  10:16  
Yeah, yeah. 

MaxyBee  10:17  
Before deciding to try killing her, until they have a girl moment and agree that gender doesn't matter and you can just ignore sexism. 

Jordan  10:23  
Yeah.

MaxyBee  10:24  
Meanwhile, Eyepatch Wolf murders Sasuke and Shitty, Sword Kid beats up Eyepatch, but he got really cut up in the process and had to go to the hospital. A couple of weeks go by and he's out of the hospital. Dead serious. That's it! That's the ending. He's out of hospital, does a little wave for a bit. Like friends up top, he's down below. That's it!

David  10:40  
The stupidest timeskip I've ever seen in my entire life.

Jordan  10:43  
You know something? In every other timeskip we do, even the dumb ones, there's a moment where it's like, "Ah, we're going forward and we've accomp- Look at what we've accomplished and we're doing this". Like with this, it was just like, "Oh hey. He didn't die." and it's like: Why did you even show me the timeskip? The series might have been so very, minusculely, slightly more interesting if you didn't do that.

MaxyBee  11:01  
Normally, when you get like a- That sort of timeskip, King Crimson effect ending, like, everyone's changed a little bit and you learn what they've been up to.

Jordan  11:08  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  11:08  
But all you get in this is, like, Sasamori going, "I might join the student council", who were trying to kill him previously.

David  11:14  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  11:14  
Of course. And that's it. That's all you get. 

Jordan  11:16  
Yeah, yeah.

David  11:16  
I also love how the main character got like a huge cut on his, like, eye and there's no scar whatsoever. 

Jordan  11:23  
Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. 

David  11:23  
A month after he gets an extremely deep wound on his face. 

Jordan  11:26  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  11:27  
Yeah. Like you'd think that would be room for like some sort of clever reference being, like, "Oh, now- Now he matches with his friend. Or now he too has an eyepatch like his enemy". And it's like, "No, that was just a moment that meant nothing".

Jordan  11:37  
Didn't matter. 

David  11:38  
Nothing in this series mattered. But, we do have to go through the characters. So let's get started on that 

Jordan  11:42  
We'll try. 

David  11:43  
Yep. And Jordan, I know you put that Super Eyepatch thing in for me. Thanks, big guy. 

Jordan  11:47  
I did. You're very welcome.

MaxyBee  11:48  
I'm glad you put that in because I wasn't expecting it. I was trying not to laugh while-

David  11:52  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  11:52  
Reading the rest of the sentence.

David  11:53  
One day, we'll get Super Eyepatch Wolf on the show. 

Jordan  11:55  
One day. 

David  11:56  
So let's get into the main character: Murayama Zan. He is super strong, master of the unsharpened blade; He has a timid personality; He has a mysterious, dead father, which didn't matter. 

Jordan  12:04  
Didn't matter even remotely. 

David  12:06  
Edgy in combat, through some alternate personality thing that they just don't explain whatsoever.

Jordan  12:12  
Okay, so here's the issue. Imagine you're watching Yu-Gi-Oh! and Yugi just turns into Yami Yugi: They don't explain it. They don't make any reference to the fact that there's a pharaoh there. You don't hear, like, his internal monologue. It's just all of a sudden, you turn, you look back and "Oh, wow!" Yugi's a little taller and he's good at cards now.

MaxyBee  12:31  
It's actually, like, just as cynical as that, but if you've ever seen or read Hitman Reborn. Like, that series had been around for a couple of years at this point, with the same sort of personality-switch gimmick going on. But being shot in the head to make it happen. So you can tell that this author just looked at that and said, "Oh, that's how you get popular! Is by doing that exact thing."

David  12:50  
Didn't that have- Series have like a gimmick where you wouldn't die if you wanted to kill yourself or something?

Jordan  12:54  
[Laughter]

MaxyBee  12:55  
The will to live after being shot in the head makes you become, like, really fired up. But there are other ones that can leave you, like, more bummed out and everything. Like Reborn's a wild comic if you guys have never read it.

David  13:04  
I know two things about that series: That and the fact that they had, like, an entire fakeout story arc and everyone got so mad that I'm pretty sure the series got canceled because of how badly it pissed everyone off.

MaxyBee  13:14  
It's close to that. Actually, it did alright for its last few story arcs. And it finished with a two-chapter storyline that said, "What if, actually, nobody's changed? And we just leave it where the series started." Which was a bold move for, uh- A series that would like change- Literally spent the whole series changing everyone, having them develop and grow, and then turned around and said, "Naaah!". 

Jordan  13:33  
It's like how Sonic '06, uh, erases itself from the continuity at the end of the- At the end of the game, so you can't even get mad at it.

David  13:39  
Yes.

MaxyBee  13:39  
Reborn is just Sonic '06.

Jordan  13:41  
OOOOOOOOH!

MaxyBee  13:41  
They're the same series.

David  13:42  
Alright. Okay, alright. But- I- I know we're gonna have a very fun audio uploading, where we'll talk about Sonic '06 and maybe any manga that actually had good endings. But we do have more characters to discuss. So Jordan, can you tell us about the- Don't want to say token female, but the series literally calls her the token female character. 

Jordan  13:56  
Well, first David: I would like to- I take issue with the fact that you said we have more characters. But yeah, her name is Tsukishima. She is the feminist girl I mentioned in the, uh, plot summary. By the way, Murayama Zan is the shitty, sword kid. So Tsukishima: All of her dialogue is, "I want to prove that girls are strong. I want to show that girls are powerful too". And then, the manga-ka spends the whole manga showing, "No actually girls are not very strong". Because this girl ,that everyone thinks is strong, constantly is getting her ass kicked, and constantly getting saved by Zan, and she has a crush on him, and it's like, "Dude, why did you even bother?" Why did you even have her say that if you're just going to have her do the complete fucking opposite? Like, oh my God, it's bad! But she has the personality and the character depth of a sheet of paper. 

David  14:40  
Yep. 

Jordan  14:40  
Like it's tough to figure out what to say with her- About her. I pretty much said everything you can say about her.

MaxyBee  14:45  
She's the mega jobber of the series.

Jordan  14:47  
Yes. 

MaxyBee  14:47  
You normally have that sort of character separate to the woman, where, like, they come out, they do the job to like show this person is tough. But because they've combined it with, like, being this weak woman, because the author just across all of his series really doesn't like women.

Jordan  14:59  
No.

David  14:59  
No.

MaxyBee  14:59  
He's gone like, "Oh women sho- Can be warriors, but this one can't." And they definitely, kind of like- Just keeps finding ways to make her look weaker and weaker. She cries a lot, she collapses for shaking too much, a lot. You could split her into two characters. You have one weak guy and a girl who's okay and it wouldn't be nearly as like offensively bad.

David  15:16  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  15:16  
But by combining the two traits, she just is the worst.

David  15:20  
I'm just thinking about, Jordan, from Ball Not Super, that picture of Vegeta with boobs, when you're thinking about a jobber woman. Because Vegeta is the biggest jobber in Dragon Ball Z.

MaxyBee  15:28  
Oh god Vegeta is the biggest jobber.

Jordan  15:30  
He is! But they at least show Vegeta kicking ass enough times, where you can forget that he's a huge jobber, in between the jobbing.

MaxyBee  15:38  
You could only get the Worf Effect if Worf wins once in a while.

Jordan  15:41  
I believe that you can sum up her entire character as the author saying, "I'm not sexist but..."

MaxyBee  15:46  
[Group laughter] Yes, yeah. Like can- Can you imagine a guy who went on to do a series where, like, a skinhead boy blasts the clothes off of women? Like can it- Can you believe that this is that same author?

David  15:58  
100%! 

Jordan  15:59  
By the way, also, it is so hard to even remember what happened in SWOT. I don't even know if what you said was a SWOT reference.

MaxyBee  16:05  
This is his fourth series I'm thinking of: Muttsuri Shinken. Where it's about, like, a guy going, "These women are too tough and getting too big for themselves. Time for me to beat them into submission and remove their clothes!" And he's the hero.

David  16:16  
This guy is definitely an incel.

Jordan  16:18  
Yeah, that doesn't shock me at all. I'm sure he looks back on this series as, "Oh that time when I'm briefly extremely feminist." Like-

MaxyBee  16:26  
Yeah, exactly.

Jordan  16:28  
God that sucks.

MaxyBee  16:30  
Something about Tsukishima before we move on: Uh, in the author profiles, uh, in the magazine, where he like explained stuff about the series, points out that fans apparently didn't like that she looked so much like Zan. And that's how you know someone can't draw more than three character types, where he tries to make the woman of the series and just goes, "It's just the main character with flat hair."

Jordan  16:46  
Oh, wow, you're talking about two characters who might look exactly the same? Well, that's funny.

MaxyBee  16:51  
Call that a segue.

Jordan  16:52  
Wow, what a segue. Jeez!

David  16:55  
Yeah, so- Why don't you tell us about the fucking eye-scar Ichigo

Jordan  17:00  
Uh, who- Who are you talking to?

David  17:01  
I don't even know. Whoever wants to. I fucking- I hate this series.

Jordan  17:05  
Alright, so I guess this guy's name is Tsuranuki [Transcriber Note- This is the proper spelling as Jordan adds an extra "A"]. I knew him as Scar-Ichigo. And the reason is because: the next character on this list is apparently named Sasamori [Also slights Transcriber Note: They mix up Sasamori with the real Joint Ichigo named Kaibara. Silly Jordan!] and his thing is that he's Ichigo, but he looks like he's smoking a joint. But yeah. Tsuranuki is, like, a sword guy, but he's also a ninja, but he's also an asshole except he's actually a nice guy. There you go. That's his whole fucking character. He throws shuriken.

David  17:30  
He also kind of wants to die in combat. And the main characters like, "I can't let you die!"

Jordan  17:34  
Oh yeah. He does, like, the honor thing and he also- I'm sorry. I've been a complete asshole here and totally unfair to the author. There is exactly one m- There is a huge, huge visual difference between Tsuranuki and Sasamori and that is that, uh, Tsuranuki has slightly taller hair. 

MaxyBee  17:50  
Slightly.

David  17:51  
I still love how there was a shot, where they were in the same shot together, and the author realized, I think while he was drawing that, how they look exactly the same. And he slightly changed Sasamori's character design so that they wouldn't look so blatantly the same. Like he changed the way he drew his eyes just in that one shot. 

Jordan  18:07  
Yeah.

MaxyBee  18:07  
His hair gets smaller over the series. Ah, Sasamori's hair I mean. 

Jordan  18:11  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  18:11  
Like the more I was looking at it, the more I'm convinced it happens because they're like, "Okay, that's the one difference I can make work." 

Jordan  18:16  
They also have kind of similar personalities too? 

David  18:20  
You don't say. 

MaxyBee  18:21  
They're both just fight boys. Just different sorts of fight boy.

Jordan  18:24  
They're both literally just Ichigo. I- I think you could argue Tsuranuki is more of a, uh, Naruto character; but Sasamori's literally Ichigo. Like literally Ichigo!

David  18:34  
Now would you had given him thought for points if he made it, like, a reveal that they were twins or something? 

Jordan  18:38  
I would have.

MaxyBee  18:39  
I would take away points for that at this point.

David  18:42  
I don't think it has points to take away Maxy. 

Jordan  18:44  
It would have been something! I'm not saying, "Oh, that's the- That's what he could have done." What he should have done is just make the characters look different. But at least then it would have been like, "Okay. He's not just completely inept. He just had this dumb idea. But at least he did it." I guess,

MaxyBee  18:57  
If the author knew how to use things like screen tones, he could, like, give a character gray hair. So like-

Jordan  19:03  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  19:03  
They look different, to both just being default blonde. But the guy literally does not know how to do that. And so, like, you only get blacks and whites and it's, um, a little limiting, which doesn't help anyone look different from each other at all.

David  19:14  
I was gonna say, it just feels like these are some negatives. So do we want to shift into why it failed?

MaxyBee  19:18  
[Laughter]

Jordan  19:19  
Um... Yeah, sure. I feel like the entire episode is just why it failed. But let's, uh... Let's go in there. 

David  19:25  
Alright. So right- We're cutting in! [David failing to rim shot? Or is he reloading his finger guns] Finger guns! 

Jordan  19:30  
Dull-ass swords. Yeah. 

David  19:31  
Yeah. It is a dull-ass transition. So Jordan, though, why don't you kick things off by telling us what were the, erm... I think relatively minor criticisms you had about this series. 

Jordan  19:39  
Every single fight works the exact same way. Like, it's the exact, same, fucking way. Like I mentioned, Zan just magically activates deus ex machina, Kaio-ken when he's, uh, when he's losing and he gets better. But yeah, that's literally every fight. Zan shows up. He's like, "Oh weak, I'm weak". And then everybody starts getting their asses kicked and then Zan's like, "Oh maybe I'll, like, start not being terrible." And then he just gets better and wins. And it's so boring and it adds nothing to what's happening. It's just... Ugh!

David  20:08  
Yeah. It's so bad. Every fight is exactly the same as well. Because they don't establish any sort of, kind of, system to how fighting works.

Jordan  20:15  
No, they don't. Another thing this author does, which I think is possibly the most crippling aspect of his writing, is that he doesn't ever set anything up, until now. He will set something up literally the moment he pays it off. So it doesn't feel like there's any payoff. What happens is, something happens and then a character turns to another character and is like, "Okay, so this is why you should care about what you just saw."

MaxyBee  20:38  
Even like the breakthrough techniques you see him like whip out in the fights: Like, they happen, and it goes, "Oh. Well, I read it in the book". And it's like, really? That the book that never comes up outside of when you just reveal something new? It's like- Jesus.

David  20:50  
It was a fencing book. It's a completely different type of sword. How are fencing techniques going to be relevant when you're using a slashing weapon versus a thrusting weapon?

MaxyBee  20:58  
I think that might, technically, be a little translation snafu? I think it's supposed to be fencing, in the sense of swordfighting.

David  21:04  
Oh, okay. 

MaxyBee  21:05  
Like in fencing, the sport. Which is uh... So I'll give him credit there. But, crucially, I forgot to actually look at it in my copy to go and check for sure. So maybe he is just stupid. It is also possible.

Jordan  21:15  
I mean hey maybe it's, uh, fencing in the sense of selling stolen goods?

MaxyBee  21:19  
Oh that would improve the series immensely. 

David  21:22  
He- He just puts up a fence, and this is actually a prequel to Build King.

Jordan  21:25  
A manga about fencing, like, just a dude trying to sell stolen materials to a pawn shop would be an infinitely more interesting than Zan. 

MaxyBee  21:34  
It says a lot about my understanding of fencing that I can only picture like a Khajiit from Elder Scrolls. Like, being like, "Ah! What wares have you bought me today?"

David  21:42  
"Wares if you have coin!" Alright. But we have to get back into the topic. Yeah, this plot was so bad. And then this series, like- Every character has zero agency. Everything is just having them react to things happening to them. Like, none of these characters have goals or interests. There's the thing about his dad for like ten seconds, and then the series, I'm pretty sure, forgot about that. 

MaxyBee  21:58  
Yeah. It never comes up.

Jordan  21:59  
If I think about it really hard: There was sort of an implication- This implication only happened because there was absolutely nothing else; But there was sort of an implication, maybe uh, his dad's possessing him or something? But again, that's just because there was absolutely no explanation. So I had to search for, like, anything that might fill that gap. But other than that, it's completely fucking meaningless! And a- Here's another thing: Literally every single time somebody notices he has this dull sword, they all say "Did you know that sword is actually very powerful, unless you're a beginner? I bet you're a beginner. Oh wow, you're actually not a beginner." And then, somebody else sees the sword. It's like, "Wow, he has that sword. That's really bad, unless you're really good at it." They say it over and over again. I get it!

MaxyBee  22:41  
They really want you to know this sword is the- The special item of the series. But all it really comes down to is just- It would have looked bad if they had the baby face main character making characters bleed. So they've just gone, "Oh, he just bruises them real hard." It's such a- A weird thing that they have to get driving home, because they need to have this blunt sword be the thing that makes him a hero as well. Not just that it wins the fights, but it doesn't hurt people the same way every other sword does which is kind of wild.

David  23:06  
Fuck! I just realized: You know what would have been the best thing, that would have been the series 10 out of 10 Jordan? 

Jordan  23:10  
What? 

David  23:10  
So you know how there's Ichigo with a joint? 

Jordan  23:12  
Yeah. 

David  23:12  
What if he was like, "Your sword. That's not my kind of blunt." And then he just lights up?

Unknown Speaker  23:17  
[Group Laughter]

Jordan  23:17  
You know what? I agree. I would actually, completely turn around and say this is the best thing I've ever read.

Unknown Speaker  23:21  
[More group laughter]

MaxyBee  23:24  
I will sell this idea to you slightly more, by telling you that, uh, when this came out, the first chapter, it was the same week as One Piece chapter 420.

David  23:33  
Nice!

Jordan  23:34  
Yeah!

David  23:34  
On purpose. I love it.

Jordan  23:35  
Aw yeah! 100% 

David  23:36  
That's why we have Maxy- Maxy on the show, for details like that.

Jordan  23:39  
Ahhhh! Thank you Maxy! That was very necessary information that I was lacking. It adds so- It adds like a ton of context. 

David  23:46  
Yes! Bless you. I also want to point out, in the art, we shit on it a lot; But again, I noted in the Chibi, but my God does it not change. Every single panel-

Jordan  23:53  
It sucks! 

David  23:53  
Is square. I also feel, like, this looks like it was drawn in Microsoft Paint.

Jordan  23:57  
Well that's because the scan quality is trash.

MaxyBee  24:01  
Oh yeah. This is taken from like MQ raws back in-

David  24:04  
Oh, okay.

MaxyBee  24:04  
2006-

David  24:04  
Alright, alright.

MaxyBee  24:05  
For fair context. However, as someone with the high quality digital version on BookWalker, I can tell you: No, it still looks like it was drawn in Microsoft Paint! 

Jordan  24:12  
Oh? 

David  24:12  
There you go. 

MaxyBee  24:12  
Just, like, current Microsoft Paint, more than old pixelated Microsoft Paint. 

Jordan  24:17  
Mmmh.

MaxyBee  24:18  
It is a uniquely, ugly series. You feel like the box tools come out a lot. And you know, maybe occasionally a parallelogram for a dynamic panel? 

Jordan  24:27  
Whoa! 

MaxyBee  24:27  
But like it's really, really unadventurous in it's storytelling. Which- You know, sure, it's a debut series. But man, it is boring to look at.

Jordan  24:36  
There is so little ambition in this series. It is shocking. I do want to talk about the art really quick before I talk about that though: Because there is one panel- 

David  24:44  
Yeah.

Jordan  24:44  
In particular that just had me cracking up. Where the eyepatch guy, I guess his name is Tojo? I don't fucking know! He shows up and he just kills Sasuke in, like, one panel. 

David  24:53  
Yeah, that was- I actually love that. 

Jordan  24:55  
Eh, yeah. What happens when you get cut David? Do you, uh, float in the- In the air, like five inches, start t-posing, and rotate 45 degrees?

David  25:05  
Yeah, that's happened to me every time I've gotten cut.

Jordan  25:07  
Yeah, yeah. But I do also want to point out: The low quality actually made that panel get, uh- Look better because when I saw the high quality, you could really tell there's like dust clouds in the background, and he just kinda drew some vague swirly lines that look like shit.

MaxyBee  25:21  
Oh yeah, because there's no backgrounds in this series at all. Like, he does not know how to draw them. The best part about that particular cut as well is- So he gets cut, big page. He's falling backwards, blood spraying out. Apparently propelling him through the air. 

David  25:34  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  25:34  
And then the next panel, he's actually falling forwards instead. 

David  25:37  
Ee-yup. 

Jordan  25:37  
Yeah [with laughter] 

MaxyBee  25:39  
Continuity does not exist in this. You'll see this: If someone's hair's blowing in the winds, and, like, let's call it the camera, like, or lens, if it moves to then show them from the other side, their hair's blowing the other way. So it's like, instead of wind blowing consistently one direction, it's like the winds blowing across the page. And every character's hair is going that direction. 

David  25:55  
But it's more dynamic!

MaxyBee  25:59  
It's so bizarre! It's like he's never thought about how to draw a comic. And even as an illustrator, even if you took every panel by itself: They're flat. They're unpleasant. Have you looked at the hands in this series? 

Jordan  26:09  
I'm going to. 

MaxyBee  26:10  
They're literally a square with rectangles coming off them. I can draw better hands and I can't draw for toffee. I don't get paid for it in a magazine. 

David  26:18  
"I can't draw for toffee"! That might be the most British expression I've ever heard in my entire life.

MaxyBee  26:22  
Is this it? The British-isms are coming out. I'll be full William Regal by the end of this episode.

Jordan  26:26  
Oh we love it. 

David  26:27  
I just want to say, I think every British guest- Cuz Jordan, how many British guests have we had? We've had Hassan and MasakoX. I think.

Jordan  26:33  
Yeah. 

David  26:33  
Am I forgetting anyone? So... 

Jordan  26:34  
Um...

David  26:34  
We are three for three for having very awesome British guests. 

Jordan  26:37  
Yes. Yes! 

MaxyBee  26:38  
Being on the same level of those two, now you really are taking the mick with me.

David  26:42  
Yes the "Big Three": Hassan, MasakoX, and Maxy!

Jordan  26:45  
"The Big Three British People". In England. That's it. 

David  26:49  
Yes. 

Jordan  26:49  
Because they're the three people that anyone cares about in England.

David  26:53  
Yeah. Did you guys have to fight over who gets to be on the 10 pound bill?

MaxyBee  26:56  
We get a crown, but it's, like, a sort of Burger King paper crown.

Jordan  26:59  
Oh, good. 

MaxyBee  27:00  
Look the royal budget's been going down in recent years.

David  27:02  
Oh my god. Alright! We are off track. Let's get back into it. So, what else do we want to say negative about the series?

Jordan  27:07  
The series art style doesn't really strike me as manga. What it reminds me of is 12-year-olds trying to draw Invaders Zim characters.

David  27:16  
Yeah.

MaxyBee  27:17  
Yeah. 

David  27:18  
This is, perhaps, the most DeviantArt art style manga. Like-

Jordan  27:21  
Yeah. 

David  27:21  
You said that about B. Ichi, but this is even moreso. This is what 12-year-olds on DeviantArt were trying to draw. 

Jordan  27:25  
This is so much worse than B. Ichi's, like, art. I think it's generally worse than B. Ichi too. 

David  27:30  
I don't think there's anything that says, "Better than- Than B. Ichi."

Jordan  27:32  
Yeah. 

David  27:33  
And B. Ichi was also terrible. 

Jordan  27:34  
Yeah. That's, like, really damning for us to say that, because we hated B. Ichi. But it's very clear that, just in terms of how they're drawing, like, the faces and the angles and stuff: It's, like, very clearly the same era of design aesthetics, and at least, uh-

David  27:49  
Mhhm. 

Jordan  27:50  
In terms of what nerds who are bad at art like.

MaxyBee  27:53  
Totally. Like, if you- that- The specific sort of DeviantArt, or, like, teen drawing trend I'm always thinking of is when you're trying to draw anime style, and you forget that foreheads exist? 

Jordan  28:01  
Yeah! 

MaxyBee  28:02  
And this has got so much of that, because the eyes are so big. It goes eyes, head. Which like if you were to show me an x-ray of a Zan character's head, I would scream and never stop. Like, it would be a terrifying concept. 

David  28:13  
Oh, God.

MaxyBee  28:14  
They're all very 2-D in a neat way as well. Like- Not to go make this a positive. I actually kind of like how amateurish it looks at times-

Jordan  28:20  
Yes. 

MaxyBee  28:20  
Because it almost makes me think of like, if you did paper puppets, that's what these series would be. Because you're- Not a single character has visual depth to them. So like, you could literally just wave them about on sticks and make your own sort of budget anime. It's great. And by great I mean terrible.

Jordan  28:33  
I mean look: With better writing, I think that you could find a way for this art style to be good, but that's not what we got. So...

MaxyBee  28:40  
This is the sort of art style you'll get in, like, a gag manga, right? 

Jordan  28:43  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  28:43  
And it would work there because comedy can look however you want it to, if it's funny,

David  28:48  
That's literally High School Family! 

MaxyBee  28:49  
Yeah. 

David  28:49  
High School Family's artist is extremely talented. He has got wonderful proportions, paneling. The art style he has chosen, I think, is why you bring it up. 

Jordan  28:56  
Yeah.

MaxyBee  28:57  
Oh yeah, no. Like to- Drawing in a way that's deliberately amateurish. It's like, uh, the d- Deal for, uh, High School Family. Their previous series, Isobe Isobe Monogatari-

David  29:04  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  29:05  
Was great, because it was all drawn in a ukiyo-e art style. You know, the old Japanese wood panel thing? I can never pronounce it correctly. 

Jordan  29:11  
Oh! 

David  29:12  
I know what you're talking about. 

MaxyBee  29:13  
Yeah. So the guy is super flexible, because he'd be drawing it in a way that both looked like that, and looked a little bit deliberately crappy. But if he wants to, he can draw something that looks really refined and brilliant. Like, he's a very flexible artist. And I think that's part of why the author of One Piece loves him so much.

Jordan  29:28  
Uh, yeah.

David  29:28  
I just love High School Family. 

Jordan  29:30  
Oh, of course.

MaxyBee  29:31  
I will get back on it someday. I dropped it a while back, because I was struggling to find loads of things to read in Jump. 

Jordan  29:36  
Mhhm.

MaxyBee  29:36  
But then I've just, like, dropped all but 10 series. So I've got room again. I can start.

David  29:40  
There you go. 

Jordan  29:40  
Nice! 

David  29:40  
Alright. But, speaking of things that we enjoy: Why don't we go into the positives about this series, where I think we'll probably all have one thing to say each and then we'll keep going. I think, we should bring in the most positive guy in the chat, Maxy! Do you mind telling us what were the things that you enjoyed about this series? Because I'm not gonna lie, this is probably the shortest positive section I've ever had in my notes. 

Jordan  29:58  
Yeah.

MaxyBee  29:59  
So this one may be one that people would disagree with me a lot on, but I actually really appreciate that- Because Sugita is really, really scared of using screen tones, and, like, pretty much uses them only three different points in the whole series. 

David  30:11  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  30:12  
He has to be really good at using his blacks and his spot blacks in particular, which is where you like- You- Makes like solid black for impact.

David  30:19  
Oh! This reminds me of another series Jordan. 

Jordan  30:21  
Oh? 

David  30:22  
So Gun Blaze West, I said that was the one good thing the author did well with the art. And Jordan just shitted on me for saying that.

Jordan  30:28  
Yeah! 

MaxyBee  30:28  
But the thing that- You can't underestimate the power of good spot blacks. It's part of why Bone is such an amazing-

Jordan  30:33  
Yep. 

MaxyBee  30:33  
Comic. Please understand, I'm not comparing Zan to Bone. Uh, Jeff Smith's Bone is far, far better than Zan.

David  30:38  
Mhhm

Jordan  30:39  
Oh, God yes! 

MaxyBee  30:40  
The spot blacks in this are actually surprisingly good.

Jordan  30:42  
I'm just remembering when I recently Googled Bone Collection and just showed up. "Oh, here's 'The Bone Collection' for the good comic Bone." Okay. Thanks.

David  30:51  
I do love Bone. I actually finished reading it like a month ago. 

Jordan  30:53  
Bone is great. 

David  30:54  
We should try and get him on, Jordan. I'll- I'll send him an email after this.

Jordan  30:56  
Yeah. And look, we're already talking about fucking Bone. Alright. So let's go back to like- 

MaxyBee  31:01  
Yeah. Because- Because any chance not to talk about Zan. So part of the thing that's great for those blacks is the school uniforms, because they're solid black. It means they can do these neat things where the legs and arms can just disappear into them, which is a great way of covering up the fact that you can't draw legs and arms, and, like, it makes it look like an artistic choice rather than just being terrible.

Jordan  31:18  
Yeah. 

David  31:18  
Hey, that is clever in a way. It's like how Rob Liefeld was really great with his posing to make sure feet never showed up in the frame. 

MaxyBee  31:23  
It's exactly like Rob Liefeld, who follows me on Twitter for some reason.

David  31:27  
Oh, we should have Rob Liefeld on.

Jordan  31:28  
We should have Rob Liefeld on! 

David  31:29  
I hear he's really, a really nice person.

MaxyBee  31:32  
He's excellent to talk to you. But his opinions suck. 

David  31:34  
Hasn't he gone from, like, being one of the worst artists to being like extremely mediocre? Where like no one would even know about him at the quality he's drawing right now? 

Jordan  31:41  
Probably.

MaxyBee  31:42  
He does draw feet now. But it looks more like someone's attached a kite to someone's leg, like a sort of rhombus shape, which is close to a foot.

Jordan  31:47  
I kind of feel like Rob Liefeld just should have gone all in on it. and just, like, gotten crazier and weirder, and like more fucked up looking. But again, this is not related to Zan. So I  do want to say, I- I agree with you. There are aspects of this style that I think are interesting, the art style. They're very geometric. You do have those really, stark, black tones and stuff like that. And there are panels where I think it works, but that is the minority of panels. Generally speaking, it really does look like, "Oh, this was a first draft drawing that he didn't give a fuck about and didn't go back and fix." And that's kind of Zan in a nutshell, I feel like. Damn this was supposed to be the positives.

MaxyBee  32:26  
You could bet money the editor never, like, went back to him and said, "You need to redo this". Like, he just went, "Fuck it. We'll publish it. It's fine. It's in the magazine. Now it's done."

Jordan  32:33  
I think maybe Shonen Jump had, like, six months where they just didn't have anything to put in there. And they were like, "Hey, man. Can you get something to us in like a day?"

David  32:41  
It's like Beast Children.

Jordan  32:43  
Yeah! [with laughter]

MaxyBee  32:43  
You don't even know how bad this period is actually. 

Jordan  32:45  
Really? 

MaxyBee  32:46  
Maybe over this time period you get a couple of things that stick out. Like To Love Ru would happen slightly earlier; You get P2! Let's Play Ping Pong! which is like a year runner, so sort of that Hard-Boiled Cop and Dolphin level of doing okay.

David  32:56  
Mhhm. 

MaxyBee  32:57  
But otherwise you have Hand's, which is one of the shortest manga in the history of Weekly Shonen Jump; You have, like, uh, Jyuki Ningen Jumbor the- The follow-on series to Shaman King by Takei. That was so bad-

Jordan  33:07  
Oh my God! 

MaxyBee  33:07  
He gave up after 10 weeks; And you have Corrector M&Y, which was by the Medaka Box artist and there is nothing you can even say about it. It's got lightsabers and tits and it did poorly. 

David  33:16  
That sounds great. 

Jordan  33:16  
Oh my God! 

MaxyBee  33:17  
It is a dearth of time in Weekly Shonen Jump, because all the popular stuff had started in 2004 and 2005 and the magazine was full.

Jordan  33:25  
Ooo.

David  33:26  
And there was no digital publishing either at that time.

MaxyBee  33:28  
Oh no, not at all. It was all print, all the time, and it lived or died by the little postcards people were sending in. So it's a miracle Zan got published in the first place. That's high to praise it for: It made it in a magazine, it ran for 18 weeks, and it ended. Technically 19 weeks, because there was a double issue.

David  33:43  
Maybe it was like a Make-A-Wish thing?

MaxyBee  33:45  
No cuz he never died. 

Jordan  33:47  
Well, maybe he faked it. 

MaxyBee  33:48  
Oh the scandal!

David  33:50  
This does remind me of Godspeed, where the author did actually die after he made it.

Jordan  33:53  
Yeah! [Laugh break] Yeah. I was like, "Oh..." It was a downer to end the episode on. 

David  34:01  
Yeah.

MaxyBee  34:02  
In a very sad way, you would almost appreciate Zan more if the author- No! I'm not gonna say it'd be better if he died afterwards. It would spare us the other series, but that would maybe be a little mean on the author. I take that one back.

David  34:12  
I'm fine living in a universe where SWOT didn't exist. 

Jordan  34:15  
SWOT was so damaging though. I don't know.

MaxyBee  34:17  
I wish it never happened.

Jordan  34:19  
Maybe instead he just put out Zan and realized, "Oh, I suck at this. I'm gonna do something else."

David  34:23  
Yeah. We are off topic. 

MaxyBee  34:25  
Yes. 

David  34:25  
I have two positives. So first of all; This is a really, cool setting, which- As we talk about where it could have gone, I had like five different ideas of where I could have done something with this root idea which-

Jordan  34:33  
Oh yeah. 

David  34:33  
At least it was an interesting seed of an idea. The second one is, I think, they actually show people being badly hurt by swords more than I was expecting. Like they actually show people being scarred and wounded in blood and, like, almost- Not almost dying. But I- I will say, I was expecting it to be treated with zero sense of seriousness and there was a very slight sense of, "Oh being cut by a sword, actually, you can die from" That shows how low my expectations were. That they, at least, did the bare minimum of of establishing that you get hurt when you get cut by a sword.

MaxyBee  35:01  
Yeah there's a lot of blood loss in the series

Jordan  35:03  
Yeah. We just read Gun Blaze West, where that author, whose name I will not speak, decided to have a gun manga but realize, "Shit! I can't just have the main character kill everybody. How am I going to do this manga about fucking guns?" So he just like hits people with guns.

David  35:17  
He punches people with- While he's holding his gun. 

Jordan  35:20  
It's great. 

David  35:21  
I don't know if you're familiar with that series Maxy?

MaxyBee  35:23  
I've not listened to your episode yet, so I don't remember if my six word summary made it in, but I definitely tried to include that.

David  35:28  
I think it did? As long as you get it before we st- Physically start recording. I usually double check. And for context, for people aren't sure: So, just for reminder, if you join the Shonen Flop Discord, which you can find a link to it in our show notes or on our site, we have a space where I will say what the series is every week, and then you can submit your six word summary and we'll read them off in the show.

MaxyBee  35:44  
I said- I just use the six word summaries as an excuse to dunk on him.

Jordan  35:47  
Totally justified! I- Incredibly support that. But David, you kind of pointed something out, which is there are moments in this manga where you could see, "Oh, hey. You accidentally struck on something potentially interesting." But he doesn't realize he did that. He does nothing with it because he can't write and he-

David  36:02  
Yup. 

Jordan  36:02  
Can't set things up or explain things. Like, about halfway through the manga- You know, this- I'm just getting into "Where it Could Have Gone" now. So... 

MaxyBee  36:08  
But one more for you, quickly. This is a very minor thing, and it says how little I- I liked about this series. It's nice that it's got some cool cameos in it. You have Softon and Beauty from Bobobo on the Chapter One color page, along with Zoro from One Piece. 

Jordan  36:21  
What!? 

MaxyBee  36:21  
You only really see it in the color pages, so it doesn't work well in the volumes. But on the first page in color, he's sitting there with a black bandana on, white top, and his shorts or whatever. Like it's 100% supposed to be Zoro. And then you've got Softon, or a guy with poopy, brown hair, chasing a pink-haired girl into the toilet-

David  36:36  
Oh that's hilarious 

MaxyBee  36:37  
Which is a really weird thing for a brother to do to a sister. It's completely, needless references. 

Jordan  36:41  
So now there's absolutely no excuse for the fact that guy looks exactly like Sasuke, is what you're telling me? 

David  36:46  
Yeah.

Jordan  36:46  
Absolutely zero.

MaxyBee  36:47  
It's almost, definitely, trying to be clever.

Jordan  36:49  
Oh God!

MaxyBee  36:50  
In chapter eight, at the end of volume one, you just- You randomly have Ryotsu from KochiKame in there. It was the 30th anniversary of that series. 

David  36:58  
Aww.

MaxyBee  36:58  
So everyone was just putting him in. And so for a brief moment, I was thinking about a good comic and I was like, "Oh, that's a nice feeling."

David  37:04  
Alright. But, you know else is a nice thought? 

Jordan  37:06  
"Where it Could Have Gone"? 

David  37:07  
"Where it Could Have Gone"! So let's mosey on-

MaxyBee  37:08  
Right into that. 

David  37:09  
Into that. So let's just, round-robin, what all of our thoughts are. So my first one is: Imagine though, if it played it straight that the main character got like a really serious concussion, like in the third chapter, and then it just kind of turns into like Million Dollar Baby. Where it has to deal with him, like- His life after he su- Has a trauma- Traumatic brain injury and it becomes like really serious. 

Jordan  37:28  
And then Clint Eastwood kills it right? 

David  37:30  
Yeah. Oh yeah! Zoro kills him at the end of this.

Jordan  37:34  
Well yeah! It end with him going to the hospital. What if, like, the timeskip- They were like, "Oh, yeah. I unplugged his life support."

David  37:39  
What if this entire manga was just him in a coma imagining it after his head injury?

Jordan  37:44  
His dying dream? 

David  37:45  
Yeah. 

Jordan  37:45  
Like a Jacob's Ladder ass-shit!

MaxyBee  37:48  
It turns out, his secret personality thing is just because he's, like, got swelling of the brain from taking a bad hit.

David  37:54  
Yeah.

MaxyBee  37:54  
Like there's- There's absolutely things you could do there that are really depressing, but it would be interesting.

Jordan  37:59  
Maybe it's, like, his softer, like, uh, timid personality is the personality that showed up when he got hit in the head. And then yeah. When he gets serious like- Oh, his old personality comes back. It's fucking something!

MaxyBee  38:11  
You've come really close to the plot of the one-shot that led to the series.

David  38:15  
I like that Jordan, for a second, was about to recommend "What if it was Double Taisei but about sword fighting?". 

MaxyBee  38:20  
Oh, that would improve it!

Jordan  38:22  
What if it was Double Taisei but about sword fighting!?

David  38:25  
There we go. I like that actually. 

Jordan  38:27  
That's awesome!

MaxyBee  38:28  
Everything should be Double Taisei!

David  38:30  
That's like a fun series to just think about.

Jordan  38:32  
We are already talking about Double Taisei! Alright?

MaxyBee  38:36  
Anything we could do to not talk about Zan! We keep saying it. 

David  38:39  
Oh, we haven't mentioned Moriking yet. 

Jordan  38:40  
Oh, yeah, Moriking. You know what would have made this series better? What if it was Chainsaw Man? 

David  38:45  
Oh... Yeah. I think we've talked about everything- All of our favorites.

Jordan  38:48  
Well wait! What if it was Eyeshield 21? 

David  38:50  
Or Dr. Stone? 

Jordan  38:51  
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Or fuck it Gurren Lagann and G Gundam too!

David  38:55  
And Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer. 

Jordan  38:57  
Okay. But yeah. So my idea here is: Towards the end of the manga, you start seeing all these characters talk about bushido, and they start talking about the way of the warrior. And that has never been brought up before that, really. It's just suddenly, "Oh, these guys really care about it.". And it's like, "Why should I care?" Because that's really a way that you could take this manga. Because the premise is, it's like- Okay, it's like real world, but everyone's got swords. And how does that change the culture of course. And this manga doesn't change the culture. But that kind of gave me a glimpse of: What if in this world, it was very similar, culture-wise, to how it is now, but everyone was just super into codes of honor and super into bushido, in like a way that they aren't right now? It would be something. It would be like, "Okay, there's some kind of character here". And then when you had characters suddenly pulling out this bushido shit, you'd be like, "Oh, I get it. Yeah, okay. I understand." But because that's not there it's just stupid.

MaxyBee  39:47  
I love that so much! Because like- There is a very interesting question this series is asking by being like, "What if swords had never been banned?"

Jordan  39:53  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  39:53  
You could see a world like completely warped by that idea. Like where- Again, like, if school somehow revolved more around swords, instead of just being a place you go to where you're allowed to hold a sword. You don't see a single class where swords are related to anything that's going on. They just go to class like a normal teenager, in a normal setting.

David  40:09  
Yeah. 

Jordan  40:10  
Like do something with the-

David  40:11  
Yeah. 

Jordan  40:11  
Fucking premise. You know? 

David  40:12  
Right? This series doesn't show anything that's not related to sword fighting though. I feel like that's a strong metric. Is- If you see the character's extended family, is like a great barometer to see if the series actually puts any effort in to high school related plots. Like you know in Which Watch-

Jordan  40:26  
Mmmh. 

David  40:26  
You see his dad really early on. While in comparison, Philosophy School: you see their family for like one chapter and that series is garbage. This- They don't leave the school in the entire series.

Jordan  40:35  
No. I think the entire series takes place over two days. 

David  40:39  
It's like Part 5 of JoJo.

MaxyBee  40:41  
School is just a building to hang out in. That's what the series is telling us. 

Jordan  40:44  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  40:44  
And you know why? 

David  40:45  
Why?

MaxyBee  40:46  
Because it's really basic and you don't need to draw backgrounds. 

David  40:48  
Yep, that's fair. 

MaxyBee  40:49  
Everything's a plain wall. 

Jordan  40:50  
This is the most basic manga you could possibly make. Because do you know why everyone has swords? The only reason is because he knew that he needed to get to a situation where you had teenagers fighting each other, with swords, in a school because that's what manga is, apparently.

MaxyBee  41:06  
Because swords were popular in manga back in 2006. They were, like, the thing everything had.

David  41:10  
Maxy, do you have any other things that you would like to change or pitch inspired by this?

MaxyBee  41:14  
Yes. I alluded to it earlier. This series should pivot to gag. It should have always have been a comedy series. 

Jordan  41:20  
Yes! 

MaxyBee  41:20  
Because, like, in a world where swords are commonplace, you can do so many gags about swords where they shouldn't be. Like tiny swords for toothpicks.

David  41:27  
Like we talked about: Someone cutting up a cucumber with a katana. 

MaxyBee  41:30  
Yeah. A lawn rake made out of daggers. You could go completely silly with it. Like, make it so much about swords that, like, everyone's completely insane. Like your- Your side character is a massive sword pervert. Like everyone's trying to have, like, a romantic sort of confession scene and he's doing it with like a sheathe. 

Jordan  41:45  
I love that.

David  41:46  
I'm just imagining, like, at the end of this series, after it ran for 15 years, he gets like married to the female main character, and they show their wedding, and it just shows a sword sheathing. [Laughter builds] And that's- That's exactly- That's probably the best metaphor you could come up with after the wedding

MaxyBee  41:58  
Yeah. You go- Go the full Family Guy with it though. Have the sword be slightly too big for the sheathe and it's just destroying it.

David  42:05  
The sword, like, retracts into the handle and says, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm nervous. It's usually not like this."

MaxyBee  42:10  
Or like one of those child's daggers where it just goes in.

David  42:12  
Fuck! That's really good. Speaking of sword sheathing: I thought if- So my ideas were, like, not to completely change the genre, but I thought it would be cool if, like- What if instead of it being like this weird-ass, blunt sword, his sword is like enchanted or something. Where he can't unsheath his sword, so he has to fight with a sheathed sword, which he kind of uses the sheathe. Like, that's, like, the power, is he has to figure out, like, how to become strong enough to unsheath this, like, restricted sword or something that his father left him.

MaxyBee  42:33  
Oh, that'd be great. It would be a character motivation and it would be plot.

David  42:37  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  42:37  
Because it's like, "Why is it like that?" Imagine having character motivation!

Jordan  42:41  
I feel like this author accidentally set up a bunch of things that didn't- Just didn't notice. 

David  42:46  
Yeah. 

Jordan  42:46  
Because they change all the time. When you change ideas all the time, it's like a broken clock twice a day, you know?

David  42:51  
By the way, in your- In your sword-world thing, I actually had a note of that. Imagine if: There's like a woman, taking a baby in a care- Or like, taking her sword in a stroller, like it's a baby. Or her baby with like a tiny sword.

MaxyBee  43:03  
Oh, that- That- That'd be fun. Baby with like a sword as a pacifier. Just- 

David  43:06  
Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan  43:07  
I agree that this needs to be a sword-obsessed world. That's what it- That's what happens in manga and anime. You know, Yu-Gi-Oh!: It isn't just that they play cards, it's that the entire world is structured around a children's card game. And that would have been a lot better here.

MaxyBee  43:20  
It's that you have to commit. Throw yourself fully into the idea. A- Anytime someone half-asses it, the series dies. Like this is very much that.

David  43:28  
I also have one last thought. To get into that whole point of how the author accidentally has good ideas: In Chapter Four, they talk about how the main character has, like, really weird footwork and it gave me the idea of: What if the main character, like, say for some reason he can't learn normal sword techniques. So he has to learn it from different, other forms of martial arts or weapons, and has to adapt them to sword technique. So like in that, he was essentially doing boxing footwork in a sword duel, and that would be cool to show, like, how do you adapt nontraditional skills into traditional sword fighting to give him like a unique advantage versus his opponents. 

Jordan  43:56  
Yeah. 

David  43:57  
Like that's the whole point. It's like, with that footwork, you can't predict where he's moving, because he's moving so strangely. But that's definitely not something that would be taught in traditional swordplay.

Jordan  44:05  
As awful as this manga was, if it had gone the Neru route, where it was like he just had, like, this weird manual of things to do, this awkward fencing manual, and you had to keep going back and looking at it, and that might have been a more consistent thing. It would have been something, and it would have been kind of interesting. You could do stuff with that. I mean, it probably wouldn't have been interesting because this art- This author/artist is terrible, but a better one could have done a better job.

David  44:26  
Yeah. Better anything, on anything could do a better job.

Jordan  44:29  
If this- You know what? If this manga, uh... If the plot was better, it could have been better. 

David  44:33  
Alright, thanks. 

Jordan  44:34  
[Jordan chuckles]

David  44:36  
Big hot take from Jordan! 

MaxyBee  44:37  
That's your review. One sentence. If it was good, it'd be good.

David  44:40  
I know you guys really want to talk about "Miscellaneous Thoughts". So let's move on to that. Alright, Maxy, you have 45 minutes. I don't know if that's enough time for you to get through all your miscellaneous thoughts bro. No, Maxy, please though, please. Uh, tell us all of the interesting observations and thoughts that you just felt you couldn't have got- You weren't able to express yet on the show.

MaxyBee  44:59  
So a lot of these are things that actually exist outside of the series thing and its place in Jump history, because it started at like a really weird time. Like, I mentioned the- The KochiKame anniversary. So it got to go and be part of this massive book that had, like, all these big authors, like the creator of Bastard, the creator of Hunter x Hunter, who was on hiatus at the time, all drawing tribute images. 

Jordan  45:18  
What?! He was on hiatus? No fucking way.

MaxyBee  45:21  
The first really big one as well. So, like, back when it was novel, if that makes sense? 

Jordan  45:26  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  45:27  
So you had all these authors coming back from retirement stuff, doing these little images, being like, "Hey, well done KochiKame for running, like- For years without ever taking a break." And then you had series that were, like, dead in the water, ready to be canceled like Zan in there being like, "Hey, I'm also here! I'm glad I'm in the same magazine as you Sensei!" Which is, like, so wild and an opportunity far beyond anything this author deserved.

David  45:48  
Imagine in reprints, they just took him out. They cropped him out of it.

MaxyBee  45:51  
Oh, I would- I would laugh so much. It would be mean, but the thing is: The little one-page comic it did, it was terrible. It's just this little thing like, "Hey! I'm going to arrest you because I'm the cop from KochiKame!" It's like, "Oh. Actually swords are allowed here." And he goes, "Oh. I guess I'm the silly one!" and runs off. And that's basically how it goes. And like the- These had amazing ones. This had things like Ryotsu trying to convince Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist to go and make gold, even though it's against the rules. Or like him going up against Ichigo from Bleach and be like, "Here's my Bankai!", and he goes Bankai, and pulls a revolver on him. And Ichigo's like, "That's a gun. Please don't do this."

David  46:23  
That's so amazing. 

Jordan  46:24  
It's so good! 

MaxyBee  46:25  
And Zan just had nothing, which, like, is so funny to me. It also got a rare thing: Whenever there's a double issue of Jump, we all know the thing, every series is on the cover. And it got to be part of a big special summer one, where there was a boy's cover and a girl's cover. So you got to see all the heroines. Which is so funny to me, because you get all these like really well, fleshed out characters and it's just Tsukishima in the background, in what can probably tastefully be described as two or like three white triangles on a stick figure. And it's like, "I'm also here."

David  46:52  
Oh, God. 

Jordan  46:53  
That is a huge blind spot for us. Just the context of what it was like when it was running and that- Yeah, that adds a lot. 

MaxyBee  46:59  
Oh, yeah.

Jordan  46:59  
I also feel like KochiKame is probably the most important manga that, um, Americans are just completely unexposed to.

David  47:06  
Yeah

MaxyBee  47:06  
Oh, 100%. They've tried to bring the anime over a few times and even that's too scary to do.

Jordan  47:11  
I know absolutely nothing about it. 

David  47:13  
Me too. 

Jordan  47:14  
Other than, like, brief things I've seen. But it is apparently one of the biggest manga ever.

MaxyBee  47:19  
Yeah 201 volumes. It ran 40 years, never took a break. Not once. 

Jordan  47:24  
Goddamn! 

MaxyBee  47:25  
Yeah. And here's the thing: A lot of those chapters are good. Like it had its off weeks, when I was checking out, like, raws of it now and then back in the day, but it stayed mostly good the whole way. The author finished that and started doing four whole series afterwards. And they were all good. Like, he never stops. He's in his 60s now. It's amazing.

Jordan  47:41  
Oh my God! So he's like the original Oda?

MaxyBee  47:44  
Totally. He is like a machine, but unlike Oda, like, they never fought to actually make him take a break. 

Jordan  47:49  
Jesus. 

MaxyBee  47:50  
He has a lot of assistants. He has, like, a named studio that helps him, which is the trick.

Jordan  47:55  
That's good. Yeah.

David  47:56  
I feel like manga-ka definitely need more assistants. 

Jordan  47:58  
Yeah.

MaxyBee  47:59  
Definitely. It's a good way to go, especially if the assistants, uh, get named in the volumes. I always love that. That's how you make completely insane charts with lines connecting everybody.

Jordan  48:09  
Oooooh, okay. That makes sense. 

David  48:10  
That's so cool. Maxy, I really appreciate your, like, unique perspective on all the manga (main-ga) stuff- Manga (mon-ga) stuff. [Transcriber note- Here is David correcting himself on the proper pronounciation of manga. The second one I mean]

MaxyBee  48:16  
Thank you. It's just because I'm getting old and I've been part of this world for too long.

Jordan  48:18  
Hey so have we.

David  48:19  
Me too man.

MaxyBee  48:21  
The other interesting thing: I'm sure you guys will probably have noticed this in passing but not given it much thought. Not to downplay it. That makes it sound like I'm dissing you guys. It's just not something you'd really think about. I'm not being mean I swear. The color page- The second color page happens in Chapter Three instead of Chapter Two, because it's from a very different time to nowadays, where it goes color page, color page, extra pages, where your second color page would be just at some point within the first five chapters. Which shouldn't feel that weird but when you're so used to it you're just having this thing of, like, reading Chapter Two going, like, "I've not seen a color page. Was this just that unpopular?" And it's no- It's just they didn't have a solid plan on how they debuted series back then. Just completely, meaningless, little note.

David  49:01  
That's so interesting. 

Jordan  49:02  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  49:03  
I- I found it kind of entertaining to go back to just being like, "Oh yeah. Times were different." And also this color page is the worst, because it's got, like, some terrible, like, gradient background made using CG and then the stick figures in front of it. It's- Ughhh! The color pages in the series aren't good. That's my other miscellaneous thought.

David  49:20  
No they're not. 

Jordan  49:21  
Very few things in this series are good, actually, believe it or not.

David  49:24  
Those are some really good thoughts Maxy. I had, I think, two small thoughts. One is: I'm pretty sure the translator thought the word "weird" was spelled W-I-E-R-D, because that typo kept showing up in the translation I read. I don't know if you noticed that Jordan? But it happened at least four or five times. 

Jordan  49:39  
I was skimming too fast. 

David  49:40  
Yeah. And then, I love how in SWOT one of the lessons he clearly learned was this, "Oh, I, uh, need to, uh, establish a power system. That's why the series didn't work." 

Jordan  49:49  
The other one was, "We need more boobs!"

David  49:51  
 And they made, like, one of the stupidest power systems we'd ever seen. Oh, and more boobs. Yes. 

Jordan  49:54  
Yes. Yes, please. That's very important. Very important lesson. 

David  49:57  
Female character wasn't sexualized enough and he needed a power system.

Jordan  50:00  
Yeah. Did you guys notice that, like, apparently Scar-Ichigo was just not wearing a shirt? Because I didn't notice until someone called him naked. 

David  50:08  
I saw that. 

Jordan  50:09  
He had, like, a puka shell necklace. 

David  50:11  
Good for him. 

Jordan  50:11  
Yeah.

MaxyBee  50:12  
The weird thing is is: He also- He calls, uh, Smoking Ichigo naked as well, because he doesn't have facial hair, but neither of them do.

Jordan  50:17  
Oh my God! I'm sorry! I got it completely flipped around then. Because that's what I was talking about, I guess. But I couldn't tell which character was talking. 

MaxyBee  50:27  
Cuz they look the same. 

Jordan  50:29  
There you go. There you go. You told me, when I mentioned this, like, "Oh, one of the guys has, like, thicker eyeliner", but then I saw two panels right next to each other, and they both had the same eyes. So- [Giggle] Ugh! So I think it's just completely inconsistent. 

MaxyBee  50:42  
Yeah it's so inconsistent. Well, if you can believe it: Uh, Sasamori was designed to be the pretty boy of the series, but you can't tell because he looks exactly like everyone else.

David  50:51  
I think there was some slight variation in chin shape. Which you know, very impressive. 

Jordan  50:54  
Wow.

MaxyBee  50:55  
Yeah, but is that deliberate? 

David  50:56  
No. 

Jordan  50:57  
Yeah, that could just be he fucked up the drawing!

David  51:00  
That's fair. All right. All right.

Jordan  51:02  
Awww! 

David  51:02  
So shall we go into "The Final Verdict"? 

Jordan  51:04  
Yeah. 

David  51:04  
Let's start things off with some six-word summaries. We're gonna take it to the community, where we've got: Agpuh, "An unskilled protagonist. An untalented author". The Laughing Fool, "Drawing blades instead of good manga." T. Wolfwood, " "Swordsmen" quotes- Finger quotes "Swordsmen" attend high school. It sucks." Well said. 

Jordan  51:19  
Yeah. 

David  51:19  
Resident Warhammer Nerd, "You just would not make the cut." Blahmoomoo, "Teen solving problems with swords? Meh." Tucker wrote, "Circa 1999. How to draw manga" Jordan, how about you?

Jordan  51:28  
"Oh my God, who fucking cares?"

David  51:30  
Yeah. How about you Maxy?

MaxyBee  51:32  
"Don't ban swords. Ban Naoya Sugita."

David  51:35  
I love that. 

Jordan  51:35  
Yeah, yeah. 

David  51:35  
And mine's was, "Bleach: Drained of style and substance."

Jordan  51:38  
Yeah, yeah.

MaxyBee  51:39  
If you only had two words that would just be, "Bleach comma Bleached."

Jordan  51:42  
Bleached Bleach! Ya-ha-ha!

David  51:44  
Yep. Bleached like my asshole. That still reminds me of the greatest lyric Kanye West ever said. Where it was- Where it was, like, what? "She's got a bleached asshole, I got some on my shirts. And now I feel like an asshole."? 

Jordan  51:56  
Genius! Genius. 

David  51:58  
Oh.. Him and his giant boots. He boot too big. Alright. So, let's take it from the top. I think we're all universal, this is a "Certified Flop." 

Jordan  52:05  
"Certified flop." 

MaxyBee  52:06  
Yeah. 

Jordan  52:07  
Seven days a wap.

David  52:08  
I think you did that joke in the last episode Jordan.

Jordan  52:10  
I say "Certified F-" And it's just, like, "Oh. Well, I have to finish that. Just feel like Cardi B. So I just got to keep going."

David  52:17  
Wet-ass, flop word. As Pensure Shabibo said. [Transcribers note: WHO???]

Jordan  52:22  
Wet-ass flop. Flawf. There we go. "Certified Flawf". Just listen in to wawf. [Transcribers note: Again, HUH???]

David  52:27  
Alright. So Jordan, though: What should someone check out instead of this?

Jordan  52:30  
Well, I mean, if you just want to watch a bunch of high schoolers kill each other, then like just watch a Let's Play of Danganronpa. You don't have to play it, but like, you know, it's still- Still fun.

David  52:38  
I think Rem and Shawn did it, on Anime Out of Context? So if they did go- Go find that. 

Jordan  52:42  
Yeah. Danganronpa started as, like- The reason why it's popular is because there was a huge thread, where some dude on SomethingAwful just straight up translated the entire game, in the thread and just put it there. 

David  52:54  
That's pretty great. 

Jordan  52:54  
But it was huge. Throughout like um, all over Tumblr. And, legit, the people who make Danganronpa owe that guy- Orenronen, I believe his name is. They fucking owe that guy so much money because nobody even- Eh, like- The reason why it didn't come over is because everyone just assumed Americans wouldn't like this. But yeah. 

David  53:10  
Yeah.

Jordan  53:11  
Again talking about something else. Zan's fucking flop, certified as fuck. Don't lis- Don't fucking read it. It sucks.

David  53:16  
Ye! Ye-ye. And then how about you Maxi?

MaxyBee  53:19  
This is the most "Certified Flop." You want something where a form of violence takes over a school system and makes for an entertaining series of fights? Read Kongo Bancho by Nakaba Suzuki. 

Jordan  53:29  
I'll hafta' check that out. 

MaxyBee  53:30  
It's delinquents on massive muscle scales. The author did Seven Deadly Sins. 

David  53:34  
Ehhh...

MaxyBee  53:34  
So they have that sort of cachet of being popular. 

Jordan  53:37  
Mhhm.

MaxyBee  53:37  
Like, it's 12 volumes. I don't like telling people that it's all scanned, but it's probably never getting licensed. It's all scanned! You can find it.

David  53:44  
Whooo! 

MaxyBee  53:44  
It's easy to get a hold on. And well, well worth anyone's time, if you'd want to go and watch a giant man punch people instead of a tiny man failing to hit people with swords.

David  53:51  
I love it. Alright. And then for me: I also am gonna recommend YuYu Hakusho, not because it's like super great and holds up, but it is really interesting to see what manga was like in the early 90's. I know it was head and above almost anything else made, so it's really cool to just see how far manga as an- As an art form has evolved in the 20 years since it came out.

Jordan  54:09  
There are absolutely periods of YuYu Hakusho that 100% stand up and 100% hold up and are still fantastic. But you really, really start to notice "Hey, this has been, like, 20 chapters of Yusuke just being a ghost and doing fucking nothing."

David  54:25  
Yeah. And every arc, kind of, is like, "Oh, Yusuke, work on this case." Literally the Black Tournament, I think, is the only arc that actually is based on prior events. 

Jordan  54:32  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  54:33  
Yeah. As YuYu Hakusho goes: Chapter Black should be required reading. Everything else is just kind of an interesting curiosity.

David  54:39  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  54:39  
But, you know, it's good, but not necessarily great. 

Jordan  54:41  
Excuse me?! What about the fucking Dark Tourna-? Oh my god! Th- I can- This is- This is heresy to me! But whatever... [Transcriber agrees]

MaxyBee  54:48  
Is the Dark Tournament Chapter Back? No, so it's less good. That's the rules.

Jordan  54:51  
Oh, you guys are fucking heretics!

David  54:54  
Jordan, you are literally basing on the anime, which fixed a ton of the manga issues.

MaxyBee  54:57  
The important thing to think of is that we've had a million tournament manga-

Jordan  55:02  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  55:02  
Since the Dark Tournament. So it was probably great back then, but it's been diluted by the rip offs over time. And it itself is kind of ripping off things like Saint Seiya so... [Grumbles]

Jordan  55:10  
And you know Dragon Ball.

MaxyBee  55:12  
Yeah. I mean I suppose Dragon Ball was ac- If that's what you like?

Jordan  55:16  
And I do.

MaxyBee  55:16  
For some reason I didn't think about Dragon Ball though. 

David  55:18  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  55:18  
I also like Dragon Ball. It's great.

David  55:20  
Oh God. Alright. So, though, here it is: The question for us. Is this the worst thing we've ever read Jordan? Is this worse than School Judgment?

Jordan  55:27  
This is in the conversation. I mean, School Judgment is also a crime, is the thing. This is absolutely more, poorly made than School Judgment. And nothing made- Has made me feel grosser than School Judgment. Like, as much as I think Zan sucks, I would reread Zan before I reread School Judgment. Like, it's not even a question for me. So, by that metric, I have to say School Judgment is still worse. But- 

David  55:49  
Yeah. 

Jordan  55:50  
It's uh... It's in the fucking conversation. 

David  55:53  
Yeah, I will second that.

MaxyBee  55:54  
Yeah. Yeah. I'm do- I'm with you. Like, I could and have reread this a lot over the past 16 years. School Judgment: Every time I've reread it, it's been because someone's made me, and every time I get to, like, the author's notes, where he's like, "Ah. I like it when the children have big tits." And you just kind of go like, "Oh, yeah..."

Jordan  55:54  
The one where he's like, "Oh, here's a hierarchy chart of all the- the glor- Girl's boobs sizes. And by the way, this girl: Oh, I wanted her to have bigger boobs later in the series so it's like she went through a growth spurt." Fucking gross! 

David  56:09  
Yeah.

Jordan  56:14  
That writer will never come back. 

I hope not! 

MaxyBee  56:22  
I mean, good fucking ridance!

Jordan  56:23  
God! 

David  56:23  
Alright, yeah. Alright. But, I think I've hit my limit of talking about terrible manga for today. So why don't we go to "Shoutouts" and hear about some things that people should actually look at. Sound good? 

Jordan  56:31  
Yeah. 

David  56:32  
I want to start things off by thanking you, Maxy. You have done nothing but lived up to the hype that we heard from Joey. Thank you so much for being on the show. Do you mind telling the audience all about you and where they can find all the wonderful things going on in your world? And in particular, what they should do instead of ever, ever acknowledging the series's existence.

MaxyBee  56:48  
Absolutely! So the main place to find me is on Twitter @MaxyTheBee. I have a nice pinned tweet there that contains all the interesting things I've ever tweeted about, for things you want to know. It's usually great for learning about things like cool manga that aren't out in English yet. Which I will then try and sell you, using affiliate links because I am just that self interested.

Jordan  57:08  
I support that! Go- Go you! Get that money!

MaxyBee  57:11  
Exactly! On top of that, I have my website, a URL I've basically been sitting on for years, because it's amazing. Even I don't use it for anything anymore: friendshipeffortvictory.com. Can you guess it Shonen Jump related?

Jordan  57:22  
Hell yeah!

MaxyBee  57:24  
Someday I'll sell that to someone for one-million pounds. You watch. 

Jordan  57:27  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  57:27  
No, no, probably not gonna happen. The main thing you can find there is a link to Friendship! Effort! Victory! Series One; Which was a 33 episode podcast series where I talked all by myself about manga that I thought were interesting from Weekly Shonen Jump. 

Jordan  57:40  
Oh wow. 

MaxyBee  57:41  
There's a lot of interesting ones in there. Some salient ones, this sort of episode, are things like a canceled popular series like Barrage that people love talking about.

David  57:49  
Oh Barrage!

Jordan  57:50  
Oh, we remember Barrage! 

MaxyBee  57:51  
I hate it!

David  57:52  
I know we don't because it won "Most Forgettable Series." 

Jordan  57:55  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  57:56  
Um.. You know other things that have been covered on this show already, like Double Arts as well. 

David  58:00  
Oh yeah.

MaxyBee  58:00  
So like, I think I'm fonder of it than you guys, but that's probably nostalgia.

Jordan  58:04  
Oh, yeah. I mean, look: I don't hate Double Arts. Double Arts is significantly head and shoulders above Zan, I can tell you that.

MaxyBee  58:10  
It's just less remarkable than what both Jump editorial and myself thought it was-

David  58:16  
Yes! 

MaxyBee  58:16  
Going to be. They bet the farm on that series and it just bit the fucking dust. 

David  58:20  
Yes.

Jordan  58:20  
Yeah. 

MaxyBee  58:20  
But it was good podcast fodder, as I'm sure you guys also realized.

Jordan  58:23  
Oh yeah. 

David  58:23  
Yes! For sure. That's awesome though.

MaxyBee  58:27  
Anything aside from that? Oh, I'm one of the Manga Mavericks, occasionally I'm on their podcast-

David  58:32  
Nice! 

MaxyBee  58:32  
Usually behind the Patreon wall. I won't plug that too much, but if you go to all-comic.com: You can find the Manga Mavericks Podcast. I'm usually there to talk about canceled Jump series with them, because, as a bit of a running theme, it seems like it's something I know.

Jordan  58:46  
Clearly. I mean, you've demonstrated your expertise. I mean, thank you for noticing us Senpai!

David  58:51  
Yeah. You're a fucking legend, mate.

MaxyBee  58:53  
You guys are far beyond me. Because you've done something interesting and popular with it.

David  58:57  
Oh shucks! 

Jordan  58:58  
If you say- If you say so!

MaxyBee  59:01  
You've managed over 50 episodes, and they're mostly good. Which I mean, that's all you could want in life. 

Jordan  59:05  
What's the bad ones? 

MaxyBee  59:06  
I've not listened to all of them. So I-

David  59:09  
[Laughter]

MaxyBee  59:09  
 Have to give you the English praise of being like-

David  59:11  
Aww.. Thank you!

MaxyBee  59:11  
It's quite good. It's quite good!

Jordan  59:13  
Thank you. Thank you.

David  59:14  
Oh. Well, that's very kind of you to say.

Jordan  59:16  
It means a lot. We really appreciate that.

David  59:18  
I going to tell my mom that someone in England complimented me.

Jordan  59:21  
Quite good. Yes, yes.

MaxyBee  59:23  
That officially means that you can have dual citizenship.

Jordan  59:26  
Whooo!

MaxyBee  59:26  
If you're praised by an Englishman.

Jordan  59:27  
It is very hard to do. I know that you're putting your- Your own citizenship on the line by saying that. 

David  59:35  
Oh God

Jordan  59:35  
But thank you so much. 

MaxyBee  59:37  
Yeah, it's a 1-to-1 trade. If- If someone moves in, I have to move out. 

David  59:40  
Oka- Alright.

Jordan  59:42  
So is that what Brexit is?

David  59:44  
Oh, shush. All right. All right. I'm gonna keep going with this. So speaking of people I want to thank: I also wanna thank Jordan for making the opening, ending theme, being a great co-host and helping with editing. 

Jordan  59:52  
You're welcome. 

David  59:52  
I also want to give props to Merliel for the awesome cover art. You can find her online @liel_mer; and Nigel for being our generous art benefactor. Thanks to Dylan for assistance with editing. You can find his podcasts Anime Out of Context, at animeoutofcontext.com. Thanks to Tucker for assistance with pronunciation, translation, and other miscellaneous research. Thanks to T-Root, Ozyrat, and T. Wolfwood for being your awesome transcription volunteers. You can find transcripts on the site as they become available. Jordan, is there anything you want to add?

Jordan  1:00:14  
Yes. Thank you so much David, for everything that you do! 

David  1:00:18  
Oh. Awww. Anytime, babe. 

Jordan  1:00:19  
And also, more importantly: I have a new episode of-

David  1:00:23  
Fuck you! 

Jordan  1:00:23  
Mission Ignition! Which is a series about the show that only I remember, and feels like it shouldn't exist, called Van-pires. Might secretly have Gary Oldman. Nobody knows for sure. Probably not. But I like to pretend it does. 

David  1:00:37  
No. 

Jordan  1:00:37  
And it has music by the bassist from The Who and it's just fucking terrible and a lot of fun. So please go listen-

David  1:00:43  
God! 

Jordan  1:00:43  
To Mission Ignition everybody. Uh, you can find it on your podcast app of choice. I guess. If you can't find it, let me know and I'll put it there.

David  1:00:49  
Okay. And you can find our show Shonen Flop on Twitter @ShonenFlopCast and our website shonenflop.com. We're also on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube or wherever else you get your podcasts. And if you're not part of it, come join the Shonen Flop Discord, open to everyone, patreon or not. Come hang with us, talk about anime, games, or whatever else is on your mind. We also have a monthly movie night, and you can find a link to it in our show notes, or on our site. And if you've been enjoying the podcast and wanna help us keep going, consider subscribing to our Patreon. We have a ton of awesome perks like bonus episodes on Magu-Chan, Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer, and PPPPPP. You can even be listening to us recording right now and hanging out with us in the warm ups. You can find that at patreon.com/shonenflop. Now on that note, I'm going to read some of our wonderful patrons. Starting with our Chainsaw Man Patrons: I want to give a shout out to Pterodactyl Ghost and Snorting Coke Off Rem's Bodacious Booty Wall Street Style. Moving on down to the Dolphin Parent: We have Tracking Roving Animals For All Loving Girls and Raccoons Wolfwood. Then moving on down to the King of Forest: We have Albie, Cram, Gabe Landau, Jacob Andrew Galloway, Josh Robinson, Marty, Rachel, ScarletMyrmidon, Selma Martinez, and TheBBKingBBThe. Enough about everything we're doing. Y'all ready to go sign off? 

Jordan  1:01:49  
Yeah. I think the word "myrmidon" actually means aunt.  Yeah let's go. 

David  1:01:52  
Interesting. Alright. Maxy, you still here?

MaxyBee  1:01:54  
Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I was just completely enraptured by the list of patrons. Okay, I'm re- I'm rea- this was what I was born for.

David  1:02:01  
Thank you so much for joining us. Tune in next Monday, as we give our first thoughts on  series that's last, but we'll see if it's least. This has been David. 

Jordan  1:02:07  
This's been Jordan! 

MaxyBee  1:02:08  
This has been Maxi. 

David  1:02:10  
And you've been listening to Shonen Flop. 

Jordan  1:02:12  
I demand that you keep on flopping floppers! 

David  1:02:16  
Yeah! 

Jordan  1:02:17  
Yeah! 

David  1:02:18  
Alright. 

Jordan  1:02:18  
Bye.

David  1:02:19  
Bye. Ye-yeah!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai