[00:00:00] Can you believe how fast 2023 went by? We here at ChronoFlop are taking a week off to celebrate
[00:00:04] the new year and of course my birthday. So in it's place we're doing a rerun of our episode of the
[00:00:09] year Shout-In Shoujo featuring the wonderful Crimson Rogue. We'll catch you all on the 15th
[00:00:13] with our first thoughts on Smokey BB and I hope you all have a human being mode my apologies. I just can't turn it off right now. I hear an answer voice I don't know You along with your friend azer bard run a very important YouTube channel do you mind telling the audience a little bit? little bard Sorry, I'm sure you've heard that joke a lot actually no, but they normally go with paladin jokes. Oh
[00:02:42] tear it apart in your latch like this wasn't too bad. I mean occasionally yes I will say in retrospect I kind of like Empress Teresa in a so bad it's
[00:02:50] good sort of way while I was reading it for you know analytical purposes I was absolutely
[00:02:55] suffering but looking back on it it's like absurdly hilariously awful.
[00:03:00] Yeah I love it.
[00:03:02] Your video on that was great I believe you did five videos.
[00:03:05] Yeah I was gonna say you did more than one.
[00:03:08] Your series Jordan. guest to you know who else does good work not this answer. No, I was going to say that people believe this manga. So why don't we get into talking about who created the series. All right. So this series is like some sort of four dimensional pun in Japanese that is impossible to translate into English, but is also known so does known as Shonen Shoujo,
[00:04:20] but also ill boy ill girl, which as noted, I think by Tucker is an absolutely terrible
[00:04:24] name. So we're going to call it Shonen Sh, oh my God. Are you thinking of Metal Gear Solid? Final Fantasy 7, DO. Colonel. This is actually not his first manga that he also created, my Docobox, which was fairly successful, very crazy and had an anime adapter. And Maxie B has a lot more to say about this offer, but I will post their notes in the Patreon.
[00:05:42] They had quite a few notes and they were kind of interesting.
[00:05:47] Yes.
[00:05:47] So Maxie, we thank you for kind of guy. Oh, really? No, no way, David. Yeah. Crazy. I like one piece. Just read all three. Yes, the big three are to one piece and shown in show Joe. God, imagine the timeline where that occurred. Oh, God. Oh, by the way, so this offer was Aprilific hits. I artists before kind of turning to safer work content. They created contractor
[00:07:04] M and Y in shown and jump for two volumes attend just not very familiar with them. Is that supposed to be like a pun on Hero and Arrow? Probably. There's probably a lot of boobs on it.
[00:08:20] Yeah, I also saw there was a note that the intro. The disease has a life expectancy of 12 years, as in exactly 12 years, as in literally your 12th birthday, you's just like way more of a fucking individual than he is. She's like so special. Like wow, her individuality is just off the fucking chain. She's like the smartest person who has ever lived and is also a talented artist. I mean it sounds like I'm just describing myself but...
[00:11:00] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[00:11:01] All the nurses and doctors talk about how she's just so great.
[00:11:05] They talk about how the little boy Thanks author that was really great to read. I am getting flashbacks from school judgment. Thank you so much Oh, like it's I will get into it. We'll dive into it's weird
[00:12:23] I'm curves and I am very sorry that you had to deal with that. I blame you too. Oh, no
[00:13:25] Isn't that a Rick and Morty plot like with the fortune cookies with the probability for two cookies
[00:13:31] We're gonna find out that they were all super into shown in show Joe this this series influenced so many
[00:13:35] Yeah soon two more kids get the disease princess and little child But the boy and girl immediately noticed their bunch of phonies because they can't see their faces
[00:13:40] Can't stand these fucking phonies David. I can't stand this guy's a phony god catcher in the ride
[00:13:46] Now I want to kill her.
[00:15:01] Seems amazingly redundant, but okay.
[00:15:03] I fucking burst out laughing when I read that. I discovered literally what happens. Stop it. Discover the DVD hidden, the drawing the girl made of him and decides to watch it on his birthday on his massive screen TV. It's like a fucking IMAX. Like, yeah, you've got to see it in full detail. She says that she created the disease and maybe killed herself or maybe someone else killed her.
[00:16:24] But honestly, fuck you, reader for wanting answers.
[00:16:27] Why should I have to tell Ball Z pleb. No, I'm not a hipster. Fuck you Also, the boy and girl were both named show yami, which is a twist So we'll never know who the disease was named after yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Beautiful. Thank you so much golf clap
[00:17:43] The best piece of writing of that entire series. Oh my god
[00:18:46] as an edgy brooding teen. He's a, he's 11. He is a brooding preteen. You're a, it's like how they call teen Gohan who's also 11 years. Yes, it's literally that. Yeah. He has that disease. So he
[00:18:52] sees everyone. Everybody who's got the disease sees people with like their faces are obscured
[00:18:56] differently. So he sees people with like black like markers over their faces like just scribbled You could really get into a character like this, is if you read him as a basic archetype of something representing a particular message or viewpoint. But the problem is the writing isn't clever enough to actually carry through with any real message because it's not, it's too obscure. It doesn't really carefully define anything or really think about his position. He just goes in wanting to kill this girl because why not edge?
[00:20:22] And like kind of evolves as the plot just gets more and more needlessly convoluted. Is this just straight up? He's vomiting atchle ink. So his whole thing is like, everybody's face is scribbled out with black ink, so he vomits black ink, which you know, that's not real, but it's like, okay, I can see that that's a liquid. Maybe he means something that looks like black ink. No, she vomits actual cloth with buttons that are sewn with patterns.
[00:21:41] And it really is just like, what is this, author?
[00:21:45] What? have like some kind of like black ink factory in his stomach. What the fuck is going on? Part squid. And guess what the series doesn't really explain it because none of this makes sense. Well, it does explain it actually, David, because she's it turns out that because she is so fucking smart, she probably just created a reason for that to happen. So she created the disease. Yeah, there you go. Of course. Oh, see, it's quantum fluctuation.
[00:23:03] It's the same as saying a wizard did it like shit. I had all these characters whose faces I obscured, but I worked really hard on their designs. And I was going to show them to you later, but I can't. So here, here's just all the characters without the scribbles over their faces. Here you go. Here they are. You're welcome. There you go. All right. So though, this here sucks.
[00:24:20] Shall we start tearing it apart?
[00:24:22] Yes, absolutely.
[00:24:23] Crimson, as we know, it's very difficult for you to say negative things about works of writing. For example, the disease stops the main character from being able to see faces or hear names, but it does nothing to stop him from seeing hair or clothes, which can't those be associated with individuality? Yeah! If it goes to the point where he can't see fingerprints or tiles on a game board, then how can we see other aspects like the way that people decorate their rooms,
[00:25:40] or the cars they drive, or all sorts of things?
[00:25:43] It would have been so much better if everything was as blank as possible,
[00:25:46] instead of having scribbled-out faces, same because there's no discrimination. So really, David, they're really the only non-racist is the point. But also you literally can't see race. But it seems like all it does to keep them immortal is just accept every transplant without issue, which I guess implies that makes them immortal.
[00:27:00] And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? That's 100% not how that works. Your life
[00:27:04] expects me goes way down if you have a transplant. We be damned. It's like making it rope bridge out of dental floss and you're connecting it to the walls
[00:28:20] with toothpicks. I also have a logic thing I want to God. There's no consistency. There's literally a part where he says he can no longer tell gender apart, but then, like, five chapters later, he intentionally finds all the female employees at the facility and talks to them. I noticed that! You can't make it the logic of how the sizzies works. Makes sense because it doesn't. Minute by minute, it works exactly as offer and needs it to you for the sake of the plot.
[00:29:41] This is the ultimate issue.
[00:29:43] You can do these super experimental, metaphorical series, because the dragon was her best friend. Why would you just let the dragon die alone like that? Yeah, this makes me feel like it would be like if you're reading Calvin and Hobbes and then his parents just started talking to Hobbes. Like he was like a real tiger. And then you also then later saw, and like having conversations with him. And then later you also saw them walking by Hobbes
[00:31:01] as a stuffed animal and talking about him like,
[00:31:03] he's, oh, Calvin's just with his stuffed animal.
[00:31:05] They look like a tiger to you.
[00:31:06] Yeah. The first thing we see in the entire series is the boy killing the girl like with scissors, like it's gruesome and shit. And they go through this whole chapter where the little boy has like a dream where I guess her second personality, she has one one offline where she mentions that she has a separate
[00:32:20] personality who is docked and I have no clue what the fuck that means.
[00:32:23] I saw that and that didn't make any sense.
[00:32:25] No, I have no the art. The characters and stuff, what you did get to see was pretty good, except the utilization of the whole inking out the face thing. Why was that a thing when the boy or the girl weren't around? There was a scene where the doctors were all in that room together and their faces are inked out, but the kids are nowhere near them.
[00:33:41] Why was that the case?
[00:33:42] If you wanted to have the idea of identity scrubbed from the doctors for that scene,
[00:33:46] why not play with angles?
[00:33:47] Why not play with shadowing? I respect an artist who's trying to do something different, who's trying to be, uh, who's trying to be metaphorical and artistic and avant-garde, whatever the fuck. I do just want to give him that, but see my previous segment that we just talked about. Beyond that, the art is pretty fucking well done, all things considered.
[00:35:02] There are some really cool looking, like, visual metaphors, I do think also that the series did a great job with the repeated paneling of not seeing of using it more for like metaphorical use rather than it just being the artist being lazy. Kind of like how Chainsaw Man also does a great job of doing that. There were a lot of points where I felt like, man, if this series was better about being metaphorical, this would be effective.
[00:36:20] Yeah, Crimson, how about you? Is there anything that you enjoyed about this series?
[00:36:24] Well, you guys have brought up the opening where the series does start doing some interesting things with its format after chapter nine where it just gets really weird, but it just gets so confusing. It just, the points it gains for at least trying something different, it loses just because I'm like, I don't know what you're doing. You're trying to like play with the space you're in, but the space you're in is so confusing.
[00:37:41] I can't even tell how you're like inverting concepts, you know?
[00:37:44] Yeah, I just realized what this reminded me of,
[00:37:46] because the best chapter of this series scale fucked up a lot in the series where they kind of forget the main characters like 11, 12 and not like 14, 15. Oh David, don't worry, this guy has experienced drawing kids. Anyway, let's go into a weird cut of con. We're sure one of the four points is don't sexualize the kids. That's our show, folks. Bye. So Crimson, please, on that note of very said, the biggest thing is stop sexualizing children in this manga.
[00:39:04] What else would you say they should have done differently he in this series?
[00:40:01] from the story at large. Yeah. Also, the questions aren't as interesting as the author thinks that they are.
[00:40:06] It's literally just like, is it okay to kill someone? Why shouldn't he kill someone?
[00:40:09] La, la, la, la, la. And it's like, yeah, that's never been asked before.
[00:40:13] Wow. No one's ever thought about that.
[00:40:15] Tell me to stop that for.
[00:40:16] I'm willing to grant some degree of leeway in that, because maybe he's just addressing like
[00:40:21] a teenage audience and these could be questions that they've never considered before.
[00:40:24] Yeah. There's the things that have been done antelope running around and shit. But something you brought up, Crimson, was how it would have made more sense if he just saw people as blank mannequins, with completely the same clothing, same everything. What if they did that,
[00:41:40] then they could show those doctors talking
[00:41:43] and then you, the reader, would have to be like,
[00:41:45] wait, which one is that?
[00:41:47] Who is he talking to in that fucking pan? Let's get in a miscellaneous spot. I already discussed the thing, like what happens if they meet someone who's named a Stone West? So I wanna dive into Maxie B's thoughts. So again, Maxie B had a lot to say, so you can find their notes on the Discord along with Tucker's notes. So thank you both of you for contributing to the episode. And they said, by the way, Crimson Maxie B is a manga historian.
[00:43:01] Yes, Maxie B is a manga historian who works on the show
[00:43:04] and they provide us a ton of really interesting information
[00:43:06] about each series.
[00:43:07] Ah, very cool. It's almost like Tokyo Shinobi Squad doesn't exist. It's almost like half of all manga we read on here is anti-immigrant or something. Yeah. The next one though of course. The translators know it's already made clear what they're both called. Yami Shuu, which is a homophone of the disease they had.
[00:44:23] Disease illness basically or Yami Shuu that no one else has to the point where he decides that he has to kill the only other person with the disease so that he will be unique except in the first chapter on page 24 I have a very specific note about this the doctor says every kid who has had this died by the age of well There have been others. Why would they name the disease after him? Oh?
[00:45:41] Ho ho ho ho ho you're forgetting another
[00:45:44] Another thing that was put towards the did name the disease after me is trying to become like a YouTube influencer. Like, it's like I'm dying in six months, so I have to get a million subscribers. Oh my God. That's a better premise. This is like a legitimately really funny idea for a way better friends. That's my favorite. Dojan, I must become famous before
[00:47:02] I die of cancer in a year. So they'll name The drug is spelled without the E. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's a pond David. I get it. This manga has a ton of puns. I get it. I get it. Okay. Just making sure. I was on Loch Ness doing a boat tour and they were talking about how like there's like a cannibalist type of fish that eats their children. They eat them at like eight months. So he said they're eight and before nine.
[00:49:22] Yeah, you've been great, man. This is gone smooth.
[00:49:24] I went with excessively soft morgue.
[00:49:26] This stuff is stupid.
[00:49:28] It's a shame these kids aren't going to be soft morse, but yeah.
[00:49:32] And then Jordan, how about yours?
[00:49:34] The fault in our original content.
[00:49:36] I get it. I get it.
[00:49:38] Mine was dull writing ruins this manga's edge.
[00:49:41] Hey, I get it.
[00:49:43] It wasn't subtle.
[00:49:44] I think mine was pretty often.
[00:49:46] It wasn't like an obscure rep. and then just did this. Right? That was great that we had just read that. Yeah. Crimson, that's why the person who created Love is War, if you're familiar with that series. Wait, cocky asama? Yes. Oh, I love that show. So do I. So yeah, Instant Bullet is essentially if the offer tried to make the most edgy, crazy time travel nonsense story
[00:51:00] where everyone has the ability to destroy the world.
[00:51:02] Like one girl can nuke things and it's just,
[00:51:04] that's where that girl at the time,
[00:51:05] like when she sees the future,
[00:51:07] if you physically cannot die I would have to highly recommend Nioki Urosawa's Monster, my favorite manga. Oh, that's great. I really love Pluto by him. I didn't mean to check out Monster for years. I needed to do it. As a history buff, and if I had to pick a favorite genre, it'd be thrillers, Monster hits every note about a detailed story that I love.
[00:52:21] Great characters, great setting, in-depth story,
[00:52:24] complicated plot that still makes sense.
[00:52:26] Really endearing emotional beats. of artistic movies that are kind of meant to be more like film versions of an art gallery. They're very weird to give you an example of the metaphor, and there is an internal consistency to the metaphor, but he's making a metaphor based on the legend that Johnny Cash called. It was see how it just kind of spirals from that. Mmm. Mmm. Definitely. I think it was one of the biggest hits last year and it's only like 16 chapters so you can see what an a more confident offer can do telling this kind of story in the exact same duration. I also want to recommend people watch Witchwatch because that would be a great pal at Linser
[00:55:00] where if you want to read a lot of text that's very wholesome and cute with good art as well.
[00:55:04] So Crimson if you're interested in that out. Yeah. Don't read it. Please don't read it. But yeah, no, this is not the worst series we've read. Believe it or not. I completely agree. And then in terms of things people should check out, why don't we get into the shoutouts? Crimson, I want to say thank you so much for being on the show.
[00:56:21] Do you mind telling an audience all the wonderful things you do, even though you have already
[00:56:24] promoted your channel in the recommendation section? online at Lyle Mer and Nigel for being our generous art benefactor. Thank you to Dylan for assistance with editing. You can find his podcast anime out of context at animeout of context.com. As I have said before, but I'll say it again. Thank you Tucker and Maxie B for assistance with pronunciation, translation, other miscellaneous research. And you can find us on Twitter at shown and flopcast and our website shown and flop.com or also on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube or wherever else you get your podcast.
[00:57:43] And come join the shown and flop discord.
[00:57:44] So open to everyone patron or not, hang out with us and talk about anime games or whatever
[00:57:48] else is on your mind. to the king of the force we have. Darth Pikachu wants a nine-coil review. Isra font, Kevin Briggs, Jacob Andrew Galloway, Josh Robinson, Lil' Real Jory, Cram T, Albie, Gabe Lando, The'll Be King, The'll Be King, Be The, Trevor Schechner, Marty, Cherylt Mirmanin, and Rachel. My wonderful fiancee, we got to hang out with some Capabera in that fucking 10 out of 10 experience,
[00:59:01] would do again in a heartbeat.
[00:59:03] They are just so interesting,
[00:59:05] like they do not care about anything,
[00:59:07] except they are startled so easily