Finally I have somewhere to put thoughts like this!
Long story short, I'm a weeb. I mean, not really... but that's the word that gets attached to people who enjoy anime and manga, so I'd say we're just meant to embrace it at this point. In any case, it's no secret.
I've been collecting and reading manga for a long time now (a good eight years, I'd say) and I still can't seem to stop. Nothing else published in the west is quite like it - each one seems to have its own individual style of art, and the experience of finding a great story, getting new content for that story (content that you hold in your hands and can place on a shelf), and following the story until its conclusion, years later... it's cathartic. I yearn for this experience in many other mediums, but alas, I find it a fruitless endeavor. As pulpy as manga is, I can't ever seem to shake my interest.
Long story short, I'm a weeb. I mean, not really... but that's the word that gets attached to people who enjoy anime and manga, so I'd say we're just meant to embrace it at this point. In any case, it's no secret.
I've been collecting and reading manga for a long time now (a good eight years, I'd say) and I still can't seem to stop. Nothing else published in the west is quite like it - each one seems to have its own individual style of art, and the experience of finding a great story, getting new content for that story (content that you hold in your hands and can place on a shelf), and following the story until its conclusion, years later... it's cathartic. I yearn for this experience in many other mediums, but alas, I find it a fruitless endeavor. As pulpy as manga is, I can't ever seem to shake my interest.
Naturally, because of this, I'm always on the hunt for new titles. The folks at my local Barnes and Noble practically know me by name at this point (not really), and I can usually be found sniffing out the Sci-Fi/Fantasy aisle, Stephen King's little nook in "Literary Fiction," and of course, the manga section.
The American side of the industry has gotten really good at bringing in new IP's in recent years, but there's still a lag. When VIZ licenses a Shonen Jump title that's popular and publishing weekly in Japan, we tend to get the first volume anywhere from six months to two years after the original debut. This frustrates me to no end - obviously translating is more art than science, and doing so consistently is not an easy feat, nor a quick one.
Luckily, with the new (or, well, new here) Shonen Jump title; The Promised Neverland, I can thankfully say I don't think I'll lose interest. To give you a short rundown, The Promised Neverland
follows the characters Emma, Norman, and Ray, three children who live in an orphanage of an undisclosed location, surrounded by a vast forest, a tall fence, and a looming, fort-like gate. Other children live here, too - children of ages 1 to 11. They routinely take an electronic test of equations, facts, and problem solving - afterward, they can laugh and play. About every two months or so, one of these children is adopted and shipped off to their new homes in the night.
One night, Emma and Norman discover that a little girl, Conny, has left her stuffed rabbit behind on her way to her new parents. When they decide to break out of the house and take it to her, they discover her body in the back of a shipping van, and learn that they are raised in captivity to feed giant demons that live outside the gate.
All of this happens in chapter one, so I hardly consider it a spoiler, but not knowing anything about the story really did wonders for how much this sucked me in. I've said before that manga is pulpy, and I'm not lying. Like everything else, most of it is just bad. However, The Promised Neverland has potential above most anything else I've read in the medium.
While I flipped pages like a madman, I couldn't get over how baffled I was that The Promised Neverland was published in Weekly Shonen Jump; the magazine that gave us Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, and Dragonball (amongst other notable works). The magazine has gone out of its comfort zone before, with things like Death Note and Bakuman (both of them penned by the same two people, no less), but this is a different type of manga entirely. I presume there's a possibility of battles and powers in the future, but as of volume one, it's a game of survival and wit between three kids and their cunning caretaker. Will they survive and escape? Or feed the demons beyond the gate?
I'm pretty hyped to follow this series. We're six volumes behind Japan, but that's a small price to pay for something so promising.
Until next time. Keep watching, keep writing, and most importantly, keep reading.
