Yo, and welcome to my read-through of Chapter 160: Tenaciousness and 900K in which we get into the esoterica of manga printing, and that gag of my nightmares and I reconcile. Basically.

If you’re not caught up, please use this index here to do so. There are no spoilers past the current chapter.

Update: I have just hit a first lock on the cut of my film. Yippeeee. However, there is still work to be done. It’s going to be a lot less labor-intensive than the edit, so I should be back to weekly; however, sometimes it might be more. You know the game, at this point.

If you want to support the mangaka and read along, please consider buying a tankobon of the current volume or subscribing to Weekly Shonen Jump or Mangaplus. I’m not affiliated with VIZ, I just want artists to make money.

If you want to support this content so it can continue at a regular pace, please like my Facebook page and Twitter, or comment down below. I do read those comments, and they make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Or, if you want to support me, buy me a cup of coffee here.

Tenaciousness and 900K

Second Attempt

Picking up directly from the last chapter, Yoshida encourages Hiramaru from the bushes. HE CAN DO IT.

And Hiramaru sits across from Aoki again. Thunk. Yoshida curses: Why can’t Hiramaru sit next to her?! Yoshida rationalizes that it’s easier to propose to someone from the front than it is from the side.

Aoki, adorably oblivious, figures that Hiramaru must really like the Ferris wheel. Yup. That’s it, no other reason. She likes them too.

Hiramaru admits that he doesn’t like them especially; he’s not afraid of heights, but is claustrophobic, which does not explain the fact that HIRAMARU HAS COMPLETELY UNDRESSED to his underwear.

Come on, man.

Aoki wonders if he’s too hot; of course not. It’s November.

….

Hiramaru is, of course, searching for the 50 million yen ring. Aoki observes that he has been acting strangely all day. He then realizes that he’s acting like a weirdo, that she is freaked out, and even if he does find the ring, he’s not going to secure that bag. He’s blown it!

She asks if he enjoyed coming to the amusement park with her. Of course! It’s just the ring he brought…

Aoki gets confused at the mention of a ring. Hiramaru makes a bizarre save about shiveRING in excitement, and he couldn’t sleep. He puts on his clothes again (thank god); it’s like the night before a field trip, where you can’t get any sleep. He’s reminiscing about his time as a student with a 300 yen allowance.

Meanwhile, Aoki is putting the pieces together.

Yoshida watches them openly now that they’re at the top again. Yoshida is confused as to why Hiramaru is not pursuing it and fondling his body (word choice) in such a weird way.

Make Me Happy

Aoki wants to look at the pretty view when Yoshida realizes he’s been spotted. He runs off terrified. Aoki has a flashback to the day on the bridge; she figures Yoshida is worried about something, again.

She puts more of the pieces together and has THE Realization. She blushes furiously and she asks Hiramaru a question: there’s something Hiramaru wants to talk about, correct?

Hiramaru’s caught with his pants down (literally, see above), but he eventually answers yes.

OH SHIT.

She gently encourages him: gather your courage, and ask. Hiramaru, slow on the uptake, wonders if Aoki figured him out.

I wonder.

A prolonged, pregnant silence. She encourages him again: he can do it. Another pause because…

HE FORGOT WHAT TO SAY. HIS MIND WENT BLANK.

Hoo boy, buddy.

The Ferris wheel is DROPPING fast, and he hasn’t done it yet. He can’t go around the third time. Hiramaru remembers what he was going to say. W.W.

WILL YOU PLEASE MAKE ME HAPPY?

Aoki is emotionally quite okay with all this and also teasing while tearing up: aren’t they already happy at this amusement park? Hiramaru corrects himself: will she marry him and make the happiness last forever?

WE HAVE LIFT OFF.

Aoki tells him to marry her and make her happy as well. She grabs his hands, and Hiramaru has a love attack that is hilarious, but we’re hitting my image quota so that I won’t share it. He then konks his head on the top of the Ferris wheel.

Yoshida sees all lights green. He did it.

HE DID IT.

Third Times the Charm

Yoshida runs up to congratulate him, but before he gets the opportunity, Aoki asks the operator to ride one more time. The operator notes they are closing, but Aoki pulls out her being cute as a button ray, and Hiramaru and the operator, both smitten let’s it happen.

He congratulates her as well. Yoshida commends her for it.

Aoki sits next to Hiramaru on the carriage, and only then does Hiramaru remember Yoshida’s advice. The two sit in silence, and Aoki, now relieved, says they can enjoy the ride.

Hiramaru can’t calm down; he’s so happy his heart’s about ot explode. Aoki’s happy too. He apologizes for not sitting down with her to begin with. Aoki scolds him: he should have, and “Please make me happy” was a terrible phrase, too. It was?
Absolutely, a marriage proposal is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and he asked her to make him happy.

He apologizes, but she’s being cute as hell, and the two are all lovey-dovey, and I am one hundred percent behind this choice. Yoshida watches from the ground. He assumes Hiramaru will feel more compelled to work hard on his manga now.

We’ll see about that.

Yoshida tears up on the ground, and Hiramaru’s crying too, and he starts making a ruckus on the Ferris wheel. He wants to see Yoshida. Aoki, these are such good friends. Hiramaru admits that Yoshida is more important to him than his parents.

Awwwww.

The two run into each other’s arms and hug it out like manly men, and Yoshida congratulates him sincerely, and also explains how he was planning to put his series on a hiatus due to creator convenience.

Hiramaru admits that he, too, freaked out and didn’t know what to do when he lost the ring.

Yoshida immediately starts chewing Hiramaru out for losing the VERY EXPENSIVE ring. Hiramaru points out that Yoshida told him to ride the roller coaster. Hiramaru wants his 50 million yen (I recently looked this up, it’s about 328K) back; Yoshida tells him to earn it with his manga, baka.

Aoki plays peacemaker and suggests they all look for it together. The two decide to do that.

At that exact moment, the park announces that the ring has been found and that it appears to be costly. All they need is proof of ownership.

Back to the Stuff That Matters

At Shueisha the news of Aoki and Hiramaru’s engagement is on everybody’s mind. Everyone thinks team Fukuda is succeeding in public and in private.

Kosugi also notes that on November 4th, both Zombie-Gun and Reversi’s first tankobon volumes are coming out. Everyone’s excited to see who wins. Yujiro lets the audience know that Reversi is currently more popular. Miura points out that Nizuma has a built-in base from Crow. Kosugi reminds MIura that Ashirogi have fans from Trap, PCP, and Tanto.

Miura thinks it’s a done deal: Crow was at a circulation of 1.5 million copies per volume while PCP is currently circulating 500,000 copies. Kosugi counters that the surveys paint a different picture currently.

Regardless, the initial print run of 300,000 is insufficient for either series. Yujiro thinks it’d be great if they immediately sold out and had to start reprints. It’s much worse to have too many copies sit there than the reverse. Yujiro reminds everyone that they’re first in the rankings and that they need to sell well to become tentpoles.

Hattori dreams of selling more than a million copies.

On November 3rd, Hattori fills the boys in on the KazuYuri (Hiraoki? YuriMaru? Fuck I don’t know man) situation and how the entire office is gossiping like a PTA meeting. But the other thing on everybody’s mind is the release of the first tankobon for Zombie Gun and Reversi.

Shujin confirms the initial print run of 300K. Hattori confirms it and notes that the initial print run is relatively small given Crow’s runaway success. But also, Reversi is getting the same amount of volumes as his work, which is amazing in its own right. Saiko thinks they’ll become a signature series in jump and get a million copies printed.

That is the dream.

Saiko fantasizes about it to himself and dreams of his own wedding to Miho.

Hattori asks why Saiko’s smiling. He was “imagining things”. Hattori jokes it’s too early to be dreaming about selling a million copies.

Ha. Ha.

Unintended Consequences

Meanwhile, Hirmaru is so happy about his present marital bliss that he can’t draw. Yoshida has shot himself in the foot and tries to remind Hiramaru he will have a family soon, but Hiramaru is literally rolling on the floor in joy, and you know what, fuck it, let the boy have his moment in the sun.

Yoshida senses “bloodlust” from behind him, and we see a somewhat thinner Nakai. He wants to know about his introduction to Miss Eriko.

Yoshida thinks he needs to lose 90 more pounds and possibly team up with a writer to get a series of his own.

Nakai then asks Hiramaur about whether Eriko actually exists. Hiramaur has never met or seen a picture of her.

Yoshida – trying not to get murdered – assures Nakai that she actually exists and does look exactly like Aoki sensei.

I believe it. I believe it. I believe it.

Reprint Woes

Next Friday, Hattori approves their storyboards – which are improving – and Shujin asks about their sales. Reversi is getting a second print run of 50K copies. Saiko asks about Zombie-guns reprints: yes, one hundred thousand.

The boys chew on that and ask about the survey results against Zombie-Gun. They’re slightly better when averaged. Hattori downplays the differential: they’re still doing very well, and the difference isn’t that substantial. Reversi is also a series that gradually sells. Saiko wonders if the cover illustration is good enough.

It is, and it’s still an amazing accomplishment to get a 50K reprint. There’s no need to compare themselves to Nizuma, and he also prefers Reversi’s cover personally.

Shujin agrees.

Three Days later, Hattori calls them with some good news: they have received another reprint order, 30,000 more copies, so there will be 380,000 copies in circulation.

Saiko’s happy to hear the news that it’s sold out twice in ten days. It is outstripping PCP and Trap by a wide margin. They may not have to wait a year for it to be animated. Saiko thinks they’ve finally hit the peak.

But then Hattori drops the bomb: Zombiegun is getting a reprint order of up to 900 thousand copies.

The boys are stunned to hear that, and Shujin asks why Zombie Gun is getting such a massive reprint.

On that note, the chapter concludes as does the volume.

Tenaciousness and 900K Reaction

Please Make Me Happy

Okay, so we’re going to break this reaction into two distinct segments just like the chapter since the two parts of this story barely cohered, and it feels like the inversion of Chapter 159, which started with the boys working on Reversi, and ended with the proposal.

This reminds me of a scene late in Anna Karenina where Levin’s older brother finds a girl he’s into and they’re walking alone in the woods. He has a moment to ask her to marry him and he freaks out, doesn’t do it, and Tolstoy bluntly states the moment has been lost forever.

So I felt the tension as the Ferris Wheel continued because I, too, have experienced a number of times where there was something that needed to be said, that wasn’t, and then the moment passed, and so did the potential for romance. It’s real, especially when you’re a gremlin like me.

Let’s start with the proposal.

Mazel Tov. Hiramaru did it! He did it in the most hiramaru way imaginable. Aoki was adorable. There is much happiness; all my reservations about their relationship were outlined last week.

But honestly, I might be a bit too harsh. Since Hiramaru has started dating Aoki, he’s been nothing but sincere, good-hearted, and genuinely a good-seeming boyfriend. Also, Aoki doesn’t mind his oafish behavior and his silliness. I guess he finds it endearing because it’s ultimately harmless to anybody except Hiramaru himself.

Except maybe the stripping part. That’s still kinda fucked.

Plus his histrionics have taken her on two lovely, if mildly chaotic, dates. So I’ve been a bit of a pissant on this one—my B.

But really, there is not a whole lot to talk about re: the engagement. Well, I’m sure I could rustle something up, but honestly. It’s just very, very cute.

Okay, let me try to rustle something up before we jump into the more substantial back half – which, Jesus, once it gets to manga mode, it really gets a lot more dense – so….

I think the thing that makes this whole state of affairs work outside of all the emotional beats we got last chapter that straightened out Hiramaru and Aoki’s romance is that it feels a lot more authentic than some of the hijinks we usually get from Hiramaru.

Please Make Me Happy

I do love that this is the phrasing Hiramaru uses to ask Aoki to marry him. And I like it, even though I could consider it cheap, because it was introduced in the last chapter as the thing that has guided Yoshida to his new status as surrogate daddy (I will not change the phrasing on that one).

But it also makes sense that Hiramaru’s mind would default to his deepest desire, which, granted, does not make a strong relationship, but his ultimate desire to make manga, stemming from a genuine desire to be happy, makes sense as the thing that would be what he wants to ask Aoki.

And also, I have to give props to Obata for making Aoki so damn cute this chapter. Even though she’s always been drawn to look very beautiful, she’s rarely been drawn to be cute, or likeable. For the majority of the series, she has been drawn with a somewhat intentional coldness about her expression.

Or maybe detachment. She speaks very formally – I can only imagine what kind of keigo is being used in the original Japanese – her expressions are very stiff, and even when she’s in on the joke, she’s usually the straight man.

But in this chapter and the previous chapter, she’s been absolutely adorable. Make cute little faces. Her proportions have been squashed in most of the images in this chapter so that she looks physically smaller, and also slightly fatter – but not fat – because she’s wearing a cardigan.

Obata is paying very close attention to how her expressions and emotions unfold from moment to moment. Which is one of the reasons this whole thing works so well.

When we got that little note about Azuma’s ability to draw expressions better than the storyboard, I started paying attention to the expression work. And the way Obata indicates expressions to drive a certain tone or mood is nothing short of economical and masterful.

Because I’m not sure I would have bought this quite as much if Aoki were drawn in the way she’s usually drawn. But with these small alterations to her outfit and the proportions of her face, which are also slightly softer and more rounded, and the use of expressions, both exaggerated and straightforward, it all works wonderfully.

It also speaks to the trust she has in Hiramaru, allowing her to tease him the way she does on the Ferris wheel while gently encouraging him. These two clearly know each other much better than the narrative reveals, and it shows in how they navigate their mutual awkwardness while still being very much ready to jump each other’s bones.

By holding hands, I mean. The smut of them sitting next to each other on the Ferris wheel was almost too graphic for me personally.

And yes, Ohba is not overcoming the allegations he himself mentioned by having Aoki marry and, presumably, stop making manga. It’s misogynistic. And I don’t like it. But I kinda hope she does off-screen because it would genuinely suck for her to stop making manga for her man since she clearly has a passion for it.

But I kid, I kid, there’s also Yoshida to consider, and that ending:

I’m Okay with this Gag (Officially)

Nakai is still a monster; Yoshida is still manipulative, but I actually think that, given how much Hiramaru genuinely cares for Yoshida, and vice versa, I’m going to just admit that this gag works in retrospect a lot better than it used to.

There. I said it. I regret nothing. Mostly.

But seriously, seeing Hiramaru want to get away from the girl he’s been pining after for years to go bro it out with a hug for someone who he considers more important than his own flesh and blood absolutely was great to me, and was something I live for. It was just too pure and adorable.

Almost as adorably as Aoki wooing the Ferris wheel operator. Almost.

I also cracked up at the idea of Yoshida being so worried that Hiramaru wouldn’t work upon being rejected that he was going to let him have a hitaus for him to recover. It’s both sweet and abjectly funny that he was anticipating an absolutely catastrophic failure.

Although as with all things, the best pain, at least in a comedic context, comes from getting the same result from a different ending. I’m not sure what Yoshida was expecting with Hiramaru wanting to draw after getting everything he’s ever wanted, but what are we going to do?

Even Nakai, who has visibly lost weight, was amusing now that he’s somewhat wise to Yoshida’s manipulation. It almost worked. And the fact that Nakai is losing weight actually makes me fairly confident he’s going to end up with someone, even if it isn’t this mythical Eriko. Does he deserve it? Nope. Is he still a big ol’ predator? Yup.

Does she exist? I’m half inclined to believe she does, but we’ll see where Nakai gets at the end of this series.

As long as it’s not fucking jacked and completely happy – he’s done too much shit to deserve that – I’ll be mostly okay.

And now, onto the important stuff: circulation numbers for manga.

The Problem of Circulation

To answer Saiko’s question, I think there are two obvious reasons why the Reversi situation is slower than Eiji’s.

The first is that Nizuma has a known built-in audience and was at a peak circulation of 1.5 million copies per volume of Crow. Those are crazy numbers for manga. If you’ve ever read the Oricon charts or looked at top-ranking manga by sales, it’s usually pretty rare for them to get past 100K for a first volume.

Doing 100K or greater sales for a first volume is some damn good numbers. In the real world, those numbers are spectacular. And I mean other series can do better, but manga is, at the end f the day, still a fairly niche market, so sales of any volume are much lower than people assume.

The second reason Zombie-Gun is doing better than Reversi, I’m guessing, is that the Jump editorial team is counting on Reversi to end sooner than Zombie Gun, which will have an indefinite run. It’s an investment in the promise of Zombie-Gun vs. Reversi.

And that logic makes sense. I’m sure the calculus also has to do with previous sales of Ashirogi v. Nizuma. But honestly, the way Zombie-Gun is being set up, it’s not going to be a flash in the pan series; it’s going to run for, presumably, a long time. The editorial team can see that and wants to capitalize on it heavily. So they’re milking Nizuma’s fanbase with a higher circulation to do so.

I even assume Hattori will have an explanation of the more niche nature of the mainstream battle story the boys are telling, and that this is based off of previous sales, and all these things that set the boys on a bit of a tailspin – this battle is far from over – but I think there are something that they aren’t considering and that are going to help them win this without them doing much of anything:

The Scarcity

I’m not sure if this is true in Manga sales, but in the sales of serialized books, it is undoubtedly the case that the first book in any series will sell the best without question, which is why the first volume is always the one that gets stocked the most. Every subsequent volume’s numbers will sell less than the one that precedes it because there is more investment for every subsequent volume.

Which makes sense; there is no commitment to reading volume 1 of a series, but there is a significant commitment to reading volume 28 of a series. Fewer people buy that latest volume unless they’re a die-hard fan.

Although I will admit, based on this setup, that’s not the expectation in manga. I guess because for its serialization status, they anticipate volume sales to fluctuate based on the popularity of what is happening in the magazine.

However, I think this chapter has already laid the seeds of the boys’ victory over Nizuma: they will be selling less, which will create a greater demand when it continues to sell out.

The chapter has made an explicit point of how it would be “bad” for too many volumes to be printed and sit on shelves rather than the opposite. And that is true: that is humiliating.

And even though I don’t think this is the most significant consideration, I believe the covers of the tankobon hint that Reversi is being given a slower start. However, it’s better than Zombie-gun by most metrics, including reader surveys, so it is likely to do well in manga sales.

By creating a somewhat artificial scarcity by reprinting only limited volumes—and because the volumes are prettier—it will help us be competitive with Eiji eventually.

But the problem with that is that it’s not active for the boys just to be patient for their series to sell, and this sign is going to be the beginning of the conflict for the next chapter. So who knows.

If it does have to do with the knowledge that the series is a short-term thing, I think that’s going to be a natural segue into the speeding through to the end debate: will they go 50 or a hundred chapters? Unclear. However, these sales numbers will be part of it.

The other element that will save the boys bacon, though, is

The Long Tail

In digital marketing, when selecting keywords, you optimize for the “long tail,” which is very niche words that have limited market share. If you can corner the market on that specific keyword, you will end up at the top of Google, more people will read your shit, and you get more money. For example: there are 2 million articles on “buying a fendeer guitar”, I’d be shocked if there were even 1,000 articles on “Buying a fender guitar from the 50s, used, while paying less than 2,000 dollars” – because the second one is hyper specific, it will yield greater reaership than the first because the market is saturated.

That is the essence of SEO: making your site appear at the top of Google and other search engines. This series uses SEO and has for a while, and if you’re paying attention, you can probably find the blog post where I changed SEO brands to make my shit pop in the algo.

We are a small but mighty blog.

In the boys’ case, the structure of their story is creating a long tail: unlike other Jump series, they are writing with a definitive conclusion in mind, and they’re going to have about five volumes minimum, but let’s be realistic, this is autobiographical, so about 12 volumes to sell.

This creates pressure to sell more because it will be more cost-effective to buy all the manga when the whole story is out. So even if they don’t get preliminary numbers, they will still do well in the end. They have occupied a very specific niche in the mainstream battle space wth a focused conflict between two characters, and readers are going to know that.

While I think this isn’t an issue overall, the boys are going to try to wrestle with it, but they don’t know what the longtail is. And the editorial team doesn’t, and I don’t understand why the editorial team is doing it (we’ll find out in the next chapter)

What is obvious, though, is that:

The Editorial Team Doesn’t know about the boys’ goals

Yeah. This one’s pretty obvious. The way Yujiro is talking, it’s clear they want manga to run in the magazine for a while, and they are content with the current quality.

So I’m pretty sure that even if they know something subconsciously, they haven’t yet been informed on the full extent of the boys’ plans. And shit is going to hit the fan once that actually happens.

And also, Hiramaru is happily engaged. I wonder what hijinks will ensue now that he’s happily married and how Yoshida plans to deal with it.

Hopefully, it remains pure. Hopefully.

But we shall see, in the next chapter.

Until then,

Peace