gggvec

[animedogoftheday]

Today’s anime dog of the day is:

This theoretical guard dog from Protect Me, Shugomaru! (2021)

[demifiendrsa]

Weekly Shonen Jump 2024 issue #29 cover

[oratokyosaigunda]

Mamore! Shugomaru series banner

[skullklutz]

Hebi said trans rights

[goldom]

[ljaesch]

VIZ Media and MANGA Plus Are Publishing the Protect Me, Shugomaru! Manga Digitally in English

VIZ Media and MANGA Plus Are Publishing the Protect Me, Shugomaru! Manga Digitally in English

Shueisha’s MANGA Plus service as well as VIZ Media’s website began releasing Daiki Ihara’s Protect Me, Shugomaru! (Mamore! Shugomaru) manga on November 22, 2021. Protect Me, Shugomaru! is described as: Being a bodyguard isn’t easy, especially when you’re a danger to everyone around you. Daiki Ihara is the artist of the One Piece gag spin-off manga Koi Suru One Piece. Source: ANN

[uozlulu]

Finished Protect Me, Shugomaru! today. It was silly and wacky, but also had a cast of interesting characters. I liked seeing what nonsense it would come up with every week but it was one of those you knew pretty early on probably wouldn’t last a long time. I also liked the final arc and I thought we had a good ending that was tonally sound to the manga overall. I’m definitely looking forward to what Ihara might do next. 

[dereksmcgrath]

How can I miss something I love when it hasn’t gone away?

Protect Me, Shugomaru! Chapter 11: "Protect Me Alongside the Malevolent God, Shugomaru!" By Daiki Ihara, translated by Caleb Cook, lettering by Sabrina Heep. Featuring characters from Magu-chan: God of Destruction by Kei Kamiki, previously translated by Christine Dashiell, previously lettered by Erika Terriquez and Annaliese “Ace” Christman. Both series available from Viz.

I already said what I had to about the challenges of letting go of something, and how trying to mourn and enjoy what you remember about something you like is still going to hurt like hell.

But in Protect Me, Shugomaru! the main character Sanagi shouts, "This is turning into a Magu-chan chapter!! Are we really fine with that?!"

Yes. I’m totally fine with that.

While it has been on my radar, I had yet to focus on and read an entire chapter of Protect Me, Shugomaru! I'm sure I was still dragging my feet because, over its ten earlier chapters that overlapped with the run of Magu-chan: God of Destruction, I kept hearing that it would end up filling the gap of gag-based manga whenever Magu-chan would no longer have new chapters.

Now Magu-chan no longer has new chapters (barring the special issue coming out in the spring). And now I see news from a friend that the newest chapter was a crossover with Magu-chan. And, darn it, I needed this.

In Daiki Ihara’s Protect Me, Shugomaru, the titular 10-year-old Shugomaru, the youngest member of a supernaturally strong warrior clan (and probably one of its shortest members) is assigned as bodyguard for Sanagi Ojo, a high schooler trying to fit in at her new school while targeted by the deadly guild known as Skull.

Unfortunately for Sanagi, Shugomaru has one philosophy: there’s no kill like overkill. Want to protect Sanagi from nearby students? Start a fire. Want to scare away a mosquito? Swing a big freaking sword–and slice off the top floors of Sanagi’s school. Need to take out an opposing assassin rushing at you with a weapon that is impossible to dodge in time? Release a fatal airborne poison–that ends up infecting you and the person you’re supposed to be guarding. Comedy ensues. Shugomaru tends to get so wrapped up in his schemes to guard Sanagi that Skull may actually be less dangerous than her own bodyguard.

Like previous Jump gag series, a lot of the comedy in Shugomaru depends on Sanagi being fully aware of other Jump publications–Yu-Gi-Oh and Hunter x Hunter, for example–comparing the shenanigans she finds herself in to what she has read in those stories. It’s refreshing to have a girl like Sanagi being the audience’s source for most meta-commentary, a character who keeps making these comparisons, reminding us yet again, for those of us who haven’t gotten it through our heads, that shonen is not only a boys’ genre but read by readers of all genders.

And like Gintama, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, and other Jump gag series, more of the humor also comes from breaking the fourth wall, whether referencing real-world YouTube celebrities, or the major villains in Skull starting to wonder whether they are actually getting anywhere in this story, when they only pop up at chapter’s end to ask whether they actually have a plan or are just repeating the same cliffhanger at the end of each chapter.

(And like the humor in Gintama, Shugomaru includes a repeated risque gag about a mushroom-shaped person…The humor is kind of juvenile.)

But more relevant for this post, Sanagi’s self-awareness and fourth-wall breaking help sell the gag at the root of Chapter 11: Magu-chan: God of Destruction has returned for one more time, before it ends all over again, this time in the pages of Shugomaru!

And thus, I get to laugh and cry all over again saying goodbye to this series. Yay…

Chapter 11 interrupts a two-parter where the Skull assassin/high schooler/stage magician Fujii tried to kill Sanagi–only to have all her deadly tricks turn out to be literal magic tricks that were harmless. By this cartoony logic, it shouldn’t be a big leap that Shugomaru uses his Yu-Gi-Oh collection to summon allies with the card "Malevolent Catastrophe," bringing into this comic Magu, Naputaaku, and Uneras from Magu-chan.

Having marathoned through Shugomaru before writing this post, it is bizarre how this chapter drags all the action in that series to a halt, all for a mostly gag-filled romp and a love letter to another series that ended too soon. Granted, one antagonist in Shugomaru eventually realizes that Magu and friends just stopped their story cold and tries to reassert their authority over this manga–which actually helps wrap up this chapter and give one more heartfelt goodbye to Magu-chan. And granted, too, it’s not as if Shugomaru is not a goofy series where something like this could be expected to happen. After all, the mayor of the town this story is set in makes a train engine with his face on it–this series is not going for realism. Heck, Uneras gets an excellent take-that joke thrown in, about how anime and manga act like all Japanese schools like Sanagi’s feature statues of their principals, regardless how common that is in real life, so realism is not at the heart of this series.

But believability is still a part of this series–“I believe, in the context of this story up to now, that this thing would happen”--and this interruption changes the tone of the series quite a bit and strains some believability. While Shugomaru has plenty of fourth-wall gags, it hadn’t yet commented on the quality of its own artwork. And of course resident troll Uneras would be the one making that gag, ribbing illustrator Ihara’s supposedly low effort on drawing windows. But Uneras also outright says they know they and Sanagi are from different manga series, and at another point Uneras pulls out a copy of Jump to read older chapters of Shugomaru, with Sanagi just kind of going along with all that she’s hearing and seeing. Sanagi just found out she is a fictional character in another manga. That one joke may have strained the believability too much: for the first time ever, Sanagi is suddenly and potentially self-aware that she is just a character in another Jump series–when up to now she has been freaking out that characters from another Jump series show up. When she is trying to be the rational one in this story, wouldn’t this new knowledge bother Sanagi at all?

But I’m over-thinking all of this. While Uneras had never broken the fourth wall like this in Magu-chan, her awareness of manga tropes makes her the ideal choice for these kinds of remarks, and it doesn’t eschew too far from the kind of metatextual commentary that Shugomaru specializes in (even though, again, that meta commentary tends to be about other series, not self-awareness about the Shugomaru series’s own fictionality).

Speaking of how Ihara characterizes Uneras, it was mostly on point, as well as Ihara’s characterization for the other two chibi gods. Naputaaku of course would want to capitalize on making and selling food. And of course Naputaaku and Magu would get into a fight to see who can make the best statue for the masses to idolize. This chapter even calls back to previous chapters of Magu-chan when Naputaaku and his hermit crabs made snow and sand sculptures.

I know it would be redundant, as Sanagi already fills the straight-man role (even saying she’ll have to do the pet-punishment sign on Magu because Ruru isn’t here), but it’s disappointing that this chapter couldn’t include Ruru and Ren. Maybe Ihara’s designs for human characters means, under their pen, Ruru and Ren wouldn’t quite look like how Kei Kamiki draws them, even though Ihara nails the designs for the chibi gods. Or maybe having Ruru show up in Shugomaru after how Magu-chan wrapped up would be a case of “too soon.” (It also would have been fun for Izuma to show up with Uneras, although adding even more wacky characters like him could turn this chapter into Bobobo–not that I would be complaining.)

The chapter also includes fun Easter eggs from the original Magu-chan series, with Uneras’s elixir bottle looking like the love potion container she offered to Ren. And I appreciate this chapter also doesn’t spoil the ending to Magu-chan. (I had recommended this chapter of Shugomaru to another Magu-chan fan, who hasn’t gotten to the last chapter, before realizing my potential blunder.)

While I miss Christine Dashiell as the translator behind Magu and company’s dialogue, it’s obvious that Shugomaru’s translator Caleb Cook (of My Hero Academia fame) did great work keeping the dialogue for Magu, Naputaaku, and Uneras almost perfectly consistent with what Dashiell already accomplished. (Maybe Magu's "Come again?!" sounded off to me, but I haven’t checked whether that’s from the original Japanese or the English translation.) And credit to Sabrina Heep for keeping what Erika Terriquez and Annaliese “Ace” Christman brought to Magu-chan, the distinct lettering each god has in their dialogue.

It’s almost as if Magu-chan and Shugomaru fit well together. It’s almost like you can acknowledge a series that ended before its time without somehow cannibalizing it for your inferior follow-up. Sorry, I know, I spent all this time praising something I thoroughly enjoyed, only to wrap up this post with yet another bitter take about something I dislike. But since I’m on that topic, it wouldn’t shock me, with regard to Soul Eater and Fire Force, if SquareEnix and Kodansha had any intense negotiations to make that potential link-up happen–and the concluding product that is the ending to Fire Force has come out like crap. I hate that this nonsense is making me defend giant corporations–so I won’t–but Shueisha owning both Magu-chan and Shugomaru had to have helped establish this crossover, while Ihara’s actual enjoyment of Kamiki’s story and artwork created an excellent chapter that looked and sounded so much like the original that I thought Kamiki actually did the Magu-chan artwork. As this chapter of Shugomaru concludes, “Thank you, Kamiki sensei,” indeed.

[recentanimenews]

MANGA Plus Releases Every Chapter of Their Currently Serialized Works for Free

  Shueisha's legal manga service MANGA Plus by SHUEISHA announced today that every single chapter of their currently serialized works will be released for free to be read by anyone once–in countries where the service exists of course! The First Read Free promotion is part of MANGA Plus's third-anniversary celebrations and includes over 100 series' and 1,000s of chapters (yes, ONE PIECE is included!).

  Here's a list of some of the works that will have all their chapters available to be read once:

  ONE PIECE

My Hero Academia

Jujutsu Kaisen

Black Clover

Dr. STONE

Mission: Yozakura Family

UNDEAD UNLUCK

Mashle: Magic and Muscles

Ayakashi Triangle

Magu-chan: God of Destruction

Me & Roboco

High School Family: Kokosei Kazoku

SAKAMOTO DAYS

The Elusive Samurai

WITCH WATCH

Blue Box

PPPPPP

Ayashimon

Protect Me, Shugomaru!

Doron Dororon

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations

Dragon Ball Super

World Trigger

Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign

Twin Star Exorcists

Show-ha Shoten!

Dandadan

SPY x FAMILY

GHOST REAPER GIRL

Monster #8 (also known as Kaiju No. 8)

Excuse me dentist, it's touching me!

Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable!

Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective

Tis Time for "Torture," Princess

Don't Blush, Sekime-san!

Diamond in the Rough

Even If You Slit My Mouth

Choujin X

  Both Blue Exorcist and HEART GEAR will be part of the promotion as soon as return from hiatus. The chapters will be available in seven languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Thai, Russian, and Indonesian.

  The First Read Free promotion on MANGA Plus by SHUEISHA begins right now and will be available for one year on the MANGA Plus iOS and Android smartphone apps. 

  Source: Press Release

  ----

Daryl Harding is a Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs a YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza, and posts photos of his travels on Instagram.

By: Daryl Harding

[soul-dwelling]

Protect Me, Shugomaru did a better job acknowledging a series that ended before its time than Fire Force did...

[animedogoftheday]

Today’s anime dog(s) of the day is:

These unfriendly dogs from Protect Me, Shugomaru! (2021)

[demifiendrsa]

Yokai Buster Murakami chapter 2 color page

[shysheeperz]

[skullklutz]

Y'all if you're into cute manga with action PLEASE READ "Protect me, Shugomaru!" IT'S ONLY ON THE 1ST CHAPTER BUT IT'S ADORABLE

[ljaesch]

Protect Me, Shugomaru! Manga Ends

Protect Me, Shugomaru! Manga Ends

This year’s 27th issue of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine has published the final chapter of Daiki Ihara’s Protect Me, Shugomaru! manga. The manga is described as: Being a bodyguard isn’t easy, especially when you’re a danger to everyone around you. Ihara launched Protect Me, Shugomaru! on November 22, 2021. MANGA Plus and VIZ Media are publishing the manga digitally in English. Source: ANN