Black Torch: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes (Patreon)

Manga Details

• Author: Takaki, Tsuyoshi
• Author’s other works:
  • Heart Gear which is ongoing but on hiatus
  • Oneshot Freaks, Unreal
• Run dates: Dec 31, 2016 to Jul 11, 2018
• Chapters/Volumes: 5/19

About the Manga

• Plot

Reader 1

• Jirou Azuma is just your regular high schooler, gets into fights, has no parents, and of course, can talk to animals. Everything’s going fine until he runs into Rago,- The Black Star of Doom -  a type of demon known as a mononoke that also happens to look like a cat. Rago is an extremely powerful mononoke that a bunch of different factions are looking for. Jirou tries to protect Rago from a particularly strong mononoke, but gets impaled because his gimmick of trying to make people attack his coat doesn’t work on actually skilled opponents.
• Rago fuses with Jirou becoming his heart which is weird because this came out years before Chainsaw Man so I guess this is just a Parasyte rip-off. However, Rago still can appear outside of Jirou so them fusing was kinda pointless narratively speaking.
• Jirou wakes up in a hospital: under the custody of the Bureau of Espionage: A top-secret spy association that deals with fighting mononoke and everyone in it is pretty much the heir of a spy clan. On that note, we find out that Jirou’s grandpa is also a BAMF mononoke spy hunting guy but that doesn’t matter for like 14 chapters.

Reader 2

• Jirou goes on several adventures with the Bureau of Espionage, doing a bunch of random missions that don’t really advance the plot forward as there’s no end goal for the series. On the way, he makes new allies through the Bureau and further grows his powers as someone fused with the Black Star of Doom.
• Rago eventually gets separated by Jirou kinda as Jirou can still use his powers and again it’s weird they are fused cuz Rago can literally fuck off and it doesn’t cause many issues for Jirou. Jirou goes into the woods where mononoke live to become more powerful or something.
• There’s also Amagi who is a very evil mononoke who has evil plans to do something evil. He eats other monoke to gain power so he’s super-duper evil. He apparently used to be a village guardian but became a utilitarian obsessed with making sacrifices to save many and probably invests in NFTs. As such he wants everyone to give him power so he can become a god and protect everyone or something

Reader 3

• Jirou eventually comes back out of the woods and now can use his full powers for 15 minutes as it’s legally required in shonen that super forms have a time limit. The entire squad gets together and they decide they’re going to attack Amagi’s HQ so they can save Rago.
• Jiro and Amagi have a fight in some mononoke palace thing while giving very cheesy dialog which somehow works cuz in my canon this is set in the Lethal Weapon universe. Jirou manages to defeat Amagi with a really badass punch and after almost dying in a Metroid-style escape from a crumbling fortress is rescued by his squad. It jumps to two days later and we have a ton of fun character interactions while they may have defeated the bad guy, the adventure continues!
• Characters
  • Jirou Azuma
    • Can talk to animals?
    • Reminds me of start of bleach ichigo
    • Kind of an asshole
    • Wholesome ish?
    • Kinda dumb
  • Rago
    • Cat but isn’t one
    • Is a Monoke
  • Ryousuke Shiba
    • Chief of public beauro of espionage
  • Ichika Kishimojin
    • strong in the real way
    • likes being complimented
    • 
      
  • Grandpa
    • BAMF
    • Knows mononoke
  • Reiji kirahara
    • Heir to powerful spy family
    • 17
    • Calls people cute
    • Very tactically thinking
    • Has a bro shinji, twin that is a badguy
    • 
      
  • Kouga
    • Wants to be strongest monoke
    • Very generic badguy
    • Works for Amagi
    • Joins the squad cause he’s not as bad as Amagi
  • Amagi
    • BBEG
    • Eats monoke
  • Fuyou
    • Childlike monokoe
    • Has flower power (™)
  • Ogre Lord Ibuki
    • Lord of monoke forest
    • Tidg ol biddies
    • Married to a former human

Why it failed

• This series def is trying to be cool but isn’t calling his jacket his “cicada shell”
• Feels kinda generic
• Fuck just use the term yokai it’s def the most well known term
• Back to sexualizing female protags
• - lazy backgrounds
• - the plot can be a little hard to follow
• I think this would have been fun in a weekly format as it can have a ton of exposition because it has the space for it
• Really slow to establish a plot for the main character
  • I feel chapter 9 should have been around chapter 4-5
  • 
• It’s hard to follow some of the action, it feels like there’s limited interaction between opponents its just one big move and the fight’s over kinda thing
  • None of the fighters are balanced
• A lot of the designs are kinda weak, just humans with horns
• Hard to tell some characters appart
• Characters feel very bland for the most part
• There are some instances where he didn’t finish the art in later chapters, it still looks good but just kida weird
  • 

What it did well

• Good art
• Kinda funny with the cat talking shit
• I can always appreciate shonen protags that wear graphic-ts
• I was legit surprised the cicada thing didn’t work the second time
• Writing is somewhat well done, I like the snarky tone at times
• - not too text heavy a lot of bad series have way too exposition
• - Rango being an active character makes it feel different vs csm
• - glad talking to animals stays relevant
• - good fight scenes
• - characters act reasonably
• - I like the slow introduction of characters
• - characters actually seem to plan things out
• - female mc is capable
• Has CSM style vibing moments like praying at the shrine
• Humor is good
• Not so black and white about monoke relationships
• I like how they say humans and monoke can get along

Where it could have gone

• Show the larger world, how monoke help society
• I like this american gods kinda thing where the monoke are former dieties people don’t believe in anymore
• Get a mens jacket sponsor

Misc Thoughts

• Why is gorilla used so much as an insult
• Can’t one shonen flop protagonist have normal parents
• This somehow rips off CSM despite coming out first
• PBOR is a very cheesy name
• I can’t explain it but this is in the Lethal Weapon universe

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • T-root: Staring Dr. Denji Doolittle the Ninja
  • Generic Man: Women drawn like a different series
  • OzyRat: Water down chainsaw man with cats
  • Dragoniitii: A void in my void? Gimme!
  • Twolfwood: They say it's good. We'll see
  • Tucker: Sketchy art (in a good way)
  • David: Mission: spy x monoke chainsaw family
  • David: What if bokke-san was actually good?
  • Jordan: the Kamina to Jiu-Jutsu Kaizen’s Simon
• Flop or not
  • Not a flop, ironically the closest series so far to CSM
• Is this the best/worst series we’ve talked about

Shoutouts

• Props to Jordan for making the opening and ending theme, being a great co-host, and helping with editing
• Props to Mer Liel for the awesome cover art, you can find her online at liel_mer and Nigel for being our generous art benefactor
• Thanks to Tucker for assistance with pronunciation, translation, and other miscellaneous research.
• We have a new person to thank for this episode! Through the combined power of our Patrons, we were able to hire some additional editing help so a big thanks to Dylan from Anime out of Context for joining us on our podcasting journey. You can find his podcast at animeoutofcontext.com
• Thanks to Luke for being our community producer
• Thanks to T-root, Ozyrat, and Twolfwood for being our awesome transcription volunteers, we’re still working hard on our new site but it and the transcripts will be available soon!
• Jordan thanks David for editing
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