Earthchild: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes (Patreon)

Manga Details

• Author: Hideo Shinkai
• Author’s other works:
  • Lightwing - soccer series for 21 chapters. It’s mid
  • Soul Catchers - music series that kept changing magazines, apparently pretty good. 89 chapters
  • Instant Detective Hirameki Hayao- 9 chapters, mystery series for kids
• Was an assistant for Araki of Coolshock BT and Baoh fame
• Ippei Goto of Hi-Fi Cluster fame worked for him
• Run dates: Feb 21, 2022 to Sep 5, 2022
  • Replaced Dr. Stone kinda (which was ending)
  • Was replaced by Ginka and Gluna
• Chapters/Volumes: 27/3

About the Manga

• Plot
  • Reisuke is an average guy whose life is saved one day by a superheroine with a dumptruck ass named Kareri. She’s an Earthchild, someone with telekinetic powers who exists as the “earth’s immune system.” And works for a government agency called WastE. They fall in love, get married, and have a baby when oh no an asteroid appears to destroy the planet! They can’t blow it up so Kareri flies into it in her spaceship and blows it up even though they said it couldn’t be done. Right as she made impact, baby Mamoru revealed he has telekinesis and is an Earthchild too. She didn’t die though she actually got fused to a rock and is floating in space like Karz from Pt 2.
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  • WastE confronts Reisuke and violently demands that he give them Mamoru until he reveals that, actually? He loves his son. The guy who runs WastE is moved to tears by how good of a guy Reisuke is. So instead they reveal that they want to save Kareri but the government won’t let them, until Reisuke reveals that he loves his wife. The head of WastE is moved to tears by how good of a guy Reisuke is, so they agree to save Kareri. Then they demand that Mamoru be forcibly aged 10 years to be strong enough to help. Reisuke reveals he loves his wife AND his son. WastE guy cries at how good of a person he is and they don’t do it. They gotta save her NOW or else she’s gonna die!
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  • Then Albert shows up and he’s a previous Earthchild who’s weak now and can’t do shit. He walks around saying he’s the main character because he was bullied and that’s what his brother told him before sacrificing himself for him. Every Earthchild has a big moment where they sacrifice themselves and die except for all of the ones we meet in this manga.
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  • Since the government won’t let them invent a cool space rocket, Albert and Reisuke go up to space somehow, planning on using Mamoru’s psychic powers to save Kareri. There they encounter Morumi who is racist against earth children until she finds out that Reisuke loves his family and is moved to tears by how good of a person he is, and Barry who is drawn in a totally different art style from everyone else. They see Kareri but worry that Mamoru doesn’t know who she is as a rock and can’t help. They have no time so decide to go back to earth and meet Kareri’s shitty fucking parents who erased all their memories of her death and are moved to tears by how much Reisuke loves their daughter.
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  • Reisuke goes back to the space station, saves his wife, and goes back down but uh oh he had to take his helmet off so he wound up in limbo where he meets the Earth who is a school girl with the earth as a lollipop. She tells Reisuke that the future is going to be shitty in the absolute dumbest way if he lives, but he refuses to die and she’s just absolutely blown away by how good of a person he is.
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  • A few years pass and Mamoru is now like 7, going on dangerous missions with his family that we never see. Then the earth school girl from before shows up and attacks them for some reason. They fight, she tries to manipulate Mamoru, and then the entire family commits suicide so they can talk to Earth in Limbo. They tell her that they love each other and she’s so moved that she lets them live; she just can’t believe how good they are.
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  • More years pass and Mamoru is graduating elementary school and that’s kind of it.
• Characters
  • Reisuke Sawada
    • May have shit himself
    • Why is he touching women without their consent
  • Kareri Hoshifuri
    • Memory wipe
    • Psychic powers
    • Fastest tsundere switch ever
  • Mamoru
    • Earthchild son
    • Is babby then 7 yo or something
  • Albert Gurahashi
    • Beautiful
    • Earthchild
    • “Main character”
  • Terra
    • The earth - Yes really
    • They actually sell that lolipop
    • Evil badguy
    • Hates alive earth children for some reason

Why it failed

• This is some weird-ass dialog
• This feels like someone trying to write araki without understanding araki
• This feels like a oneshot
• This has no real structure to the plot, if it was self contained that’s fine but this is meant to be a 100+ chapter manga
• This art gets really weird and stiff after the first chapter
• This plot just moves so fucking slow, it’s ok author I know you don’t know what to do
• If there's only 1 earthchild why did she deal with petty crime?
• The implications of 10yo with adult minds is fucked yo
• The motivation of terra is dumb and makes no sense
• More than any manga we’ve read here it feels like it was written as it was drawn
• Character anatomy is weird. He can’t pull off thiccness to my standards. The lines are slightly off and it makes the ass look flat.

What it did well

• Art is fine?
• It’s a unique idea with the memory wiping
• I really do like the idea of a guy being plunged into a supernatural world and feeling powerless
• I like the idea earthchilds have to find a way to avoid death, final destination shit

Where it could have gone

• Structure the first chapter as a flashback or fuck just not make a series from clearly a oneshot
• I think having the psychic mom saga as only flashbacks while dealing with the kid be cool, maybe reveal the mom’s still alive later into the series

Misc Thoughts

• This author really loves drawing women’s asses but he aint got the gift like black torch
• This is if the author of tpgw didn't get any other chapters from the future
• Maxy Bee thoughts:
  • Despite liking the author dropped this mad early
  • Interesting that Kareri is frozen out in space, merged with rock. An homage to Kars’ fate in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure?
  • People say there’s an unspoken “three strikes and you’re out” rule in Weekly Shonen Jump, but I think Shinkai is safe from this, as Soul Catcher(s) was a minor success, and sold about as well as Undead Unluck does now. So I’m sure they’ll return one day. Make no mistake, though. Earthchild is a BOMB.

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Community
    • Maxybee:
    • Duderocks: Cancelation proves we're in worst timeline
    • Xylon: Nature versus Nurture: Literal A F.
    • ZZDigital: Plot like learning to drive stick-shift
    • Daniel: We’re in space!…… let’s go back
    • Blahmoomoo: Avoid cool plotlines, save the world.
    • Scott: How to make magical fatherhood boring
    • The Laughing Fool: We went everywhere and got nowhere
    • Twolfwood: These six word summaries are good
    • Chemychems: Feels like a half-forgotten Dad story.
    • Glornak: Ultra simp and his psychic family
    • Genericman: And we'll call them... The Credibles
  • David: Even earth itself wanted this canceled
  • Jordan: Reisuke is such a good guy
  • Guest: milf doesn't die on big rock
• Flop or not
  • flop
  • 3 days of happiness if you want the vibe of the first chapter; 20th century boys if you want this idea done well
• Is this the best/worst series we’ve talked about