Hi-Fi Cluster: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes (Patreon)

Intro

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• Welcome to this episode of Shonen Flop, where we talk about manga in Shonen Jump that didn’t make it big
• David: I’m David
• Jordan: I’m Jordan
• David: Next week we’ll be covering Sakuratetsu Taiwahen If you’d like to read along with us. Be sure to join the discussion in our Discord and submit your six-word summary. You can find a link to the Discord in our episode description and on our website shonenflop.com
• But this week we’re talking about Hi-Fi Cluster and we’re joined by our guest Courtney from the Strictly Series
• Guest: 30-second intro

Manga Details

• Author:  Gotou, Ippei (Go-toe, eep-pay)
• Author’s other works: NOTHING
• Who they were an assistant for: Naoshi Komi (Double Arts, Nisekoi), Hideo Shinkai (Earthchild, Soul Catcher(s), Light Wing)
• Went to university with Yuusaku Shibata (Zipman, Yoakemono)
• Run dates: Sep 13, 2014 to Jan 26, 2015
• Chapters/Volumes: 18 / 3

About the Manga

• Plot
  • In 2045 we live in an ability society
  • People put barcode stickers on their bodies to get abilities and even things out. The stickers were made by a guy named “Landscape Mole” and they’re stored on a database called the Hi-Fi cluster title drop.
  • Main character Peta can’t use them, defeating the point.
  • Some stickers are “Hi fi labels” which have the intelligence of geniuses
  • Peta is delivering pizza when he runs into Kosaku Kandera, a cop with a robot arm and the hi fi ability of a famous Japanese swordsman with a really fuckin long sword so he has a really fuckin long police baton and is looking for a hi fi label black market.
  • Peta’s childhood not-girlfriend nano shows up for this chapter and is never relevant again.
  • Peta actually works for the barcode black market, and when delivering a hi fi label it gets stuck to him and his boss tries to beat the shit out of him due to lost prophets but Kandera shows up and saves him.
  • Kandera runs special unit 6, which is like a hi fi cop team, and asks Peta to join.
  • Peta has the hi fi power of Socrates, who used insight to see through the lies of society which obviously means Peta can see through walls which believe it or not is one of the lesser bullshit stretches in the manga.
  • Peta meets Miri who’s special unit 6’s deputy chief after Kandera, and is the mom of the group because she’s the only girl obviously and doesn’t matter beyond that. Then an asshole named Ekusa shows up and he’s got rocket skates as well Isaac Newton's famous power over gravity. They beat up some bad guys I guess. Then Peta meets a sleepy guy named Heckt with the power of a Japanese Prince. I had to google who had the power to hear ten conversations at once. Obviously this means that he has ten brains which of course means he can use 20 rocket propelled robot hands that punch things shut up what do you mean it doesn’t make sense no YOU’RE stupid.
• 
  
  • Peta and the gang talk about the 6/11 terrorist attack where Kandera’s friend killed a bunch of people and the cops covered it up, but when some people on 4chan said they were gonna do a copycat attack, the special unit jumps into action. A random unnamed guy is using the intelligence of the Japanese spelling of Lu Bu from Romance of the Three Kingdoms to throw cars around when Noto, the dude who actually did 6/11 kills the random guy and is helped by the kid who made the stickers: Landscape Mole. He’s way too young but it’s never explained why. Noto and Kandera fight to a standstill and then the bad guys run away. Oh yeah the girl gets stabbed but she’s fine and it doesn’t matter so I forgot.
  • Peta tries to help a guy getting bullied and even though it’s obvious the guy is landscape mole the author acts like it’s a shocking reveal like 2 pages later. Next Special Unit Six goes after a transforming car driven by Shanon, a taxi driver using the power of Ludwig Van Beethoven to drive good which IS the most bullshit stretch in the series. He’s got a little girl in the back seat with the dynamite powers of the Nobel peace prize guy. Landscape Mole takes the girl and turns on Shanon. Kandera saves him cuz he’s a really good guy and Shanon agrees to join the team, driving them to parliament where Landscape Mole is.
• 
  
  • He doesn’t like how the Ability society sold out to corporations so decides to be a tankie or something. Landscape Mole says he’s got a twin brother that he wants released. Then Landscape Mole and Kandera have a really annoying conversation where Kandera lectures him about being a good person cuz he’s just such a good guy. Landscape Mole blows up his robot arm and it turns out that Kandera can’t use labels without his arm just like Peta wow he’s really cool I wish he was my big brother. He punches landscape mole in the face and they win even though he escapes.
  • A few years go by and Peta is graduating when he bumps into a guy who looks exactly like Landscape Mole’s secret identity. The guy picks up the phone and calls his brother, meaning that he’s the twin brother and that’s the resolution to the plot line. I don’t know, Peta gets a diploma and his not-girlfriend is in college. It’s over who cares. Did you notice I never mentioned anyone else in Special Unit Six after introducing them? It’s because they didn’t do anything.
• Characters
  • Peta Jugojo (“Jew-go-joe, Hey-tah”)
    • Peter Juggalo
    • Rides moped
    • Kinda aloof
    • 10th grade
    • V dumb
    • Can’t use labels or can he? Yes he can
    • He can only use 3 abilities at once which begs the question of why doesn’t everyone just stick 30 labels on themselves every day at all times.
  • Kosaku Kandera (“Con-deh-lah, Koh-sah-kuh”)
    • Cossack Candle
    • Wears suit
    • Fake hand
    • Fucking cop
    • Special unit six
    • Chief
    • Real, people die if they are killed energy
    • Jim Naruto’s friend
  • Miri Sanyama (San-yah-mah, Mee-lee)
    • Member of team
    • Kawaii
    • Deputy chief
    • Literally just “the girl”
    • What is her power again? Does she not have one? Why the fuck is she on the team if she doesn’t?
  • Landscape Mole
    • I forget his real name
    • Supposed hifi inventor
    • A kid
    • Apparently there’s some weird reason why he’s too young to invent the hi fi stickers but that reason is never explained cool

Why it failed

• Any manga set in the future in tokyo is probably going to be racist
• This art feels like a webtoon
• This writing really just feels stiff
• Crazy how this somehow ripped off cyberpunk before it came out
• This really feels like someones first manga, if the art quality was worse I’d assume a highschooler wrote it
• The series does know that reflecting bullets still kill people right?
• How the fuck did they get data on someone that lived a long time ago
• Some of the hifi abilities make no sense why do you need one to literally stab someone you have pinned
• Having experience doesn’t change your body composition you still cannot move fast enough to deflect bullets or split a car in half
• Wow the art really shits itself after chapter 1
• This power system makes no fucking sense, seriously how can anything make you have xray vision
• Characters only exist if plot relevant, so lazy
• Really gotta have the only female MC be emotionally weak?
• These characters are look similar so I have trouble telling characters apart
• Everything must have plot purpose, it all just feels so shallow
• Now THIS is show don’t tell. Rather than learning how the characters are by how they act, Peta is constantly being like “oh he’s such a nice guy” or “he seems like a jerk but has a heart of gold”
• WHY MAKE THEM BARCODES IF YOU NEVER FUCKING SCAN THE BARCODES??? THATS THE POINT OF A BARCODE!

What it did well

• The dramatic pineapple
• Cyberpunk is at least unique for WSJ
• Lmao I like the MC getting arrested in the first chapter, a reverse double taisei if you will
• Well I do like the idea that no matter how powerful you are you still need action to fix things
• I think the paneling is fine, at least it uses splash pages pretty well
  • Does it?
• At least it’s not dialog heavy so it goes quick?
• I did actually like how they broke a completely normal mission to go crazytown
• I lol’d at the bad guy complaining about repair costs when he’s getting shot

Where it could have gone

• Make this like megalo box where authentic skills are much better than fake ones
• Day 1 make the series have magic it’s so stupid they made this scifi when it’s all impossible
• Introduce the characters outside of missions
• This is like the perfect world to make an anti-manga in that it seems normal for 6 chapters then goes off the rails like stealth symphony at the end
• This series seems like it could have very easily shown what makes cyberpunk tokyo unique but just doesn't
• Fucking have a shanon teaching the MC how to drive that would have been amazing

Misc Thoughts

• We live in an ability society
• Wait didn’t peta use the moped ability on the first page?
• How are they getting guns?
• So is this a ripoff of Hungry Joker?
• 6/11 massacre are you kidding me
• Shouldn’t shannon have died from internal injuries by being broken through a highway barrier
• Maxy Bee thoughts:
  • Series it replaced: Illegal Rare by Hiroshi Shiibashi
  • Series that replaced it: Kagamigami by Toshiaki Iwashiro
  • Appeared on two group covers during its run.
  • It’s just the Blood Blockade Battlefront your Mum tells you she’s got at home.
  • Per tucker this series had a bunch of bad/weird translations, since as using Ryo Fu instead of Lu Bu which is much more common

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Community
    • Tucker: Power system unfit for major labels
    • Maxybee: Like scanning a faulty barcode repeatedly
    • The Laughing Fool: A Ghost in the Sell Out
    • Loser: We live in an ability society
      • Knew this would be here
    • Twolfwood: Dolphin Cop but with lame barcodes
    • King Q: Sci-fi dumpster fire put to page
    • Duderocks: ironically it's barcodes won't be scanned
    • RileyOfPi: Anime Cops And Barcodes (are bad)
    • Beast of Burden: Welcome To Detroit: Become Bad 2
  • David: IT’S THE FUTURE aka Cyberpunk 207-sucks
  • Jordan: Hungry Shinobi Joker Squad In Tokyo
  • Guest: Feels more like a lo-fi disaster
• Flop or not
  • Wow this really sucks, go watch Cyberpunk Edgerunner (which is not a hot take)
• Is this the best/worst series we’ve talked about