Instant Bullet: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes (Patreon)

Manga Details

• Author: Akasaka, Aka
  • Who they were an assistant for:
    • Jinsei Kataoka & Kazuma Kondo (Deadman Wonderland)
• Author’s other works:
  • Sayonara Piano Sonata (2012, 16 chapters, 3 volumes, Dengeki Maoh)
    • Arguably a full adaptation of a light novel but maybe still cover it
  • Kaguya-sama: Love is War (2015-2022, 281 chapters, 28 volumes, Miracle Jump/Weekly Young Jump)
    • Very good def worth reading and has an anime
  • Oshi no Ko (2020-present, 102+ chapters, 9+ volumes, Weekly Young Jump, art by Mengo Yokoyari)
    • A doctor is reincarnated as one of the twin children of a pop idol he was caring for during his life
• Run dates: Jul 27, 2013 to Aug 27, 2015
• Chapters/Volumes: 5/27
• Ran in Dengeki Maoh
  • It tends to do stuff like chuuni tales of twisted humanity, sweet yuri series featuring schoolgirls, adaptations of hyper-weeby rpgs like Persona and Disgaea, and lolicon stuff. Like, a LOT of lolicon stuff. So think of these magazines as for a specific sort of sweaty nerd who goes on about purity a lot while also min-maxing their relationship side-que
  • It has some weird shit in it as well and Maxybee is not a fan

About the Manga

• Plot
  • Kuro is sad and lonely. He has two imaginary friends, beats people up for fun, and wants to destroy the world. For some reason no one likes him. Then one day he meets Sera, a girl who has power over bombs and wants to be a hero. They are called instant bullets and I forget why. Kuro actually made the beast because it’s his power. He’s the bad guy kind of, but really he’s just an edgelord. Then they meet a witch named Yume who says there’s 20 instant bullets. She can see the future but it’s fucking useless cuz she can’t change it and everyone sulks about being edgy. Turns out Sera is also a bad guy who wants to blow up the world. Yume introduces him to a guy named Moroki with a pocket dimension and a creepy murder bunny girl named Kokage. Bunny girl also wants to kill everyone on the planet because her mom was a sex worker who died. People think she killed a bunch of people in something called the maria drug incident because she created a new drug, but the drug just makes bad people nice. When people couldn’t get the drug anymore they didn’t wanna be bad again so they all committed suicide in a way that framed her for their murder. She wants to make a giant plant that makes dicks stop working but Kuro and Moroki make her cry until she turns nice.
  • 
    
  • Yume foresaw her own death and also that she’d fall in love with Kuro so she enrolls in high school and asks him on a date. They go back to her place where she has a little sister who stays locked away in her room don’t worry about it, it's not important. She wants to watch porn and make out but Kuro turns her down. She’s gonna die in three days so he agrees to be her boyfriend til then. Then a group of evil ibs appear called Colorful and they kill the witch which makes Kuro sad because the romcom high school chapters were the best part of the manga, and he gets ULTRA DEPRESSED which makes him MEGA STRONG. However, the witch’s little sister was actually her from when she was a little kid because she also has time travel powers. That’s right, I lied. She WAS important. She went back in time and grew up so she was older in the present but her current day self still exists here as a 9 year old girl. Kuro had two neighbor girls who were sisters and they were the imaginary friends he’d been hallucinating. The older one, Toiro, burned down her own house and Kuro felt guilty about it while the younger one, Iroha, got put in a coma thanks to that fire, and then legally became Kuro’s sister. Turns out they’re actually not hallucinations. Well Toiro is. Kind of. I think. They’re also instant bullets with vague powers created by Kuro’s ability maybe?
  • 
    
  • Then Colorful’s Instant Bullet Lawyer gets Kuro to sign Toiro’s “life” away from them but Kuro suddenly changes her name which ruins the contract because the law is confusing like this manga. Sera then steals all the bombs in the world and threatens to blow everyone up unless Kuro can find her. Through a flashback we see that Sera was a sociopath who thought death was funny but her dad tricked her into wanting to be a hero until he got hit by the isekai bus and she thought that was funny too. Kuro finds her and tells her that his angst made him strong enough to destroy the world first so Sera gets to be the hero and fires all of the bombs in the world at him until they’re all gone, successfully enacting world wide nuclear disarmament and becoming one of the greatest heroes in history. But she’s gonna drop the mega ultra bomb until Yume reappears because she has time travel powers and for some reason decided to only use those powers like a couple times. Yume stops the bomb and that’s pretty much the end basically.
• Characters
  • Kuro Fukase
    • Tucker: Kuro means black, hammering home that this dude is EDGY and DARK
    • MC
    • Very violent
    • Pervert
    • Not liked by his classmates
    • Imagines siblings?
    • Edgy badguy
    • Abandoned by his mother
  • Sera Himeura
    • Wants to save the world
    • Jk wants to kill everyone
    • Special attack star bomb
    • Dead parents
    • 
      
  • Yume Furusuna
    • Seems to know it all
    • Witch hat
    • Can show people the future
    • Crush on Fukase
    • Dies lol
    • Kind of the most interesting character imo.
  • Fujinami kokage
    • Super twisted
    • Wears onesee
    • Controls plants
    • Drug kingpin
    • Wants to die
    • Her mom didn’t just deal drugs, or sex. She dealt worse: drug sex.

Why it failed

• Art is kinda inconsistent
• Pacing feels weird I’m have trouble following it
• Ya know if you want a mc to not be liked by society that’s fine but THEY SHOULDN’T BE RIGHT TO NOT LIKE HIM
• These chapters feel sooooo slow
• I know the MC has a shitty life but he really does nothing to improve it
• It is exhausting knowing every character is secretly twisted and evil
• This series makes no fucking sense and the author didn’t actually build up to anything he just wants constantly edgy reveals
• This series is constantly trying to make the mc a good guy when he clearly doesn’t which makes the plot feel very muddy
• This series seems to have just rewritten its plot midway through
• Again we see an author struggle with making monthly chapters work
• I do not know what the plot of this manga is

What it did well

• The monsters look cool and some nice page layouts
• Has a nice sense of style and effects
• It feels like a fun deconstruction of shonen manga
• I did lol at the blowup doll distraction
• Everyone being a terrible person is novel?
• Getting out of the contract by changing names was cute, the series did do some minimal work establishing names are important
• It had a few little fun moments not related to plot which was nice
• LMAO THIS ENDING WHAT A TWIST
• There are actually some really interesting concepts in here. The idea of people being addicted to a drug that makes them kind, for instance.
• The time travel stuff is convoluted but it’s sometimes cool and interesting maybe almost.
• The romcom parts are actually pretty good
• Some effective scenes like when he’s crying playing the video game with young witch.

Where it could have gone

• Be cool to have a shonen protag with schizophrenia that’s not used as a twist plot device
• What if 1b played on how it looks like 18 and it's all about people having to emotionally prepare for adulthood
• Lower the stakes why is everything the end of the world
• Have a crossover with agrav boys and fix their depression
• Been a series about cognitive dissonance between powers and characters, it’s an interesting idea that the protagonistic characters have very violent or evil aligned abilities

Misc Thoughts

• Has a chapter 1b which is kinda weird, Bamb points out to make a Ib = 1b joke
• 99% of people in the world achieve happiness is utter bullshit
• Big fax on the nothing being random
• This makes me really appreciate how well OP handled Robin
• THE BADGUY HAS THE SUPER SMARTPHONE
• Hahaha. IBS like irritable bowel syndrome. That’s great.
• Maxy Bee thoughts:
  • I am very incompatible with this sort of comic, because I like… believe in humans.
  • Cancellation after two years and five volumes is pretty good by our standards.
  • Aka Akasaka says this is something he worked on since high school, and calls it his life’s work in the afterword. Kind of cute considering the success he went on to.
  • Akasaka declares his intent to return to this one day, but has since retired as an artist, now only writing comics, so it’ll be very different if it ever happens.

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Community
    • Tucker: Gentlemen, we’ve achieved it: peak emo!
    • Maxybee:  A chuuni tale of twisted humanity
    • Orange: madoka magica but everything is black
    • Duderocks: Protags power is pupifed cream? Amazing
    • Chickenwarlord: Biscuit Hammer: Now with extra delusions!
    • Albie: Who wrote this Instant Bullshit? Ishigami?
    • Twolfwood: Not bizarre enough to interest me
    • Dragonitti: I feel nothing and remember less. (Special thanks to Resident Warhammer Nerd)
    • 090z: Neat concepts, not expanded thoroughly enough
    • Resident Warhammer Nerd: a miracle this even got made
  • David: you all can't be this edgy
  • David: Alexa play Where Is My Mind
  • Jordan: they’re all angsty cuz of IBS
    • This plot’s the opposite of instant
  • Guest:
• Flop or not
  • If flop, what they could read instead
    • Lucifer and the biscuit hammer BABY
    • Also Angel beats
    • Puella Magi Madoka Magica
  • If not, how it compares to Chainsaw Man
• Is this the best/worst series we’ve talked about