Champagne: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes (Patreon)

Manga Details

Araki Joh (writer):

• Author’s other works:
  • Done a fucking ton, 20+ series. Most of them in hospitality
  • Sommelier series - between the three series almost 30 volumes
  • Bartender - 40 volumes between 4 series; has an anime
  • Aiport - 7 volumes about airport staff
  • Hotlier- 2 vols  about hotel staff
  • Niragi Kioumaru - 5 volumes about a swordsmith?

Kenji Nagatomo:

• Notable people they were an assistant for:
  • Masanori Morita (Rokudenashi BLUES, ROOKIES, Beshari Gurashi)
    • Assisted on ROOKIES
• Author’s other works:
  • Hotel Milk 2 vols FLOP ELIGIBLE
    • Fella from a bodyguard service gets hired to look after a mafia boss’ daughter, who runs a cafe and gets into constant trouble with her bubbly ways and freakish athletic abilities.
  • Did bartender as well which was a big hit
• Run dates: Apr 18, 2018 to Mar 6, 2019
  • Series it replaced:
    • Nothing, really.
  • Series that replaced it:
    • Nothing. Grand Jump is weird like that.
  • You may be thinking that it’s weird that nothing really ended or began because of Champagne, but Grand Jump is a strange magazine for businessmen who are horny, hungry, and long for the days of their youth. It runs all sorts of stuff irregularly, and if something wraps there’s no guarantee of anything replacing it. As such, cancellations are rare.
  • Published as part of a spring campaign in 2018 that aimed to launch FORTY new series across all of Shueisha’s manga magazines. Series included in this campaign are Hakyuu Hoshin Engi, We Are Magical Boys, Olympia Kyklos, a returning from hiatus Terra Formars, World’s End Harem Fantasia, and many, MANY more
• Chapters/Volumes: 15 / 2

About the Manga

• Plot
  • Two old guys are at a club with a sexy hostess named Ema. One of them throws a temper tantrum that one of the champagne bottles brought to him was a fake. Unable to handle the blow to their club’s reputation, Ema is tasked with proving it’s real. While falling asleep in her European history class, Ema notices that her teacher, part time lecturer Shunsuke, is kind of an expert on French history, so she makes him lunch for her and her weird friend Rin who knows an insane amount of champagne trivia for some reason. Ema makes Shunsuke pretend to be a champagne critic with Rin there to help, and they use the power of champagne to repair the old men’s relationship. Next an old rich lady is mad that her son is marrying a poor hostess so she pays her 20 million yen to go away. The hostess returns the money, reveals that she’s pregnant, and give her champagne that the main characters helped pick out which earns her respect. Then Shunsuke meets an old friend who became a rich but lonely crypto bro, so Shunsuke drinks champagne with him that’s so rare money can’t buy it, and his friend thinks that’s cool. Unfortunately the crypto bro has been doing illegal money things so Shunsuke has Winston Churchill champagne with him to cheer him up. Shunsuke invites him to drink with his friends but he ends up dying in a car accident on the way oh well
  • 
    
  • Next an old teacher is being threatened with divorce by his much younger wife who was his ex pupil because he’s so obsessed with economics that he doesn’t even remember what champagne he was drinking. He calls the main characters in to help figure it out but it turns out it was just the champagne they drank when he proposed to her. Next, Ema meets a cute guy and falls in love with him so she buys champagne to drink with him. Unfortunately she finds out he’s already married with a kid so she just drinks with Shunsuke and Rin instead. Then a famous author asks Shunsuke to appraise champagne that his mom gave him before dying and he uses symbolism to prove that his mom actually loved him. He repays Shunsuke by letting him live in his grandpa’s mansion that’s getting torn down in a year, and the girls start a bar out of it. Next 3 successful brothers walk into the bar and argue about which champagne is better, so Shunsuke gives them each champagne and then reveals he bamboozled them and that they actually got their brothers’ favorite drink instead. This repairs their love. Next a salaryman is sad cuz his coworker got mad at him when he coughed during a champagne toast to their boss. Shunsuke drinks champagne with him and makes him realize that his coworker tried really hard to set that up, which fills him with determination. Then a guy missed his entrance exams to help an old lady who died anyway and because of that he couldn’t get into the school he wanted to, ruining his life. His friend just got on the train instead and is now a rich doctor. They drink champagne together and he can’t hide his jealousy, which sends his doctor friend away in tears. Shunsuke talks to him and they bring him back where his friend reveals he feels bad about leaving that old woman to die so that’s why he became a doctor.
  • 
    
  • Next Shunsuke is on TV talking about champagne for some reason, when he gets a message from an ex girlfriend to meet him somewhere. Instead her mom showed up, said her daughter had to leave quickly and gives him champagne. Turns out her daughter has cancer and is going in for a vaguely defined surgery. Then Shunsuke meets with an old rich guy who runs a food company and never had time for friends except for his old war buddy that became his rival in the food business. His rival died and sent him champagne and Shunsuke uses symbolism to prove that they were friends. Next Ema sees a depressed and guy and invites him to drink champagne with them. She tells him not to commit suicide and then reveals that a friend of hers killed himself in middle school so his mom sends her texts every year pretending to be him, still alive. Next Shunsuke learns that his deadbeat dad is dying, but when he learns that he left him champagne, Shunsuke uses symbolism to prove that his dad loved him. Finally it turns out that no one knows who the fuck Rin is. Ema just kinda vaguely met her and she doesn’t go to their school, so using symbolism, Shunsuke goes to France where he determines that she is an angel. He comes home to Japan to find her toasting champagne over his father’s grave like an absolute psycho. Now just go back through this plot summary and pretend that every sentence was interrupted with an excerpt from the Wikipedia page on champagne and you have this manga.
• Characters
  • Ema Sakiyama (Sah-kee-yah-mah, Eh-mah)
    • Feisty
    • Snoozes
    • Hostess
    • Proud of her boobies
    • Tried to date a married man it was weird
  • Rin (reen)
    • Quiet and shy
    • Dissociates a lot
    • Wine expert
    • The series kind of forgets about her
    • I'm not sure what the point of her is
    • An actual angel
  • Shunsuke Sakaki (Sah-sah-kee, Jun-s’kay)
    • Europe professor
    • Lives in a box
    • Had rich friend who died? In a car crash
  • Boomers
    • Pretty much some old npc lady who runs the bar and an old guy
    • 
      

Why it failed

• I'm sorry is this some sort of bourgeois manga Im too poor to understand?
• A slow start
• Wine facts are cool but everything feels like an excuse to talk about wine
• Just don’t really care about anything that’s not learning about wine
• I can’t tell all these old men apart
• I have no idea what the fuck is going on a ton
• So much text
• It's all sitting and talking so boring
• So boring jfc
• That suicide chapter wow

What it did well

• Some solid-ass art
• It’s fun reading something that’s just kinda friends hanging out
• Everything is explained via natural dialog no long text boxes
• This is quite informative
• This really sells the poor millennial energy
• The cover art is cool

Where it could have gone

• MAke this like 5 chapters this is not a topic with legs
• Have them go do things like go to a field trip to a vein yard or something, I talked about it in the chibi but if talking about Victory champagne gets you going to a sports event at least It's something
• Make it more about the people mattering than just wine like the divorce chapter was a good example of it
• Build up the bar part like talk about how they market it and shit could be a base building operation
• Visually metaphor for drinking the champagne yea just steal from food wars

Misc Thoughts

• This really is a great show of how awful boomers are lmao
• It's neat all the brands are real, no wcdonalds
• Fun fact my dogs middle name is champagne
• Maxy Bee thoughts:
  • This series, despite being some 15 chapters, took almost a full year to publish, having to take frequent breaks from the regular twice-monthly pace of Grand Jump. This probably related to its early conclusion more than any other factors, as GJ is famously patient compared to its sister magazines.
  • Araki Joh’s series all tend to use the formula of the taste, origins, or deeper meaning behind a drink resolving personal dramas on an episodic basis, so this is more of the same winning strategy.

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Community
    • Tucker: Tasting notes: dry, understated, bright, mature
    • Maxybee: Bit of bubbly breaks the heart
    • Portal Man: i'm new, and i'm an alcoholic | talking about wine makes me hungry
    • Tree: I still cant pronounce Champagne right
    • Riel: Sparkling Wine, Great Art, Decent Ending.
    • Chudley: From Japan? Manga. Elsewhere? Sparkling Comics.
    • Daniel: Isn’t Non-Japanese Manga Just Sparkling Comics
    • Duderocks: Makes me wish France was real
    • Yeti: Bottles of bubbly breaking down barriers
    • Resident WH Nerd: Sparkling wine for a flat series
    • Suprascoriae: Quite literally the Bubbles of God
    • Chicken Warlord: Drops (doesn't finish) of God? Maybe
    • Blahmoomoo: Tonight I'd recommend Drops of God.
    • T Wolfwood: never tried Champaign, manga or beverage
  • David: wow boomer's really just fucking suck | wine sparkles, the manga does not
  • Jordan: solve all relationship issues with alcohol
  • Guest:
• Flop or not
  • Wow this sucked, go drink a shirley temple instead
• Is this the best/worst series we’ve talked about