Demon's Plan: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes (Patreon)

Manga Details

• Author:  Okamoto, Yoshimichi (Story & Art)
  • Notable people they had as assistants:
    • Kei Kamiki (Magu-chan: God of Destruction)
      • Included in both assistant pages under the name Keiji Kinoshita. Pen name changed some time afterwards.
    • Mizuki Yoda (ne0;lation, Marriagetoxin)
      • Included in the assistant pages in-volume, caricatured as some sort of inky fox
• Author’s other works:
  • None. Nothing before or after. Just three one-shots, one of which was entered in (BUT DID NOT WIN) the Golden Future Cup in 2014.
• Run dates:  Nov 21, 2016 to Feb 20, 2017
  • Series it replaced:
    • Love Rush by Ryohei Yamamoto
  • Series that replaced it:
    • Hungry Marie by Ryuhei Tamura
  • Series in same serialisation round:
    • Ole Golazo by Takemasa Moue (Akane-banashi) (flop eligible)
• Chapters/Volumes: 12 / 2

About the Manga

• Plot
  • Boro and Carlos are bros trying to get enough money to make a wish using a mystical item called the demons plan. They know it works because they once saw a dude regain the ability to walk using it. However it costs $1million to use it, and just after working really hard and saving it up, Carlos is arrested by a dirty cop. While in prison the guy who owns the demons plan happens to show up and reveals that it’s a fake, so Carlos goes nuts. When Boro finds him the police station is destroyed and only Carlos is alive, next to a creepy guy called the patron (Patreon.com/shonenflop) who used the actual demons plan to give Carlos super powers. Boro tries to bring him back and reveals that he has his own demons plan power: red armor which turns his blood into armor. Boro punches Carlos really hard with it so the patron takes him and escapes. Three days later the patron appears to Boro and says that he is now a demon called the “protectionist” who will never age and is locked in battle with 107 other demons. They must kill each other and the last one standing will get a wish because THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE! So Boro gets on a ship and goes to the city where he finds a sexy information broker named Salvia. She doesn’t want to help him because she runs a damn business and actually she hates guys like Boro… but then, why can’t she stop thinking about him? It’s not like she cares or anything while she keeps watch on him getting mugged.
  • 
    
  • Boro scares the muggers away with his power and they’re all immediately murdered by a guy named Veronika who satisfies this manga’s queer panic quota. Veronika is the “collectionist” demon and stores a bunch of weapons in his body. Salvia threatens him with a gun and he absorbs it, so Boro fights him. He shoots a bunch of guns and a missile at Boro but Boro’s blood turns into his armor so it doesn’t work. Boro wins of course and they leave Veronika alive but the Patron shows up to shoot him. Veronika was a piece of shit but like it turns out that one time he wanted to marry a girl who died so I bet you feel like a jerk for hating him now don’t you. Also Salvia’s brother is missing and he’s probably involved with the demons plan. Anyway he dies and when Boro and Salvia go back to her room they’re confronted by a guy named Eustass who’s the “Justist” demon. His power is uh… I dunno, tornadoes? He’s actually a good guy and tells them his tragic backstory. His sister was gonna get married to the village chief’s son but when he found out that her friend was going to be given to a bad guy named Roblion to be a sex slave Eustass rescues her. Unfortunately Roblion finds out and kills everyone in the village except for him and his sister and now Eustass wants revenge. Salvia and Boro go with Eustass to the village his sister is hiding to discover that it’s been 56 years since she went into hiding and she’s now and old lady with a granddaughter. By the way a lot of the immortals have teamed up into factions under leaders called “The Dogma.” One of the Dogma is named Velvet and It seriously doesn’t matter aside from the fact that Velvet hurt Roblion and he wants revenge so he’s sending a group of bandits to sack the village where Eustass’s sister lives to get supplies I think.
  • 
    
  • The two demon boys fend off the bandits until Boro tells Eustass to go find Roblion while he fights everyone alone. Eus finds Roblion who immediately grows two more arms like Goro from Mortal Kombat and they fight. However, Roblion has the power of “Super Regeneration” so he just immediately recovers from everything. Thankfully Boro appears, having defeated all of the bandits, to join the fight. This causes Roblion to get serious and grow 4 more arms, but Boro also gets serious and his armor grows to cover his entire body. To stop the regeneration, they realize they have to take Roblion out in one hit. So Eustass uses his tornado powers to fire Boro right at Roblion’s head, knocking him unconscious. He doesn’t want to kill him so Boro traps him in his blood armor, seemingly trapping him in that spot forever which is way more humane. The Patron then shows up to talk about politics and reveals that Carlos has defeated “the angerist” demon and taken one of the seats of Dogma, as well as that Salvia’s brother is the “Revengist” demon and is involved in this too just like she thought. He then says that he’s also a member of Dogma, called “the informationist” demon, and that a tournament arc is about to start. Thankfully though the manga ends before that happens.
• Characters
  • Boro
    • Perv
    • Dumb shonen protag
    • No family
    • Blood demon powers
    • Stronger he gets the more he bleeds
  • Carlos Diarose
    • Not perv?
    • Smart
    • Kinda a psycho
    • Has demon powers or something
  • Patron
    • Willy wonka guy?
    • Super violent and edgy
  • Salvia
    • Info broker
    • No bullshit
    • Alcoholic
    • Looker for her brother
    • I don’t think she does anything but complains?
    • Tsundere af
  • Eustass Bergamod
    • Justist demon
    • Defeat Royvleon billy
    • Trolly problem didn’t work out so well
    • immortal
    • They don’t explain his power at all

Why it failed

• Panneling is just too overstuffed for this plot
• So edgy
• The writing just feels lose, like so much indirect dialog yet still feels so direct
• The proportions are very off at times and so is placement of characters in panneling
• Every character is at 100 at all times
• “Just going to be raped” what the fuck
• Art WAS kinda solid and then fell completely apart. The backgrounds are cluttered as hell.
• The hell was up with the finger
• Very little actually happens in this series
• Eustass shows up and completely takes over the entire comic. The plot just stops and turns on a dime to be about him.
• Salvia basically disappears and becomes irrelevant almost as soon as she’s introduced. She has no personality at all.
• Complicated political intrigue that is totally pointless
• Art starts going extremely off model very fast it’s awful
• A lot of info dumps
• Bad guys have nothing to them, they’re just completely unsympathetic one dimensional evil bastards
• Paneling and composition are difficult to follow

What it did well

• Art is really solid, has backgrounds
• Everyone is so nice, it’s weird having the MC be one of the worst people in the series
• Everything was kinda competent?

Where it could have gone

• The artist really just needed to be explicit about things, I legit think he was trying to use post timeskip oda style writing from chapter 1 which doesn’t work
• Have an actual sense of progression with the hero, let him actually spend time in his lower power state and learn the rules and optimizing his abilities
• Show the actual turmoil with the fact the protag has to kill his BF to make things right
• Why are we getting pointless backstory, protip make the audience care about a character before having us see their backstory
• It would have been cool if eustass had a reason for teaming up with Boro like his power was a hard counter to the evil guy

Misc Thoughts

• They have missiles, what year is this?
• I feel this really wanted to be weird west but it wasn’t?
• This kinda makes me think of FMA
• Maxy Bee thoughts:
  • Upon ‘finishing’ this you may ask yourself the question, “is that it? Is there some sort of epilogue that does anything with what you’re told in the final chapter?”. No. No there is not. That really is the ending.
  • This series had a ‘Jump Start’ run in the digital Weekly Shonen Jump magazine Viz Media used to do prior to their current simulpub model, giving us three day-and-date chapters with official English names and the like. Like Bolo for our main character, or ‘Carlos Diarroz’ over the scanlator’s ‘Carlos Diarose’.
    • It also means that it’s possible to read ¼ of the series without pointless swearing added in, imagine that.
  • Viz’s version translates the red armour as the ‘crimson bell’, which sounds cool, though with it being ‘aka yoroi’, red armour is more literally correct. BUT, the furigana is ‘akagane’, which is copper, which might inform one some level as to why Viz or Shueisha went with crimson bell. After all anyone from Philly could tell you the virtues of having a giant copper bell.
  • Volume 1 is five chapters and the one-shot ‘Nigashiya’. Vol.2 is chapters 6-12 and the one-shot ‘Brain Breaker’.
    • Okamoto makes a point of being grateful to the editor for including the two one-shots and bulking the series out to two volumes, which considering the low sales of the series probably constituted a bit more money overall for him. Reminds you that this is a real person whose livelihood just took a big old knock after a mere 12(ish) weeks of work.
  • Most extra pages are just an extra little panel. Not even like a joke, just a little extra drawing taking up a tiny fraction of the page.
  • <— like this
  • 2000 Watts a day at the docks, Japanese dockworker makes 1,120 an hour, 8,960 a day. (equivalent to £54?)
  • Assuming parity for no reason, this makes 2000 watts equivalent to 8,960 yen, or again, £54.
  • 
    
  • Nine years = 3,285 days
  • 11 months = 308 days (roughly)
  • 23 days = 3,616 days total
  • 3,616 x 2000 is 7,232,000, so they should have been able to take the Demon’s Plan 7 times over, but then I am ignoring weekends and expenditures.
  • Also if those were all workdays, they saved up the equivalent of £188,176.64 ($233,996.67)
  • - So a mil is roughly about £26,135 ($32,517.04)
  • This was a waste of time and my maths is probably incredibly skewed.
  • 
    

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Community
    • Tucker: touching friendship story, then jack shit
    • Maxybee: Demon’s plan to get canceled immediately
    • Lord Anubis: Tournament Shōnen, except when it's not
    • Portal Man: Wait, doctor Faustus made a tournament?
    • Riel: Shonen Protagonist Says, Just Punch Harder.
    • SquidCo42: Artist couldn't save protagonist against cancelist.
    • Portal Man: the demon wins, no matter what
    • The Duke of Dumbass: The most 14 year old shit ever
    • Cram: Starts surprisingly gay, otherwise boringly generic
    • Duderocks: So edgy yet so very dull
    • Dackerson: Didn't go according to Demon's Keikaku
    • Twolfwood: I read this morning, already forgotten
    • Yeti: Demonic dueling dingus drives droll drama
    • Diego_MT: Demon's plan was flopping all along
    • Redblade: Pretty good oneshot... Wait theres more?
  • David: Had no plan, demon’s or otherwise
  • Jordan: there should be only one chapter
  • Guest: Jojo tackles the wealth gap (kinda)/(not)
  • - Imagine if this guy had hemophilia
  • - Hard work hardly works! You twats!
  • - Genuinely generic, startlingly standard, clinchingly cliché
  • - One chapter cutting, then just edgy
  • - Story bleeds worse than its lead
  • - A Blood Clot in Manga Form
  • 
    
• Flop or not
  • If flop, what they could read instead
  • If not, how it compares to Chainsaw Man
  • Dis a flop baby, go watch The Jury
  • Cert Flop this was traaaash
• Is this the best/worst series we’ve talked about