Amalgam of Distortion: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes (Patreon)

Manga Details

• Author - Ryo Ishiyama
  • Notable people they were an assistant for:
    • Eiichiro Oda (author of One Piece)
      • Noted in an August, 2014 author comment in Weekly Shonen Jump, where Oda said: “I was wondering why Shibata and Ishiyama hadn't been coming to assist me lately, and it turns out they have new series! Good luck!!”. He did not have good luck.
    • Tomohiro Hasegawa (author of Moriking)
      • on Koi no Cupid Yakenohara Jin (credited in-volume)
  • Notable people they had as assistants:
    • Kenta Yuzuriha (Story of a "Jobless" Champion and a Princess Who Together Find Their Happiness)
  • Other works:
    • Mitsubuki Condor (2014, 16 chapters/3 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump) flop eligible
      • Two quirky characters called Sue and Marshmallow seek out fantastic treasures in a mystical world. I am constantly under the impression you’ve already done an episode on this for some reason.
    • One Piece: Episode A (storyboards only) (2020-2021, 4 chapters/2 vols, One Piece Magazine) with Boichi
      • An adaptation of One Piece novel A by Sho Hinata and Tatsuya Hamazaki. Boichi is a busy boy, so Ishiyama storyboarded the whole series and Boichi did the final art.
    • Dragon & Chameleon (2022-present, 2 vols+, GanGan Joker)
      • A successful author swaps bodies with his cynical, evil former assistant, and battles from the rookie level upwards to prove his creative philosophy is the correct one.
• Publishing
  • Run Dates
    • October 8th, 2016 - February 20th, 2017
  • Chapters/Volumes:
    • 18 chapters (+1 epilogue), 3 vols.
  • Series it replaced:
• Takuan & Batsu’s Daily Demon Diary by Kentaro Itani (3 vols, flop)
• Series that replaced it:
  • Demon Prince Poro’s Diaries by Hitsuji Gondaira (2 vols, flop)
• Series that started at the same time as it:
  • Spring Weapon no.1 by Tomohiro Hasegawa (7 vols, did okay)

About the Manga

• Plot
  • Rokumichi is just a guy you know? He goes to school and has a big crush on his childhood friend yayoi who physically abuses him with karate. He finally works up the courage to ask her out and while walking away he sees a little kid on the dang train tracks with a train coming to get him! Oh no! Rokumichi jumps to save him but the kid was actually a hologram and he gets fucking rekt by the train. When he wakes up he’s in an anime science tube with his torso and one of his arms missing as a freaky female scientist slurps his missing guts like spaghetti. Rokumichi discovers that a recent transfer student, Eishu, is there too as a scientist. Eishu tells him that hes been implanted with monster cells to turn him into something called a Gashadokuro and that he’s actually a spy. The evil cannibal lady, whose name is Sarah Warren, overheard him and Eishu breaks Rokumichi out, and he finds that his missing limbs have been replaced with cool boney ones and he has monster powers now. He defeats all the bad scientists but Eishu tells him he has to kill him so he doesn’t become a crazy rampaging monster but when he realizes that Rokumichi hasn’t gone insane he decides to give him another chance with the caveat that if he does go crazy he’ll kill him. Suddenly a hot girl in her underwear wanders over out of nowhere babbling gibberish, and when she stretches her neck 10 feet the two realize that she’s turned into a truly crazy monster. Rokumichi tries to stop Eishu from killing her but she impales herself on one of his many spines anyway.
  • 
    
  • Rokumichi passes out and wakes up in a hospital room with gotou who tells him that he either has to run away and change his identity or join their special police agency: squad 0, the secret squad who fights SAI, the bad guys from chapter 1. Rokumichi chooses the latter and they let him go on his date with yayoi so he can tell her that he has to go away for a while. Eishu and Rokumichi are then made to share a dorm together as roommates and bicker about food and stuff until it’s time to go on their first mission where they have to stop a serial killer guy who uses 9 tail fox powers to fuck up peoples faces and prevent them from breathing. Rokumichi ends up defeating him and the guy is captured with his victims, a paranormal investigation club looking for spooky ghosts, all surviving. Later, Rokumichi and Eishu are just chilling in their dorm when gotou visits them. He tells them that two new really cool agents are coming to join them. He opens the door to find their drivers who hand him a box with the agents finger and ear before blowing the fuck up. The three survive and discover that the squad 0 agents were killed by SAI agents. One of them is a young girl with guns all over her body who Gotou fights and defeats. The other is an anxious man with a super powered laser in his hand who’s worried about returning a DVD on time to avoid late fees. Rokumichi saves Eishu by going into ultra bone mode and defeating him. He goes just a tiny bit crazy from it but is incapacitated when Gotou reveals weird dimension powers that we never learn about. Rokumichi wakes up in the jail cell next to the serial killer guy who tells him that he overheard that his childhood friend Yayoi was kidnapped by Sarah Warren and is being helped captive.
  • 
    
  • Rokumichi busts out of prison and rushes over to save her. When he gets there Sarah is real happy to see him and sends her underling after her while she gropes Yayoi and then drags her to the roof. He has a tengu monster inside of him with gravity powers and loves Sarah because she saved him from things like drowning, being eaten by a lion, and getting struck by lightning. Meanwhile Sarah is threatening Yayoi with an x-acto knife when Eishu appears and cuts off her fingers which she instantly regenerates. She tells him that she’s actually an 800 year old immortal being with mermaid powers who has been trying to make more monsters like herself and that Rokumichi is the first success. Rokumichi defeats the tengu guy and takes him to where everyone else is and Sarah tells the guy that his memories were faked to manipulate him and he’s very sad about that. Rokumichi then fights Sarah who then grows wings, a tail, and uses bone powers like Rokumichi AND gravity powers like the tengu guy. He turns into a giant big ol bone monster and Sarah uses gravity balls to try and hurt him faster than he can regenerate the bones, but he turns the tables on her and uses the gravity ball AND his bones in order to hurt her faster than SHE can regenerate! Rokumichi manages to win but he seems to have turned crazy until Yayoi is able to bring him back to his senses. Then the bones on his feet break off to reveal actual feet. Later, Sarah is still hurt when she’s approached by gotou’s older brother who is apparently the actual bad guy and her boss. Regardless, Rokumichi goes back to school and has a cute moment with Yayoi when he gets a call from Gotou that they need him for something because he still has some of the bone powers in him. So he jumps off a building to go to the rescue because he is now Spider-Man.
  • 
    
• Characters
  • Rokumichi Kusaba
    • Very blunt - you've gained weight
    • Crush on yayoi
    • Goes berserk
    • Able to resist monster shit
  • Eishu kuromizu
    • Transfer student
    • Cop
    • Completely based and not monsterpilled
  • Sara Warren
    • Mad scientist woman
    • Also a monster
    • Cannibal
    • Mermaid killer
  • Gotuo Jirou
    • Hungry for apples?
    • Super strong but nothing really is explaineda bout him
    • 
      

Why it failed

• I feel the pace of panels isn't great like there was a kick but I didn't feel energy of it, this continues throughout the entire series
• I'm quite confused how the humans are able to fight the monsters if they don't have supernatural abilities
• The timeline of when monsters existed is weird
• I just struggle to really understand the framework of the story and how the power system works for anyone
• So dumb it goes into body horror to just straight magic

What it did well

• Arts good if a little unoriginal
• The violence vs romance is pretty funny
• I like how the mc actually asked her out
• Some cool splash pages
• Horror in Shonen is just cool to see
• Samurai cop is actually completely reasonable about how to think about the monsters
• The series really understands it's tone and when to inject some comedy to make fun of itself

Where it could have gone

• Imagine if the mc did have to kill the female monster at the Start and really has to grasp his humanity both phyciscal and mentally
• What if he was completely fine with killing people
• Slumdog millionaire with powers where every flashback gives him an idea for an ability
• It kinda needed a power system or something it's just normal humans fighting monsters but doesn't explain how
• Make the monsters a part of things don't have them all he science made by maybe even worse monsters and the natural monsters arent so bad
• Set up the mermaid shit like lmao cmon

Misc Thoughts

• The monster jibberish reminds me of jjk
• Maxy Bee thoughts:
  • Volume extras include character profiles and little gag drawings in between chapters, as well as 4-koma, bonus drawings, and one-shots.
    • Vol.2 has the one-shot ‘Kyousei no Murasaki’, from Jump NEXT in 2015
    • Vol.3 has the one-shot ‘Ayakashi Ishoku Hen-Itai Garo’ from Weekly Shonen Jump in 2016
      • Both are prototypes that lead to the creation of Amalgam of Distortion, but the latter resembles it more so. I’ll include an image of the main kid’s bone form below.
  • CHAPTER 19 IS VOLUME ONLY. THE SERIES ENDS WITH CHAPTER 18 IN JUMP. THAT’S A BONUS, BAYBEE.
  • The last few pages in the scan are separate from the rest of the chapter too, as a post-credits sequence in the book.

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Community
    • Maxybee: Saxophone Player: “Nice work, Bone Daddy”
    • 090Z: Tfw no crazy immortal mommy gf
    • Diego (Phantom Seer): Some distorted kind of Bone Collection
    • duderocks the earthchild stan: This should’ve been called bone Collection | Why did the mangaka introduce mermaids?
    • LordAnubis, #1RedHoodFan/Mourner: Leaving Jump was the right call
    • Portal man: My life as a teenage monster
    • Redblade: Boring manga is a boner killer
    • Riel: What if your bones were outside? | Mermaid Mother Makes Many Monster Minions
    • Sbubby: Oh god. What has science done?
    • Spike: Distortion speedruns "getting axed in Jump"
    • Spook (Sir Skelington): This is Oppenheimer for Japanese people
    • SuperDave: Planning dates is monstrously hard work
    • 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕸𝕱 𝖄𝖊𝖙𝖎: Spooky skeletons, shitty sketches, substandard storyline
    • Blamoomoo: Skeleton manga should be cool, c'mon
  • David:  gotta break and reset the plot |mermaid murder mermaid murder mermaid murder
  • Jordan: the chainsawman we have at home
  • Guest:
• Flop or not
  • If flop, what they could read instead
    • Flop read scoob and shag or parasyte