 Hey everybody, welcome to another exciting edition of A Week in Geekdom. Today it's a little bit different, different kind of setup. I thought I'd share my screen here as I was looking through some information and I remembered, hey, I haven't actually talked about these manga titles, just a quick little first impressions. Nothing too fancy for you guys, just sharing my thoughts on these brand new Shonen Jump titles. So the first one that we're looking at is Earth Child from Hideo Shinkai. And as it says here, a regular person falls in love with a superhero who protects the Earth. In terms of circumstances, ability, experience, they are from two different worlds, but they get to know each other, support each other, and then a unique love story on a planetary scale now begins. So I only read the first chapter, which was the only thing available as of the recording of this video, but I thought I talked about it because it was a slightly oversized chapter. I think it was close to 60 pages and it was pretty interesting. The art, not necessarily my favorite, the story, even though it was one chapter, it really did feel like I was reading 20 volumes worth of this epic romance slash action sci-fi story crammed into one pilot chapter. Obviously, when you finish reading Earth Child chapter one, you realize what the story is really going to be about. Not necessarily going to spoil it here for you guys, but I'm excited for it. It's a nice concept. It's tragic. It's romantic. It's simple. There's nothing too spectacular about it, but yet I want to read more. I want to find out more about this world. So at the start of this chapter, our main character that you can see here is saved by this awesome superpowered Earth Child girl. She has levitating powers and she can do all sorts of super heroics, but she ends up erasing the main character's mind because he must not know of her existence, I guess, and to protect her identity and keep the world safe and all that tropey stuff that we like from comics. So the twist here being that the guy actually does remember her and looks her up again and is able to find her and track her and just sort of back and forth banter ensues between the two of them and they sort of hit it off from there. There's not a whole lot to it. Just the fact that they explain her powers, they explain how she's operating in this futuristic world that's very similar to our own, of course. So it's a romance in the pilot chapter and we see them get closer and closer together. And of course, by the end of it, the nature of, you know, being an Earth Child is explained how she basically, you know, she is the Superman type character and has to protect the world when there is a catastrophe which does happen in the chapter. So at the end, a little nostalgia, a little bittersweetness to it, but I think it's going to make for an interesting read going forward. Naturally, it wasn't. It was kind of predictable as you were reading it, as you were going along with the story, but I'm excited to know what else this manga have up its sleeve. So as an introductory chapter, yeah, pretty interesting. Again, pretty funny that essentially you're getting a full series just crammed into one manga chapter and then sort of like this pilot for an ongoing series that we're getting. I thought that was pretty funny in my opinion. The next series I'm reading is of course Akane Banashi and I'm hoping I'm pronouncing that right from Yuki Suenaga and Takamasa Moe on art. So this reminds me a lot of Shoha Shoten in that it's taking the concept of entertainment and Japanese media and comedy and making a series out of it. And it's nothing supernatural. It's nothing fantastical. It's these human characters going through a very human thing. In the case of Akane Banashi, it is through the world of Rakugo, which is the one man performance art that is so emblematic from Japan. And you have the character of Shinta Arakawa, the father in this story. He's trying to make it. He has what it takes and unfortunately, or though predictably fails at some point in the opening chapters. And a couple years later, it's up to Akane Ozaki, his loving daughter who wants to remind everybody that his father really was funny and she's going to become the next Rakugo star. That is essentially what you need to know about this title. The artwork is absolutely beautiful, even though nothing really happens because it's about Rakugo and it's a more realistic slice of life series. The art is very nice to look at. I love the character designs in this. Gonna go ahead and share my screen here with Manga Plus legally, of course, you can see you can read all these chapters. And I don't know, there's something about the character designs which is really nice. And of course, that goes back to the artist Takamasa Moe. I really like how nice everybody looks in this. They look realistic. And I think the art does a good job of letting us know about the stories that these characters are telling. So of course, the main character, she doesn't like that everybody's calling her dad a deadbeat because it's a very awkward profession. It's not something that's glamorized in today's society. He chooses to do somewhat of an older art form that's really not relevant in today's society. And the whole concept of Rakugo is really interesting. It's essentially you playing out this story for an audience and you're the whole friggin cast and you're making all the jokes and you're transmitting that energy and that vibe of that story to the audience and they're trying, you know, as they're seeing you perform, they're visualizing the story right there. But what's crazy, it's just, it's one person. That's insane and that's really hard to pull off. So essentially, it's a pretty simple story. I'm enamored by these type of tales. Not necessarily the most avid reader when it comes to Shonen Jump, simply because I kind of get a little bored by the similarity between titles. But having stuff like this is much more appealing to me and I'm really excited to continue the story. I don't see it lasting super long, not because of cancellations, although that could be a possibility. Who knows? But just the fact that just the nature of the story really does lend itself for a nice beginning, middle, and end and not this, you know, overgrown story that could have been told in simpler fashion or smaller chapters. So just like with Shoua Houten, it relies on you liking these subjects and liking these characters. Because yes, it is about comedy at the focus of it. It is about drama theater in the case of this one with Rakugo, but it's more of a character-centric tale and how they are able to entertain audiences and in the case of our main character here, how she is able to get the message of cross of how wonderful her dad is and how, you know, Justice was not served in this case and she's going to carry on the family legacy and make sure that people know that Arakawa was a nice Rakugo performer. So yeah, overall these two series are pretty interesting. This was an interesting video to make as I usually don't use this format a lot, but hopefully you guys were entertained by my little musings here, completely improvised. Stay tuned for more videos on the channel. I'll be reviewing a couple new books that I got and all that fun stuff. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Thank you for liking, commenting and subscribing. It really does mean a whole lot. Thank you so much for supporting your boy here at Weekend Geek Tim. That's it. I got to go. God bless. Stay safe out there. I will catch all of you on our next episode.