Masashi Kishimoto new series, Samurai 8 is a dud (UP: Cancelled)

The art is VERY detailed but as mentioned, VERY busy. I'm sure it would look good animated, but I'm not sure it will get to that point...

My main problem is the story, though. It's pretty convoluted and just kind of throws stuff at you. Princesses, keys, etc., It's just... I dunno, just way too rushed to quickly. First couple chapters were ok, but then it just went on so quickly and the characters aren't really detailed and just yeah... A pretty big disappointed, and I'm really not surprised it's near the bottom of the SJ rankings, either.

I'm a huge Naruto fan but this just didn't grab me. I didn't hate it or anything but nothing had me coming back either. Naruto had me hooked right off the bat.

Castile said:

People may say it is because it's Sci-Fi, but Edens Zero is also sci-fi and is selling at average 3-4 times more than Samurai 8 on the first week. Astral Lost was also popular a couple years back, and even got a full adaption after the manga ended, a rare sight as nothing new was release to promote.

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Edens Zero runs in a different magazine and doesn't have to worry with sharing space with heavy hitters such as OP, Yaiba and Neverland.

brinstar said:

Naruto had me hooked right off the bat.

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Pretty much. In comparison this has been a real snoozefest for the most part.

...Well that's kinda sad for me, because I rather like Samurai 8. But well, however much it may appeal to my particular niche, sales like that are really not what Shonen Jump will want. The shift to a samurai battle royale the last few chapters may reflect such, now that I think about it.

That's...brutal. I knew it wasn't doing very well, but not bomb-levels. Just goes to show nothing's guaranteed in this industry.

Kishimoto's clout aside, I can't say I'm surprised though -- far too convoluted for what's a run-of-the-mill shonen, right down to the overly-busy art. (What were they thinking with that character whose hands had multiple personality disorder or w/e?)

Demon Slayer the GOAT.

Kisimoto's illustrations in Naruto were more detailed and enjoyable to look at than Akira Ōkubo's Samurai 8 stuff. Everything just "blends" because of the lack of detail. The story is pretty boring right now too.

Here's an example of the pamphlet thing. I guess any WSJ volume you buy comes with it.

Dale Copper said:

Samurai 8 had...pretty high ranking upon it's debut, the the likes of chapter 2 - 7 being in the TOP 5 ranking series of the week.

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The first few index placements are chosen by the editors. The position in the index table only starts really following the series' ranking votes by week 8.

MrSaturn99 said:

(What were they thinking with that character whose hands had multiple personality disorder or w/e?)

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I had to read some of those panels over a few times to even figure out WHAT I was reading. It was weird and just not really clear.

SteelBeast6Beets said:

Edens Zero runs in a different magazine and doesn't have to worry with sharing space with heavy hitters such as OP, Yaiba and Neverland.

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The argument I see some people spout for it failing is that Japan just doesn't like Sci-Fi which is just false, as the two above examples have shown; plus they absolutely love Star Wars. Sure it does have hard competition in Jump, but that doesn't excuse its horrible ranking these past couple of weeks, especially when it repeatedly goes down to the bottom five.

I've only read the first chapter but the art is cool

It's going to get axe'd in the next year.

Xyer said:

Demon Slayer the GOAT.

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Demon Slayer is truly next level

I've been enjoying it so far but I'm not surprised. Kishimoto introduced way too many concepts way too quickly. It's like if Hunter x Hunters delved into the complexities of Nen in chapter 3.

Castile said:

The argument I see some people spout for it failing is that Japan just doesn't like Sci-Fi which is just false, as the two above examples have shown; plus they absolutely love Star Wars. Sure it does have hard competition in Jump, but that doesn't excuse its horrible ranking these past couple of weeks, especially when it repeatedly goes down to the bottom five.

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First time I've read something such as that and cannot wrap my mind around it. Japan is the last country I'd think that would shut down Sci-Fi works.

It's just not very good. There's some cool visual ideas and it doesn't look bad, but it's just not very captivating. Very by the numbers and bland, and it throws a ton of shit at you. It would've been better off simplying things early on and focusing on getting to know the characters more.

And, honestly, re-reading Naruto a few years ago, I felt it didn't hold up at all. I think he may just have never been a very good writer.

I read the first few issues of Samurai 8 and it felt rushed. Why set up a story about a disabled kid wanting to be a samurai and then give him a fancy cybernetic body with no downsides in the first chapter? He achieved his goal in the beginning of the series so you were given no time to sympathize with his situation. And I thought it was lame he was able to flex on that other cyborg samurai so easily right after getting his powers. There has to be SOME buildup.

Anyway, my boy Denji is getting that money. GO CHAINSAW MAN!!!!!!

FusionNY said:

I've been enjoying it so far but I'm not surprised. Kishimoto introduced way too many concepts way too quickly. It's like if Hunter x Hunters delved into the complexities of Nen in chapter 3.

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*shudders

Mankoto said:

Demon Slayer is truly next level

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Lmao

It's an intensely mediocre series. It spends way too much time on boring lore and worldbuilding and not enough on establishing characters and a reason for us to care about the universe. And it doesn't even do the lore and worldbuilding well, since it's overly long, dry and inefficient and despite spending so much time on it I still feel like very little has been clearly defined. And none of it has gone towards actually making the world feel like a real, lived in place, it's just vague jargon and vague explanations of how the powers work

Curler said:

The art is VERY detailed but as mentioned, VERY busy. I'm sure it would look good animated, but I'm not sure it will get to that point...

My main problem is the story, though. It's pretty convoluted and just kind of throws stuff at you. Princesses, keys, etc., It's just... I dunno, just way too rushed to quickly. First couple chapters were ok, but then it just went on so quickly and the characters aren't really detailed and just yeah... A pretty big disappointed, and I'm really not surprised it's near the bottom of the SJ rankings, either.

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This is my problem, Naruto had the benefit of a beginner going through ninja school, so it was a nice natural pace/flow, to slowly learn things about the world/characters.

With Samurai, everything feels like we're on fast forward. The main character, with some help, can already destroy a planet and the bad guy(s) can already devastate entire solar systems/galaxies.

I'll wait till an anime before I really start calling it a dud. On another note why do we discredit creators work so quickly. Now people are acting that Naruto was huge in spite of Kishi? I see same thing from SW fan about Lucas to me it's really lame.

flaxknuckles said:

I read the first few issues of Samurai 8 and it felt rushed. Why set up a story about a disabled kid wanting to be a samurai and then give him a fancy cybernetic body with no downsides in the first chapter? He achieved his goal in the first issue so you were given no time to sympathize with his situation.

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Yea it never sat right with me that his prior disability quickly became an afterthought.

Slightly surprised but guess you can't really ride on name alone. The first couple of chapters were okay but not something that had me excited to keep reading.

Will be interesting to see what happens with Kubo, I'm more interested in seeing what he comes back with than Kishi.

So glad Chainsaw Man is doing good, love that stupid book.

rrc1594 said:

I'll wait till an anime before I really start calling it a dud. On another note why do we discredit creators work so quickly. Now people are acting that Naruto was huge in spite of Kishi? I see same thing from SW fan about Lucas to me it's really lame.

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I mean, Naruto had issues for a long time and given that editors change for manga at a frequent pace, it's not a stretch to believe his early work (which was his best by far) was shaped heavily by his initial editor and that his later work, even on Naruto, was worse because as an established super popular writer he had more leeway to push his untouched vision forward

This has nothing to do with being a sci-fi manga

Is very bad
The main character is boring and annoying as hell
The story is a mess
The pacing is meh
The scale of level is off the charts
The art was a mess the first 10 chapters

He is making the same mistakes

But don't worry, Kishi says we just have to keep chewing that squid and maybe eventually it'll be good lol

Aaronrules380 said:

It's an intensely mediocre series. It spends way too much time on boring lore and worldbuilding and not enough on establishing characters and a reason for us to care about the universe. And it doesn't even do the lore and worldbuilding well, since it's overly long, dry and inefficient and despite spending so much time on it I still feel like very little has been clearly defined. And none of it has gone towards actually making the world feel like a real, lived in place, it's just vague jargon and vague explanations of how the powers work

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Gengahrrr said:

This is my problem, Naruto had the benefit of a beginner going through ninja school, so it was a nice natural pace/flow, to slowly learn things about the world/characters.

With Samurai, everything feels like we're on fast forward. The main character, with some help, can already destroy a planet and the bad guy(s) can already devastate entire solar systems/galaxies.

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This and this. It has NOTHING to do with it being sci-fi (as mentioned before) but HOW they went about in doing it. Sure, sci-fi is heavy with exposition, but don't just throw a bunch of stuff at us all at once and then go all OP with your strength :/ It's... a bit of a jump going from this frail child that is on constant life support to "omg look at my powers now! I crush planet!" Not much of a "hero's journey" here, either.

I was most invested in the story when the MC met the one char he played with on the VR game. There was... a pacing where they talked about things, built a bit of character... and what happened to this character that I thought would be part of the MC's crew? Eh, just mentioned once recently and that was it. Wasted potential :/ Now it's time for the tournament arc, get ready!!!

(Geeze, slow down, please... I still don't even care about this characters...)

I like Samurai 8 well enough but I'm not hung up on it not doing well. And I can definitely see why it isn't hooking people. Way way too much exposition, it didn't introduce a cool villain until several chapters in, the leads aren't super appealing.

I don't read it, but I really like the art (I know it's not drawn by Kishimoto).

SteelBeast6Beets said:

First time I've read something such as that and cannot wrap my mind around it. Japan is the last country I'd think that would shut down Sci-Fi works.

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It's really not Japan, but rather Shounen Jump itself which has issues with sci-fi stuff, and due to some people mostly following Jump they generalize it. Anyway, there's a specific cause for that - the old editors of Jump back in the 70s hated how toy companies wanted to get involved with giant robot manga after Mazinger Z, so most mecha stuff went elsewhere and mecha always was a big part of sci-fi in Japan, so Jump in general had very little sci-fi related material afterwards. They eventually seemed to back down from that position, but it kind of shaped Jump's image and style. It's pretty clear most authors who want to push sci-fi series go elsewhere. That doesn't stop Jump from having some sci-fi series though. Gintama's run in Jump ended relatively recently, and that was a mix of samurai with sci-fi too, even if it was mostly comedic (initially).

Just seems like a slow burn imo. That's not really a bad thing. World building seems like it has a lot of potential.

art wise it need more shading for better separation (Felt like it was being left blank for a later colour version), but that seems to have gotten better over the chapters.

Castile said:

People may say it is because it's Sci-Fi, but Eden's Zero is also sci-fi and is selling at average 3-4 times more than Samurai 8 on the first week. Astral Lost was also popular a couple years back, and even got a full anime adaption after the manga ended, a rare sight as nothing new was release to promote.

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Isn't that Hiro Mashima's new manga? If Kishimoto's worry was about explaining things then Mashima has the perfect solution to that: don't!

kishi hasn't been a great manga writer since like 2004, so not shocked

I've said it before, Samurai 8 is this generation's Gun Blaze West. A popular manga artist's follow-up work that completely failed to catch on.

Japan not liking sci-fi sounds like a load of crap. Gundam is huge, and yeah they love Star Wars too. Samurai 8 is just badly written.

Lotus said:

Started off lame? It's very first arc was its best, frankly one of the one better shounen arcs

After that is where its YMMV as not everyone has been feeling the shift in direction.

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I thought it was fun as long as I suspended disbelief that these toddlers and child prodigies were somehow capable of doing what it showed them doing. It was ridiculously overwrought, like taking a potato chip and eating it x100.

It was better than Platinum End at least, damn that series went to shit almost immediately. Sad to see Death Note be followed up on by complete trash.

The premise is compelling, but I quickly dropped it, because...well nothing really works. The busy art, the story, the characters.....none of it is any good.

Curler said:

what happened to this character that I thought would be part of the MC's crew?

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Almost everything about that character was handled weirdly

How on earth is Shokugeki no Souma selling that well with the crappy ass last arc and ending?

I actually wanted to start reading it when it started but never got around to actually reading it. I eventually forgot that it existed.

Arkeband said:

I thought it was fun as long as I suspended disbelief that these toddlers and child prodigies were somehow capable of doing what it showed them doing. It was ridiculously overwrought, like taking a potato chip and eating it x100.

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I mean they were literally raised to be that intelligent, wasn't really an issue for me. Only thing that was kinda ehhh was this one thing with Ray and his memory.

I read up to Chapter 5 when they got training and just got bored. Read the spoilers about every samurai requiring a Princess to partner with to fulfill their full potential with and laughed and never looked back.

Alps it never felt Sci-fi to me. Just replaced the magic terms with technology ones like programing. It felt very typically magical in that Naruto way.

SatoAilDarko said:

Read the spoilers about every samurai requiring a Princess to partner with to fulfill their full potential with and laughed and never looked back.

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It's even worse than it sounds, they're effectively cheerleaders, to the point where if a princess prays for her man samurai, they get a power boost. It's legitimately a part of the series' battle system.

psynergyadept said:

How on earth is Shokugeki no Souma selling that well with the crappy ass last arc and ending?

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People hate reading to see if Soma and Erina got together.

alexi52 said:

Kushimoto was never a good writer, it became clear through interviews that most of Naruto part 1 success was do to the editors and once he got more control over the story it all went to shit, Samurai 8 is just the worst aspects of part 2 Naruto cranked up to 11

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Yes and no.

The early editors are also the reason behind some of the big problems with Naruto as well.

So Naruto's dad also being Fourth Hokage (which makes Naruto's backstory nonsensical) was pushed by the editors.

Same with the invention of Sasuke and Sakura.

The Chunin Exams Arc is lauded as one of Naruto's best story arcs but it derailed a lot of things.

Kishimoto was planning more of an adventure manga where Team 7 would bond together while traveling throughout villages but because of the Chunin Exams, he was forced to create a bunch of new characters at once which he didn't know how to use after said arc because they were only
necessary for that arc. Hence all that wasted potential.

So without all that Team 7 bonding, it hurts that the endgame is Sasuke versus Naruto. It just looks like a fight with a boy obsessed with his abusive boyfriend.

I'll also point out that it's kind of funny that there's also that other ninja/samurai/shinobi series, Tokyo Shinobi Squad also being currently published, aaaaand also not doing too well. The thing with that one that it does well, is the Bladerunner-esque world, with the blended cultures and ninjas in the city, rather than in some other world/fantasy land. Unfortunately, that's the only thing it really does well, and is also near the bottom of rankings consistantly, will probably also get axed soon as well...

Not a good year for the majority of new series in SJ! Been interesting following along, since I got that $2.99 sub back last December.

NeonZ said:

It's really not Japan, but rather Shounen Jump itself which has issues with sci-fi stuff, and due to some people mostly following Jump they generalize it. Anyway, there's a specific cause for that - the old editors of Jump back in the 70s hated how toy companies wanted to get involved with giant robot manga after Mazinger Z, so most mecha stuff went elsewhere and mecha always was a big part of sci-fi in Japan, so Jump in general had very little sci-fi related material afterwards. They eventually seemed to back down from that position, but it kind of shaped Jump's image and style. It's pretty clear most authors who want to push sci-fi series go elsewhere. That doesn't stop Jump from having some sci-fi series though. Gintama's run in Jump ended relatively recently, and that was a mix of samurai with sci-fi too, even if it was mostly comedic (initially).

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That makes sense. I haven't noticed until now but there's indeed a lack of SF series in the magazine. As for Gintama, I've always been under the impression it was comedy series foremost with the Sci-Fi angle being just window dressing/mostly unimportant background stuff.

MrSaturn99 said:

That's...brutal. I knew it wasn't doing very well, but not bomb-levels. Just goes to show nothing's guaranteed in this industry.

Kishimoto's clout aside, I can't say I'm surprised though -- far too convoluted for what's a run-of-the-mill shonen, right down to the overly-busy art. (What were they thinking with that character whose hands had multiple personality disorder or w/e?)

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Yeah, Jump can be a real grinder. The two that stick out to me most are Stealth Symphony, from the guy who wrote Durarara, which barely got to 20 chapters before being axed, and Gakkyu Hotei, which was from an unknown author but had art by Obata (Death Note, Hikaru no Go, Bakuman), which only got like 10 chapters published in the magazine before they shipped it off to Jump+ for it to wrap up in a 3rd volume.

All of the series launched in Jump around that time have been bombing. Last Saiyuki already got canned, Yui Kamio is rocketing towards the final boss, and last week's chapter of Double Taisei concluded a mini-arc by having his opponent
The bottom five of Jump's table of contents is pretty consistently filled by the same five series.