Welcome to the *sword-unsheathing sound* FREE VIZ Social Media Team Substack! ⚔️
WE'RE HERE
VIZ Media fans: welcome to the first ever Substack post from us, the Social Media team at VIZ! This is a FREE newsletter (did we mention it’s entirely free? Because it is! Don’t send us any money for it!) dedicated to you, yes YOU. Here we’ll celebrate your/our comments on VIZ social media posts, your cosplay (AND cosplay from your fur babies, plz), and feature your comments on our weekly Substack!
That being said, let’s dive into some of what we’ve recently seen online. What ruffled our proverbial feathers, what got us joyously prancing around in circles for hours? What ground our gears? Time to find out!
Any anime/manga fan who has spent even 5 minutes online the last couple weeks probably heard about Kagurabachi by Takeru Hokazono. The bloody new Shonen Jump series follows the sword-wielding Chihiro, who seeks revenge on those who killed his father. These same dastardly villains also stole the immensely powerful enchanted blades his father forged, and Chihiro is determined to retrieve the weapons and make sure they aren’t used for totally unchill, nefarious plans.
Even with such a gritty premise, the first three chapters feature plenty of laughs and you, the fans, have had a wildly comical response as well! All over social media there are memes GALORE for Kagurabachi, and more than a few had us grinning ear to ear. X user MangaAlerts made the ingenious meme below, riffing off MC (main character) wordage with uhm, a funny absurdist reference to AC units? It was as cool as Chihiro’s icy, vengeful stare imho. 🥶
User Zenith_013 delivered this whacky meme about Kagurabachi sweeping the box office even though it’s *SPOILER-ALERT* not even a movie. Absolutely classic.
Why is Kagurabachi such an instant hit? Well, who doesn’t like an action-packed (but funny) tale about a bad dude dressed in all black with a neat face-scar, slicin’ and dicin’ his way through some diabolically-inclined fellas using a mystical sword his dad made? Sounds like peak fiction to me. Personally, if I was compelled to ruthlessly avenge the death of someone in my immediate family, I hope I’’d have a similar sense of drip as Chihiro, paired with a suitably chilling-demeanor.
What about YOU? What if you lived in a fictional universe and wanted to avenge a fallen parent who crafted enchanted blades that were stolen by unsavory characters? Would you seek retribution the same as Chihiro? Would you also keep your gnarly scar as-is so you could wake up every morning with a tasty morsel of fresh, scrumptious hate to keep you motivated? Let us know in the comments!
Here’s the part where we show off all your cool cosplay but we don’t have any yet SO, please, help us out and send your best cosplay (and that of your pets) for a chance to be featured in next week’s Substack!
You can send your fabulous cosplay to this email: heysocial@viz.com
With that, it’s time to sign off. Let us know in the comments about your opinion on revenge-themed manga, and also what you’d like to see from our adorable VIZ Substack page! So chime in on our first ever poll directly below! Until later~~
I think that Kagurabachi’s popularity was just a perfect storm of events. Bear with me for a moment.
Jump is going through another transition period. My Hero Academia and Black Clover are in their final arcs, and Jujutsu Kaisen is getting close to its end too. Those are some of the most popular titles in Jump because of how action-packed and mainstream they are, and people are naturally going to be looking for more. Sakamoto Days has a fight every chapter, sure, but since then we’ve gotten more series which focus on Jump’s love of drama (Blue Box, Ichinose Family) or esoteric subjects (Cipher Academy, Akane-banashi).
Kagurabachi, on the other hand, is simple. Almost DECEPTIVELY simple. Guy has magic sword, guy sees his dad die, guy wants revenge. It’s a basic plot with basic art and the most basic cliches out there, that anyone can pick up and understand almost immediately. And the action is clean - Hokazono-sensei may be a newcomer, but he definitely knows how to draw a fight scene. And as someone who thought Black Clover was a Fairy Tail ripoff when it first started, a basic series can easily catch on.
I’ll admit, part of it is also a meme, sort of like how Morbius was. Someone might’ve ironically said that Kagurabachi is the savior of Jump, and it was an in-joke that snowballed into a cultural phenomenon. But honestly, so far Kagurabachi stands well on its own, even without the artificial hype. In other words, I’m totally ready to get my Kaguras Bachi’d.
Is it time to Kagura Bachi, VIZ?