Cyber Blue: Unedited Audio & Notes

Manga Details

• Original story - BOB

  • BOB is largely an enigma, though his author comment on volume 2 depicts him as an aspirational writer wanting to do films, novels, manga, and anything else he can get his hands on.

• Script - Ryuichi Mitsui

  • Largely an enigma.

• Artist - Tetsuo Hara

• Notable people they were an assistant for:

  • Yoshihiro Takahashi (author of Silver Fang: The Shooting Star Gin)

    • Likely on Aozora Fishing (1981, 5 volumes) and Sho to Daichi (1982, 3 volumes), though he would have left the latter series before it was over.

  • Kazuo Koike (author of Lone Wolf & Cub)

    • Tetsuo Hara was a student under Koike at his Gekiga Sonjuku, a training school started to preserve gekiga, a style of comic that was considered more dramatic, mature and detailed than manga.

• Notable people they had as assistants:

  • Koji Maki (Godsider, Metal K)

  • Masanori Morita (Rokudenashi BLUES, ROOKIES)

  • Shinji Imaizumi (Kami-sama wa Southpaw)

  • Yasuhiro Watanabe (author of a LOT of baseball manga)

  • Hirohisa Onikubo (very accomplished hentai artist, chief assistant for Hirohiko Araki on Battle Tendency/Stardust Crusaders)

  • Katsuhiro Nagasawa (The Edge)

  • Tetsuya Hasegawa (Napoleon - Lion’s Era)

  • Yuuko Uramoto (The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up: A Magical Story, written by Marie Kondo)

• Other works (highlights):

  • Iron Don Quixote (1982, 2 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump)

  • Fist of the North Star (1983-1988, 27 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump) written by Buronson

    • You don’t need me to tell you what this is. Star-making, genre-defining, massively influential. You’re already dead.

  • The Magnificent Bastard: Keiji (1990-1993, 18 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump) based on Ichi-mu-an Furyuki by Keiichiro Ryu

    • Hara’s second hit, a fictionalised biography of Keiji Maeda, a somewhat flowery samurai gangster.

  • Kagemusha - Tokugawa Ieyasu (1994, 6 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump) written by Sho Aikawa, based on work by Keiichiro Ryu

  • Takeki Ryusei (1995, 3 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump)

    • Want to know more about this one? Listen to Shonen Flop episode 81!

  • Sakon - Sengoku Fuuunroku (1997-2000, 6 vols, Monthly Shonen Jump) written by Shingo Futahashi, based on work by Keiichiro Ryu

  • Fist of the Blue Sky (2001-2010, 22 vols, Weekly Comic Bunch) supervised by Buronson

    • A prequel of sorts to Fist of the North Star, set in 1930s Shanghai.

  • Ikusa no Ko: The Legend of Nobunaga Oda (2010-2022, 20 vols, Monthly Comic Zenon) with Seibo Kitahara and Yuuta Kumagai

    • Hara’s last series as an artist due to a combination of a deteriorating eye condition and a desire to work with young talents and pass on his skills. A semi-biographical manga of Nobunaga Oda, focusing on his youth.

  • Cyber Blue - The Lost Children (2011-2012, 4 vols, Comic Zenon) art by Motoki Yoshihara

    • A remake of Cyber Blue, reimagining the story with an all-new artist involved. Immediately followed by:

  • X Battlers - Cyber Blue The Last Stand (2012-2013, 3 vols, Comic Zenon) art by Motoki Yoshihara

    • A sequel to the remake, promising the strongest opponents in any Tetsuo Hara work, which is a bold-ass claim!

• Publishing

  • Run Dates: 

    • November 22, 1988 to July 10, 1989

  • Series it replaced

• Godsider by Koji Maki (8 vols, did okay)

• Series that replaced it

  • Chameleon Jail by Kazuhiko Watanabe and Takehiko Inoue (2 vols, flop, SHONEN FLOP EPISODE 120)

• Series that started at the same time as it

  • Magical Taruruto by Tatsuya Egawa (21 vols, notable hit)

  • I am Shitataka-kun by Motoei Shinzawa (5 vols, did okay)

  • Dinoventure - Stories of Dinosaurs by Kishi Daimuro  (1 vol, flop, but Akira Toriyama loved it! Flop eligible, too.)

• Chapters/Volumes: 

  • 31 chapters/4 volumes

About the Manga

• Plot

  • In the future, humans have colonized the planet Tinos which has half the oxygen of earth, requiring life support systems. A 17 year old kid named blue is wandering the desert and is about to die due to his system being stolen, when he meets a 300 year old robot who says fuck that can serve as his life support. After showing off his skills with a gun, Blue is hired by Sheriff Weiser to stop some guys from stealing a ticket to earth. Blue agrees and shoots the robbers but oh no Weiser bamboozled him! He just wanted Blue to kill them for him to keep them from going to Earth! Weiser’s gang then murders the fuck out of Blue but thankfully before he dies Blue calls the robot “Fatso” which turns out to be his name, so Fatso does surgery to fuse himself with Blue and save his life by turning him into cyborg kenshiro. Now that he looks like kenshiro and says fuck he is ready to be the protagonist. Blue kills the guys who killed him before tracking down the newly appointed police chief Weiser and killing him too. Blue then goes to his home town to find that his group of orphan friends are all dead except for a kid named Alan who has a robot leg. Alan joins Blue as they board the Noel, a ship from earth that carried the first humans to Tinos. 

  • They’re stopped by Joe-K, a bounty hunter from the planet Sieg who allows them on the ship because doing so will increase Blue’s bounty. Blue meets Stan, one of the five elders who tells him that the other four wanna take over Earth and he’s gotta stop them. Stan initially agreed to do that too but he felt bad about it and they shot him. Also Stan is Blue’s dad but he dies aw. Blue leaves the ship and fights Joe-K. Things look bad until Blue’s arm morphs into a sword. He spares Joe-K and goes to take down the Elders. He gets help from Clare, a narcotics officer from Earth who tells him that the church is smuggling drugs oh no! They go to stop the church and discover that it’s run by Rosalie, one of the Elders. They kill Rosalie and stop his army of junkies and set their sights on the next Elder: Prince. Yes Prince. In this manga he’s going by the name Gaza but it’s Prince. Clare uses her PhD in computer science to hack into Prince’s systems and locate his girlfriend named Shila who works at a casino. Blue gets Shila alone who shows him her boobs and says that Prince is on Earth and that they have to stop him. Unfortunately she has to save her cat Sharon and is shot in the process so Blue reads her mind to find out what to do next. Blue, Clare, and Alan go to Earth to find Prince where they meet Clare’s useless partner Tony and are attacked by bio-beings: powerful creatures who are people mixed with animals. Blue is severely injured after defeating a spider bio-beast, when Joe-K appears. 

  • Joe-K happens to be on earth protecting an African president who is killed by Galgo, a bio-being mixed with a lion who was sent by Prince who is sitting on a throne of titties. Joe-K takes them to a magical forest where Blue is healed by his old friend Lonnie, a child with psychic abilities obtained using the power of imaginary numbers. Lonnie is being held captive by Prince who wants to use his powers to become immortal by fusing with the ultimate life form. Blue goes to save Lonnie but has to fight Dabra, a Doberman bio-being with the power of the shadow force. Thankfully Joe-K gave Blue a photon knife that Blue turns into a photon sword with the power of his cyber abilities. Blue defeats Dabra and travels to the top of Prince’s tower to find Joe-K dead, killed by Galgo. Galgo is going to die soon so wants to fight Blue for honor purposes and Blue defeats him by fusing with the building’s nuclear reactor. Prince then absorbs the ultimate life form and Lonnie into his own body but Lonnie instead causes him to melt to death. Golgo then tells Blue that hey, he’s gonna die soon anyway, so just give Lonnie his body. So Blue does that and everyone’s ay-okay.

• Characters

  •   Blue

    • Just a punk

    • Looks like kenshiro

    • VENGEANCE

    • 317

  • Alan

    • Just a kid

    • Idk how he doesn’t die constantly

    • Tries to be brave for the kids man

  • joe-ki

    • Crazy AF

    • From seig

    • Laugh with me

    • You are already dead

  • Clair

    • FBI or something 

    • From earth 

Why it Failed

• This is stupid 

• I don't really feel the setting it just feels like it could be set anywhere

• The art is over detailed? It kinda all muddy together 

• Did I completely miss how they found out blue was combined with an ancient computer

• There's not really any morality everyone is good or blatantly evil 

• Sometimes the paneling is weird like how did Clair get her gun back when she got handcuffed?

• This translation is rough 

• The pacing is absolutely atrocious 

• I can't tell if it wants to be nature vs science 

• Why did this add a power system that makes less sense than anything else

• I’m so confused, did his chip get fixed by the nature spirit kid?

• What was Shadow force and it seemed to not really matter 

What it Did Well

• This is so stupid 

• It knows how dumb it is and is about killing bad guys with dumb one liners

• Oh the lore is solid 

• I like how blues personality has an element on fatso 

• Somehow the same plot over and over doesn't get boring 

• The jokes are so dumb I love it

• It at least tries to make Alan and Clair relevant 

• How can you not love a guy saying fuck you and punching him so hard he explodes 

• Lmao ofc the badguy made mermaids

Where it Could Have Gone

• Been nice to see some of the actual wisdom fatso face him

• Make it actually feel like they're on an alien planet 

• This needed like an overarching plot i know there's killing the families but we don't really see how the moment by moment actually leads to this

• Have the mc lose I feel he doesn't change at all as a character and I wonder if he learned violence isn't always the jk rip and tear baby

• I think this would have been good as a tight 1-2 vol series there's a lot of filler 

• Man imagine of Clair and Alan were like doing something on screen while Blue was tearing things up so it felt like they had a purpose

Misc Thoughts

•  Why would you need poisoned bullets?

• How did a thrown knife cut someone's arm off chapter 12 whatever it was awesome 

• Lol the FBI agent definitely would have had a three point holster

• Imagine if Jesus bot hadn't changed form

• Woah nudity 

• This series kept making me think of ttgl

• Minutes being 60 seconds are derived from math and not natural observations so why would a minute be longer on another planet

• So Lonnie is in the body of a 30yo man now?

• Maxy Bee thoughts:

  • Curiously, Cyber Blue looked like a hit for most of its run. It received no less than two covers, four lead colour pages, and three centre colours. But either hyper or goodwill gave way to some sort of reality and its last two months saw its popularity bottom out and the series wrap up. It’s enough to make it feel unclear if this was a simple cancellation or if other factors were involved. 

  • When witnessing Blue being blown to pieces in chapter 1, please remember that Robocop came out just the year before. It’s not subtle.

  • When witnessing Blue reborn as a cybernetic being in chapter 1, please remember that Terminator came out just 4 years before. It’s not subtle.

  • You can tell that Tetsuo Hara loves his pop culture, as characters resembling Mike Tyson, Madonna and Prince feature quite handily in this series, and Blue himself looks quite a lot like Mad Max and Billy Idol fused together, with a touch of Stallone sneer in for good measure.

  • When reprinted by Tokuma Shoten in 2011 both writers’ credits are removed, declaring Tetsuo Hara as the only creator. A bit of revisionist history right before the remake series came out that year.

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary

  • Community

    • Tucker: So anyway, Cyber Kenshiro started blasting…

    • Maxybee: No cyber sex? Cyber Blue balls!

    • aidansully97: You are already cyber shot

    • AuraPaladin: Tetsuo Hara lets Robocop say Fuck

    • Desscaras, The Abyssal Witch: Cyborg says FUCK cries manly tears

    • Diego: Still less "fucks" than hazbin episodes!

    • duderocks: Manga had 45 f#$ks to give

    • Everyone's Favorite Uber-Talente: Cy Blue dabba de dabba die

    • FunkyGreenOverdrive: (Schwarzenegger voice) "You are already axed"

    • LordAnubis: NANI?! explodes into a bloody mess

    • Portal man: futuristic guns of the north star

    • Sbubby: Becoming a cyborg makes you Kenshiro

  • David: A Plot as imaginary as numbers

  • Jordan: shit the plot out your ass