Chameleon Jail: Unedited Audio & Notes

Manga Details

• Kazuhiko Watanabe (Writer)

  • Notable people they were an assistant for

    • None Known

  • Notable people they had as assistants

    • None Known

  • Other works

    • None Known

  • WELL WHO THE FUCK WAS HE, THEN?!?!

    • So 渡辺和彦 as a name gives us a few options, mostly a music critic and a voice actor, which don’t feel particularly likely. A photo of him is in one of the Chameleon Jail volumes, but it’s just a dude. If he was anyone, he didn’t do anything of note past this point. Unless he’s the music critic or voice actor. Again, unlikely.

• Takehiko Inoue (Artist)

  • Notable people they were an assistant for

    • Tsukasa Hojo on City Hunter (for ten months)

  • Notable people they had as assistants

    • Yasuhisa Hara (Kingdom)

      • on REAL and Vagabond

    • Katsumi Tatsuzawa/TATSUZ (Transition Game)

      • Chief Assistant on Slam Dunk, REAL, and Vagabond.

    • Kazuto Mihara (The World is Dancing)

      • on REAL

  • Other works

    • SLAM DUNK (1990-1996, 31 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump)

      • The greatest manga of all time, the 7th highest-selling manga series of all time (over 185 million copies sold), a series so monumental that it shot Weekly Shonen Jump sales to unimaginable heights, and made basketball into a popular sport in Japan.

    • BUZZER BEATER (1996-1998, 4 vols, Sports-i ESPN/Monthly Shonen Jump)

    • Vagabond (1998-present*, 37 vols, Morning) *has been on hiatus since May 2015

    • REAL (1999-present, 16 volumes, Weekly Young Jump)

• Publishing

  • Run Dates: 

    • July 31, 1989 to October 16, 1989

  • Series it replaced

• Cyber Blue by BOB, Takaichi Matsui, and Tetsuo Hara (4 vols, flop, remember this one for later)

• Series that replaced it

  • Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai by Koji Inada and Riku Sanjo (37 vols, HUGE HIT)

• Series that started at the same time as it

  • Ten de Showaru Cupid by Yoshihiro Togashi (4 vols, flop, but that’s okay it all works out for him later on)

• Chapters/Volumes: 

  • 12 chapters/2 volumes (republished as one volume in 2004)

About the Manga

• Plot

  •  So there are these guys named Risk Hunters who are essentially super PIs. The best risk hunter is a guy whose name is literally Chameleon Jail like that’s his actual name it’s wild. But yeah an escaped burglar is playing basketball in New York but jokes on him because one of his teammates dispels his magical blackface to reveal that he’s Chameleon Jail. You see his name is Chameleon because he can change his appearance, and Jail because he sends people to jail, and this guy is going to jail. Chameleon is approached by Shall, who works for the detective agency that employs him, and tells him he was hired by a Chinese doctor named Wan to stop his friend from becoming a murderer. His friend, Long, wanted to become an actor but the mafia killed his girlfriend Ling Ling oh no! So instead he decided to follow his backup plan of becoming a billionaire New York businessman, changing his name to Goldman. Goldman corners an Italian mafia boss named Mr Pinocchio who was responsible for Ling Ling’s death. Goldman tells him that he already killed the other mafia guys and he’s gonna kill him too. But what’s this? Ling Ling appears to play the piano? Why it’s just Chameleon Jail using his spirit energy to make tiny explosions happen all over his body to morph him into Ling Ling. Goldman decides not to kill Mr Pinocchio and no one is upset that he killed other mafia guys. 

  • Jail then stops a guy from being randomly violent by turning into his brother who is a boxer, which pushes him to instead become a champion boxer. Next he helps a young synchronized swimmer defeat  an older, cheating swimmer, in a competition that only makes sense if you don’t know what synchronized swimming is. Uh Oh! An evil big boss guy wants revenge on Chameleon and has kidnapped Shall! Chameleon shows up and stops him by using his powers to turn him into a woman. Like straight up gives him gender reassignment surgery in an instant and I can’t tell if he’s happy or upset about it and I don’t know why Chameleon did it. Next there’s a whole thing where a detective named Cody with a medical allergy to girls is in love with a pickpocket named Kat. They have matching sonichu pendants and used to live together with a landlord who seemed to know way too much about them because she told Shall and Chameleon everything about their personal lives. 

  • She’s forced by a criminal group named Jackal to steal an ancient Egyptian artifact. Detective Cody has to shoot her with a sniper rifle to save the museum’s valuable assets, and the head of Jackal tries to save her life but BAH GAWD ITS CHAMELEON JAIL IN DISGUISE WITH A BULLET PROOF VEST! Kat and Cody reunite at Kat’s fake funeral. Finally a guy named Jed hijacks a plane with bombs strapped to him because his cop father never loved his mother and she died. His dad, who is in the hospital dying of heart stuff, gives Chameleon his special cool gun. Chameleon infiltrates the plane, turns into Jed’s dad, and shows him his cool gun. Jed also has a cool gun and when you put the two guns together it says that his mom loved them both which means he couldn’t have been an abusive husband. Jed salutes his dad as he dies before going to jail and that’s the last thing that really happens. I mean we see a little bonus scene where Chameleon Jail captures a generic criminal but yeah.

• Characters

  •   Chameleon Jail

    • Man of a thousand faces

    • Big food mood

    • A punk

    • Keeps making CSI miami jokes

  • Ms. Shall

    • Women drivers am I right!

    • I think she has no defined personality or backstory

  • Kat

    • Chapter titles call her Madonna

    • MAster thief but loves her police boyfriend

    • Has had it hard out there ya know

    • Fem fatale

Why it Failed

•  The actual fight scenes seem kind of wonky like the punch in chapter 2

• Why is the transforming so underused 

• The pacing of chapter 2 is really bad it's resolved in like 2 pages

• Chapter 3 was really dumb with the pool latch

• So they just skip the whole finding the kidnapper plot with Kat?

• They spent way too much time on the Kat plot 

• Ultimately I just don't care that much about the characters 

• This whole Jackal thing needed to be seeded in some way

• Zero explanation about how he got his powers or abilities

• Why was the Jackal boss fight not against the actual boss? Why introduce this other character for like no reason?

• Wow that accent on the woc

• The hijacking makes no fucking sense

• The series keeps fucking having CJ turn into a flashback character

What it Did Well

• David: And before we get into what we think it did well, if you’ve been enjoying the show we’d really appreciate it if you subscribed to the Shonen Flop Youtube! We’re trying to hit our goal of 1500 YouTube subs and if we hit it we’ll do a special bonus episode on the Build King Epilogue. If you’re already subscribed, thanks so much!

• It's so over the top and it knows it

• Is this series trans rights?

• Arts solid even if the paneling and action leave something to be desired 

• I like the ending of the thief plot with Chameleon Jail pretending to bet Kat though I’m not sure when he had time to get into position when he had the boss fight

Where it Could Have Gone

• A myth arc would have been nice so it felt like things were progressing 

• Show more of the repercussions of his actions like he helps take on two mafias in the first chapter but there's nothing about it after 

• Give some backstory like damn

• Maybe explore the power system like at all what was the point 

• Make it a bluesky show

• Why didn’t it end on the multi chapter arc?

• Maybe show how his power can be used long-term? Like he never goes undercover or anything

• Show us anything about the risk hunters, we literally don’t see any other ones?

Misc Thoughts

• you can tell this is by someone not super familiar with American when they say stealing a gun is a huge deal 

• The man competing in women's Olympics line didn't age well

• CJ could make infinitely more money giving perfect gender affirming surgery to people 

• It's weird it doesn't use black gutter flashback I wonder when that became the norm 

• Lmao imagine if Corey failed his police test

• Why did Jail wear a wig when pretending to be Corey???

• This has the energy of a shitty WB show where they save budget on the superpowers constantly

• Maxy Bee thoughts:

  • Takehiko Inoue originally had this series published under his real name, Takehiko Nariai, changing it to Inoue at a later date as a way to try and maintain some privacy.

  • It is likely that Takehiko Inoue was selected to be the artist for this series based on his assistant work for Tsukasa Hojo on City Hunter, which this is… trying REALLY hard to be. Risk Hunters are just a poor man’s Sweeper. 

  • Chameleon Jail is one of Takehiko Inoue’s manga still kept in a physical-only jail, along with Slam Dunk and Vagabond. It’s believed that this is due to resistance from Inoue himself, a common occurrence in the manga industry.

  • Despite being a big old flop, the volume release did have its appeal, with volume 1 including Inoue’s debut one-shot ‘Kaede Purple’, an incredibly well-received basketball story that became the basis for Slam Dunk.

  • Explosions can actually change the structure of your face, just not quite in the same way Chameleon Jail does. 

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary

  • Community

    • Tucker: Mission Impossible unmasking scenes: the manga

    • Maxybee: magical trans powers? I want them

    • AuraPaladin: King Scissored by his Lizard Wizard

    • CT3LA: Would've been better without the superpowers

    • dackerson: I'm allergic to bad manga... Blaarrgghh

    • Diego: Shitty Hunter Shapeshifter... Is that blackface?!

    • duderocks: Should've actually been about incarcerated lizards

    • FunkyGreenOverdrive: City Hunter, now with more blackface

    • FunkyGreenOverdrive: This manga isn't a slam dunk

    • Gene Shalit: Shall, we advance? No, more chapters!

    • Kpt.Kluless: Change face into something more interesting

    • LordAnubis: It was NOT a Slam Dunk

    • Portal man: should have shifted into something better

    • Sbubby: you’re under arrest (transes your gender)

    • Spike: Karma karma karma karma karma axemeleon...

    • Thores: Wait… there’s no dragons in this

    • Watchtower: Looking for shapeshifting shenanigans? Yeah, same.

    • Blamoomoo: Constantly shapeshifting between variations of mediocritry

    • Red blade: Shape shifts into confusing new genres

  • David: Always be helping your trans homies | ALL YOU HAD TO DO, WAS FOLLOW THE DAMN TRAIN CJ

  • Jordan: this face makes you feel ashamed! | a medical miracle being used poorly 

• Flop or not

  • David: It’s a certified flop go listen to King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. I also heard good thins about MarriageToxin so maybe that?