Harisugawa in Mirror World: Research Notes

Tucker

Title: Kagami no Kuni no Harisugawa 鏡の国の針栖川

• Hah-ree-su-gah-wah
• Japanese title literally translates to “Harisugawa of the Land/Country of the Mirror”

Author: Kanou, Yasuhiro 叶 恭弘（かのう やすひろ)

• Kah-noh, Yah-su-hee-roe

Characters

• Harisugawa, Tetsu 針栖川 哲（はりすがわ てつ）
  • Hah-ree-su-gah-wah, Teh-tsu
  • Family name written as needle + cobweb + river…have no idea if that’s significant
  • Personal name written as philosophy/sage, but is pronounced the same as “iron”
• Satomi, Ma’o 里見 真桜（さとみ まお）
  • Sah-toe-mee, Mah-oh
  • Ma’o is two separate syllables! It isn’t pronounced like “Chairman Mao”!
  • Given name can be interpreted as “pitch-black cherry blossom”
• Matsukawa, Saki 松川 咲（まつかわ さき）
  • Mah-tsu-kah-wa, Sah-kee

MaxyBee

Author - Yasuhiro Kano

• Notable people they were an assistant for:
  • Ryu Fujisaki (Hoshin Engi, Sakura Tetsu Taiwahen)
    • This was on the one-shot DIGITALIAN, as they were close friends, along with Munenori Michimoto.
• Notable people they had as assistants:
  • Tatsuya Endo (Spy x Family, Tista)
    • This was on Pretty Face (vol.6 credit)
  • Kimiya Kaji (Meister)
    • This was on Pretty Face (vol.6 credit)
  • Gege Akutami (Jujutsu Kaisen)
    • Noted in a French interview, but I don't know which specific series this was on: https://www.lefigaro.fr/bd/gege-akutami-pour-le-heros-de-mon-manga-je-me-suis-inspire-de-mon-frere-20201007
• Other works:
  • So many one-shots. I won't list them all, but Kano has done enough one-shots to have THREE collections of them, with enough left over to make a fourth. These are:
    • Black City (1992)
    • Tokyo Ants (2003)
    • Snow in the Dark (2007)
  • Pretty Face (2002-2003, 6 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump)
    • Masashi Rando is a hot-tempered young man who gets in a bus accident. Thankfully an esteemed plastic surgeon restores his face based on a photo in his wallet OF HIS CRUSH. Now his crush has mistaken him for her twin sister, and Rando must maintain the illusion for both her comfort and his survival! Available digitally from Viz Media.
  • Mx0 (2006-2008, 10 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump)
    • Taiga Kuzumi is a hot-tempered young man who accidentally applies to a magic school, and goes from rejected to accepted, having to maintain the illusion of being an ultra-powerful student while having no magic abilities!
  • Kiss x Death (2014-2018, 7 vols, Shonen Jump Plus)
    • A parasitic alien is tasked with bringing five criminals of its kind to Earth to trap within frogs and other weak lifeforms, but fucks up and they possess five schoolgirls and kill his host body. Years later he manages to possess a student of the same age and hunts them down in a sci-fi school rom-com. The gimmick? The only way to remove the parasites is by french-kissing, and the alien’s host body is SCARED OF GIRLS!
  • Kiruru Kill Me (2020-present, 5 volumes, Shonen Jump Plus)
    • Aoi Nemo is a handsome and successful heir to a pharmaceutical empire with one big problem: there’s a hit out on him, and he’s the one who put it out! Why would he do that? Because he fell in love with Kiruru, an assassin, and this seemed like a good way for the two to connect. This has been on hiatus since 2022. Available now from Seven Seas.

Publishing

• Series it replaced:
  • Sengoku Armors by Shota Sakaki (flop, 2 vols) Flop eligible
• Series that replaced it:
  • Haikyu!! by Haruichi Furudate (MEGA-HIT, 45 vols)
• Series in same round:
  • ST&RS by Ryosuke Takeuchi & Masaru Miyokawa (flop, 5 vols) covering soon

Manga Itself

• Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carrol is titled Kagami no Kuni no Arisu in Japanese. And so in Japanese this is called Kagami no Kuni no Harisugawa. It’s a homage.
• This series debuted strong. Volume 1 had first week sales of ~45k, and received comfortable placement in the magazine’s table of contents for most of its run. It is widely accepted that this wasn’t cancelled for its reception, but for a lack of ideas.
  • In volume 1’s author comment Yasuhiro Kano asks who the idiot was who came up with a plot with so many limitations, a bad sign.
  • The epilogue chapter, with perverse shenanigans is notable for two reasons. One, it is NOT included in the volumes. That’s a magazine exclusive, baybee. Two, it literally ends with a caption saying that Kano does not plan on continuing the comic in any shape or form. He peaces out, rather than just get axed.
• In the starting pages of chapter 1, child Harisugawa is wearing a tee with “M0” on the back. Mx0 reference.
• Golf ball stack trivia: the Guinness World Record for largest stack of golf balls belongs to Don Athey of Bridgeport, Ohio, who stacked 9 balls vertically in October of 1998. Harisugawa’s mental golf ball stack simply cannot compare.
• Mao’s phone is a flip-phone, which were still very much in vogue in 2011 in Japan, but has quickly dated this series, as smartphone adoption increased massively in the years since.
• Volume extras are mostly sketch pages, showing what chapters looked like at the draft stage. They’re surprisingly detailed at the character level!
• Other than that you get a couple of pages of bonus comic in vol.1 and that’s your lot. No assistant credits, no afterword, nothing. Bare bones stuff.
• Voyeurism is a criminal offence, even in Japan, though photo voyeurism (i.e. upskirt photos and the like) has literally ONLY JUST been criminalised. Peeping through magical mirror is a less common version of the crime, and the severity of the crime is yet unknown.