Zan: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes

Manga Details

• Author: Sugirta, Naoya (Su-gree-tah Nah-oy-a)
  • SWOT
• Run dates:  Jul 24, 2006 to Nov 27, 2006
• Chapters/Volumes: 2/18

About the Manga

• Plot
  • It’s an alternate world where Japan has the 2nd amendment but for swords so everyone is obsessed with swords. There’s a kid and he’s got a shitty dull sword that’s actually good if you’re a master but he sucks except he doesn’t suck he’s actually a master but he thinks he sucks. He gets a crush on a feminist girl who’s good with swords and wants to prove that girls are strong by losing fights and being a damsel in distress. The shitty sword kid then saves her life from an incel and feminist girl immediately falls for him.
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  • Then there’s a guy who looks like Ichigo with a scar who’s a cool ninja and he’s a bad guy but he fights shitty sword kid and realizes he doesn’t suck so they become friends. Then some short douchebag kid gets a crush on feminist girl and kidnaps her before siccing his bodyguards on them. One of the kids looks like ichigo smoking a joint and after getting beaten up he joins the shitty sword kid and scar ichigo who looks identical to him because this artist sucks.
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  • Short guy makes feminist girl sword fight him but he gives her a tiny sword (or as people not in sword land would call a dager) so she’s getting cut a lot. Thankfully a third faction that doesn’t matter appears consisting of a teenage girl with big boobs and Sasuke. Boob girl saves feminist girl before deciding to try killing her until they have a girl moment and agree that gender doesn’t matter and you can just ignore sexism. Meanwhile Eyepatch wolf murders Sasuke and shitty sword kid beats up eyepatch but he got really cut up in the process and had to go to the hospital. A couple weeks go by and he’s out of the hospital. I'm dead serious, that's it, and then the series ends.
• Characters
  • Murayma Zan (Mur-ey-ama Zan)
    • Super strong
    • Master of unsharpend blade
    • Timid personality
    • Mysterious dead father
    • Becomes super edgy in combat
  • Tsukishima (Tsoo-kih-she-mah)
    • Pretty girl with huge head
    • Made fun of for girl
  • Tsuranuki
    • Eye scar
    • Wants to die?
    • Becomes an ally for some reason
    • Ichigo with a scar
    • Has shuriken which are not swords in this sword manga with the premise that everyone only uses swords
  • Sasamori
    • Edgy
    • Smokes
    • Idk this series sucks
    • Ichigo with a joint
    • I think he has a special sword that’s fast? I think? I don’t care

Why it failed

• This is very not ok art - very deviantart tier. Looks like it was drawn in MS paint
• Very lazy square paneling
• Does this series really need to explain sharp swords = good
• This is going to have a gun blaze west issue where how the fuck are you going to avoid characters dying from the sword fighting
• This author doesn’t respect women
• You’d think the author could draw swords given the topic
• Fuck this plot is so bad
• They really spend a lot of time talking about nothing
• Wow they really saying ill play with you with the Tsuranuki fight to excuse anything real from happening in it
• The characters have 0 agency, everything happens to them
• Why are people using things other than swords so early in this series
• Man you 100% could riley method this series
• Dude idk how his personality switch works at fucking all
• Every single fight works the exact way. Zan is losing and then he just becomes good suddenly and wins. It’s never explained, there’s no depth or mystery, he just suddenly gets stronger and wins. It’s like if in Yugioh they never explained that there was a pharaoh so Yugi just inexplicably got taller and better at duel monsters. It’s meaningless.
• HOW DO YOU HAVE TWO CHARACTERS WHO LOOK IDENTICAL TO ICHIGO IN THE SAME CHAPTERS AT THE SAME TIME
• This author is terrible at setting things up. He doesn’t tell you anything until literally the moment he pays it off, meaning theres a ton of exposition dialogue in the middle of fights where characters explain why the reader should give a shit about what just happened. Which means I didn’t give a shit when I read it. I can only care in hindsight.
• The time skip existed solely to show us that Zan got discharged from the hospital. He doesn’t even talk to anybody. Why did I need to know he was alive there’s no sequel series.

What it did well

• Lol everyone is a sword master + normal life is a hilarious idea
• I’m impressed they show people being actually hurt by the swords
• It was refreshing to see a non sexualized teen girl in a manga for once and then the author introduced a sexualized teen girl oh well

Where it could have gone

• Show more weird people having sword scenes, maybe using swords for weird purposes like imagine cutting a cucumber with a katana or a baby with a little sword in their stroller
• Establish some sort of plot, maybe he has a sword he can’t unshief because he’s not strong enough and it’s a clue to finding his dad or something
• Have strong female characters there’s not a lot of swordswoman tropes
• Imagine it plays it straight then the MC gets a concussion and it completely warps around that, like Million Dollar Baby
• How about the MC is forbidden from learning normal sword techniques so he learns other martial arts to adapt to his swordplay, like how he kinda did boxing footwork in chapter 4
• WHY does Zan get strong suddenly? Why should I care? Is his dad possessing him? Fucking tell me!
• Towards the very end they start acting like Bushido or the way of the warrior matters or whatever. What if that ACTUALLY mattered? Like it would be interesting if in a modern world obsessed with swords people went back to samurai codes of honor, but that is not this series.

Misc Thoughts

• Why would a fencing book help with a completely different kind of sword and why does it not have a fencing sword on the cover
• The translator 100% thought weird was spelled wierd as that typo keeps happening
• It’s crazy one of the lessons the author thinks he needed to learn was oh yes I def need this to have more to do with the school and have a power system

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Community
    • Agpuh: An unskilled protagonist. An untalented author.
    • The Laughing Fool: Drawing blades instead of good manga
    • Twolfwood: "Swordsmen" attend high school. It sucks
    • Resident Warhammer Nerd: Just would not make the cut
    • Blahmoomoo: Teens solving problems with swords? Meh.
    • Tucker: Circa 1999 How to Draw Manga
  • David: Bleach drained of style and substance
  • Jordan: oh my god who fucking cares
  • Guest: don’t ban swords, ban Naoya Sugita
• Flop or not
  • If flop, what they could read instead
  • If not, how it compares to Chainsaw Man
  • Certified flop, read yuyu hakusho
  • Certified flop. Just listen to WAP. JK just watch an lp of Dangan Ronpa if you wanna watch anime high schoolers kill each other.
• Is this the best/worst series we’ve talked about
  • Dude it’s in the conversation

Shoutouts

• Thank the guest, guest plug
• Props to Jordan for making the opening and ending theme, being a great co-host, and helping with editing
• Props to Mer Liel for the awesome cover art, you can find her online at liel_mer, and Nigel for being our generous art benefactor
• Thank you Dylan for assistance with editing, you can find his podcast Anime Out of Context at animeoutofcontext.com
• Thanks to Tucker for assistance with pronunciation, translation, and other miscellaneous research.
• Thanks to T-root, Ozyrat, and Twolfwood for being our awesome transcription volunteers, you can find them on our site as they become available
• Jordan thanks David for editing, anything else Jordan wants to talk about
• MISSION IGNITION REMIND ME TO TALK ABOUT IT IF I FORGET
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