How I learned to like Kagurabachi by peeling the irony away layer by layer

I get really annoyed when people all flock to something awful and gas it up as a joke, or a bit, or a meme-whatever you want to call it. It really rubs me the wrong way in a primal sense. I don't have the energy for something like that. So when Kagurabachi (KB) rolled around and a few pages from the first chapter leaked and everyone spent an absolutely agonizing week, praising the manga as a meme I was immediately over it. The officially revealed synopsis for the series was so generic and so derivative of current manga trends  you'd be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of AI prompt spit out of a computer trying to create a "New Hit Manga!" And the panels that came from it didn't inspire much confidence. And yet the people went crazy for it. KB is the new big three! The best newgen shonen is here! Chihiro is the greatest MC since Guts! It got so crazy that people congratulated Aleks Le on voice acting Chihiro in the anime adaptation that didn't exist. It was ridiculous. I still don't really know how this meme caught on so fast and so much, it was honestly suffocating. It was exactly like that shitty ass Morbius meme, which some of these KB posts did rip, bar for bar. I fucking hate shit like that man. It drives me nuts in ways I can't even fully understand. But at its core it really is just insanely corny. And like Kendrick said, "some shit just cringeworthy it ain't even gotta be deep I guess".

So the first chapter drops and it's alright. About as generic as you would imagine with a few sparks of something more sprinkled in. For starters I think the bond between Chihiro and his dad was pretty neat. I feel like there's not a lot of on screen father/son moments in Shonen manga for whatever reason. It's probably something Oedipal if I had to guess but that's a crazy can of worms to open. The way the powers were visualized were also quite interesting. The koi fish motif is not only really visually striking and pretty to look at especially how they're rendered in a super inky, splotchy kind of style but are also a pretty good metaphor for Chihiro's surprisingly graceful fighting style. For such a blunt and frankly awkward guy, he sure puts on a show whenever he fights. Which leads me to my next point, the fights in KB are pretty good. That's really where Hokazono is able to show his stuff and you can tell that's really what he cares about. While the art style of Kagurabachi is a little flat and generally not super clean, the mangaka really has a good eye for framing his action panels and creating interesting circumstances surrounding the fights as well. Plus Chihiro's ludicrous speed makes even fighting through nameless goons pretty interesting, as you barely get to see him fight them- rather you watch him flash by, leaving behind a trail of limbs and gushes of blood. Some of those guys end up dead before they even realize what's going on, which is pretty funny and a good way to show that our MC really is on a different plane than a lot of these guys. 

I'm lowkey glazing, haha. But that's the stuff that's genuinely good about it. The rest is less than stellar to be honest the writing isn't great and full of clunky exposition. A lot of anime is like this but I've seen people praising the writing in this manga which, I'm sorry, I just don't see. It’s competent but I don’t know if I would gas it up. I mean the most memorable line of dialogue in this manga is the line about Chihiro not wanting to cover up the scar on his face so he can look at it and wake up with fresh hatred every morning. I just can't handle that line. It really is genuinely so awful. So awful that there ended up being no follow through on this idea and we quickly find out that he’s actually kind of a sweet-heart. Maybe he’s trying to trick himself into believing that he’s more cold hearted than he actually is. I guess we’ll see.

Speaking of which, I think it's relevant to bring up the other side of this proverbial coin that only exists in my mind, that being Kimetsu no Yaiba. KnY is also a pretty generic sword fighting Shonen by all accounts. But its brought to life by extremely expressive art and a sense of empathy for the other, but not allowing that empathy to obstruct the necessary violence of justice. Its a neat lil series I like it a lot, and people slander it a lot but will gas KB in the same breath and now that I've hallucinated this connection between them I can't really let that rock. They are kinda cut from a similar cloth and once I realized that it made me understand KB a little better. I can’t lie I was hating on KB for being generic; but that doesn't necessarily mean bad. People will shit on KnY all the time for being generic but it has heart, and I like that. I feel very similarly about Kagurabachi. It’s got a lot of heart and that really comes through to me in the ways the characters interact and how Chihiro comes to respect opponents like Sojo and Hakuri.

This manga really feels like this is some sort of cosmic success story and despite how incidental that success might be, it doesn’t change the fact that somebody got to live their dreams as a result of a bunch of awful, terrible memes. That really is beautiful to me. Would KB survive Shonen Jump's slash-and-burn approach to publishing manga if not for all that mess? I don’t think it would but we don’t live in that world, so we’ll never really know. KB was given the chance to shake off its rocky start and come into its own as a genuinely good action manga, which as of this point is ending off its second major arc. So who knows, this manga could still go to shit down the line, but at the very least if it does- I can still say I’m glad it got to exist and thrive for the time that it did. I’ll always applaud when art gets that chance.  It was really nice to find something genuinely good amongst the rubble of dogshit fake ironic agenda posting and gassing up "peak fiction".

So yeah, ultimately KB is going to sit on the same shelf as Chainsawman and a few other manga where my feelings are pretty much “This is alright, I fuck with this I really wish people would stop sucking it off constantly though”. Things would be so much better if people were more willing to stop speaking in extremes. Everything is either peak, or it sucks or its MID and that's such an annoying place to be as someone who likes talking to people about why they like stuff. As a final note: It's still a little ugly sometimes, but Hokazono has gone on record saying he only started drawing manga 4 years ago which is pretty fucking nutty to think about. Legitimately super inspiring to see. This guy has a crazy eye and some serious talent, in a few years this shit is gonna look insane.