Wizard's Soul: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes

Intro

• David: Welcome to this episode of Shonen Flop, where we talk about manga in Shonen Jump that didn’t make it big

• David: I’m David

• Jordan: I’m Jordan

• David: Next week we’ll be covering Super Dog Rilienthal If you’d like to read along with us. Be sure to join the discussion in our Discord and submit your six-word summary. You can find a link to the Discord in our episode description and on our website shonenflop.com

• But this week we’re talking about Wizard's Soul and we’re joined by our guest GuestName_

• Guest: 30-second intro

Manga Details

• Subtitle is “Koi no Seisen,” which means “Holy War of Love”

• Aki★Eda

  • Notable people they had as assistants

    • None known, but interestingly an assistant runs her various socials (twitter, pixiv, et cetera), and another is a bit of a card game expert. Assistants are useful in more ways than one.

  • Other works:

(NOTE: Aki★Eda is a prolific doujin circle leader and mangaka, and we would be here all day if I listed everything, so this is very much a highlight reel rather than a comprehensive list.)

• Bonnouji

• Koi wa Hikari

• Please Wake Up, Kusakabe-san

• Houkago Metaverse

• Publishing

  • Magazine:

    • Monthly Comic Flapper

      • Yes, that sort of Flapper. No, I don’t know why. Seinen magazine that has run such hits as Twin Spica, Young Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games, Girls und Panzer, and My Wife Has No Emotion. So series for adult men, but usually starring women. 

  • Run Dates: 

    • August 2013 to August 2015

• Chapters/Volumes: 

  • 22 chapters/4 volumes

About the Manga

• Plot

  • The entire world is centered around Wizards Soul, a card game that’s 90% Magic the Gathering, 10% made up bullshit. Manaka works in a card shop frequented by kids who she routinely loses to. Sakurai is a boy with a powerful deck who has a crush on Manaka and likes walking her home. One day Manaka’s out of work father comes home to reveal he got caught in a rare card scam and put them all into severe debt. The only hope they have of paying it back is for Manaka to win a big WS tournament, so she gets serious and breaks out the annoying bullshit deck. She needs points in order to join the tournament, so next day she challenges Sakurai to a game. If she wins she gets all of his and if he wins she’ll do whatever he wants, which he thinks is her way of telling him that she likes him. She ends up crushing him in a horrible, annoying way and taking all of his points. He leaves in a huff and they both regret that it looks like their relationship won’t recover. 

  • It turns out that the reason why Manaka is so good is that her terminally ill mother was an expert player. She had an idea that the more suffering she endured the better she was at the game, which lead young Manaka to believe that if she beat her then it would help her recover. So she played her almost every day and never won even once but in the process learned incredibly powerful techniques. Manaka’s first match in the tournament is against Ohta, a fat girl with a fatty deck. Don’t blame me that’s what they say. Manaka hates playing because it’s triggering to her mother’s death. Despite this however she crushes Ohta. A girl who has a crush on Sakurai that Manaka defeated in chapter 2 tells her next opponent Ouji that Manaka stole her deck and gives him a list of her cards. It doesn’t help him win against her. Her next opponent is Aki Aka “Roman” who runs a fucking Exodia deck. Manaka switches things around and Exodia Obliterates her ass instead. Next she’s pitted against a cat girl named Kokono and her best friend/girlfriend? Yukino. Yukino was bullied because even though she has an encyclopedic knowledge of WS she’s trash at the game. Kokono however stood up for her which brought them together. The jealous girl from earlier steals Manaka’s deck and marks her cards with a utility knife. She then tells Kokono that Manaka is cheating. However, after Kokono loses the jealous girl walks up and asks why she didn’t report Manaka. Yukino says it’s because they could tell she was a fucking liar and Manaka wasn’t paying attention to that shit at all during the game.

  • Her next opponent Tsumugi is an ancient 29 year old talented victim of the dunning-Krueger effect who thinks she’s worse than she is. It’s a close match but Manaka wins. Then she plays against an asshole who makes fun of Sakurai and she obviously wins because he sucks. Then she defeats a girl with a deck full of cute cards. It’s time for the finals when Manaka plays against a dude named Chikudate with a Hawaiian burn deck who’s a protege of Tsumugi. This whole time Manaka has been absolutely miserable, but Chikudate’s love of the game makes her start to question if maybe she can enjoy it too. She still crushes him and wins the tournament. Since she won she gets to play an exhibition match against Aoi, an idol who’s an expert at WS. Manaka puts together a deck with all of her friends’ cards and loses, but she already won the money so whatever, you know? The next day Sakurai goes into the card shop to find Manaka swamped with fans trying to get her autograph. He gets her to come play WS with him as he struggles to tell her he loves her. Manaka says she hates playing but he says that he disagrees. Manaka wouldn’t be this ready to play if she hated it. She realizes that actually she does kinda like it and cries a little bit. They go for a walk and Manaka tells Sakurai that she loves him aw the end 

• Characters

  • Manaka Ichinose

    • Tucker:

      • Is her name a reference to the mana system of Magic: the Gathering? 

      • The character's name is written as まなか in hiragana, which is pretty common way for people, especially girls, to write their names when not using formal kanji spellings. According to the Japanese wikipedia article describing the rule of MTG, mana is written as マナ in katakana, which is the most common way of writing words borrowed into Japanese from other languages. 

      • This doesn't mean that Manaka's name isn't a reference (it does sound exactly like saying "is it mana?"), but it would be very weird and out-of-character for her to write her name in katakana (I can't remember any instance of seeing a Japanese female name written in katakana). If she did write her name using katakana, it would make her come off as an edge lord or something, which does not seem like something she would do

    • Nice lady who works at the FLGS

    • Has to get shit done

    • Kuudere

    • Hates wizard’s soul

  • Sakurai Eita

    • Older big brother like guy

    • Crush on Manaka even after she beats him up

Why it Failed - Zach

• This gets dark so fucking fast

• The art is kinda…lame it’s a lot of sitting and talking. Why is there no real imagery of the cards?

• The game has rules unique to it but man it took a while to get there

• The game itself isn’t interesting so it’s hard to feel like man I’d wana play this like why not use an existing game at that point

• You can tell the author doesn’t understand competitive MTG that well like a major tourney has way more than 3 rounds

• It’s kinda slow, there’s a lot of the same things said a lot and the art is pretty uninteresting

• Having a super long tournament arc was kind of boring

• A lot of the character designs are boring like with go in or out with the designs being weird 

• Another example of the author not really thinking about things is why would you diversify the strategies your deck can win vs day 2 when you'll deal with a much smaller types of decks 

• No one ever seems to play clever outside of the mc I really wanted the winter lady to get out of her lock 

• Also you certainly can lose in mtg tournaments but they make her unbeatable like have her lose in the swiss rounds

What it Did Well - Jordan

• The use of card games to communicate is cute

• I appreciate it shows school and makes efforts to have characters that matter

• The author makes the interactions interesting like her having the same panel over and over again was interesting

• Romance is an interesting element to add to it

• The author did their research like not showing all your deck is a valid strategy

• Cat lady was a fucking real one

• The characters ahile not super interesting at least don't despawn once beaten

Where it Could Have Gone - Zach

• Actually make a game with like mechanics it’s weird as a MTG ripoff

• Show some actual theory like they kinda dip their toe into how pros play but like say why you sideborded or explain more advanced strategy talk some who’s the beatdown

• I wanted to see more worldbuilding like lucky lifecounter is fun but we don’t see how card games are like the life of everyone

• I feel this was a draft away from being good like just remove the text and have more focusing on the matches and impCr of the game

• Show more of the yakuza stuff where's the life or death card game vs an opponent with a giant card tattoo missing three fingers

• Maybe rather than this weird yakuza plot its about her trying to make friends via the cardgame, shit even rip off the phone contact thing from eyesheild. It would better explain the weird hostility subplots you

Misc Thoughts

•  One notable example of a real life MTG card that went to 0 to hundreds of dollars is lion’s eye diamond which was absolute garbage and is now worth over 400

• The control and swing with one creature for a ton of turns is a reference to how “The Deck” used Serra Angel to win over enough turns

• It’s weird this seems to be set in 2000s era MTG with things like upkeep costs but it’s much newer than that

• If your grades are based on points did Sakurai just fail out of class

• Lmao at least they just straight up say this is MTG in the bonus material

• The cards say battlefield but people say play, smh translator

• Lmao the editors note about why someone would wear a mask, how things change

• Persophones effect doesn't seem consistent does she or the owner get the creature 

• Maxy Bee thoughts:

  • I cannot stress enough that the author’s name is Aki★Eda, not Aki*Eda, not Aki☆Eda. It’s a solid star. I have no idea how you would say her name out loud. Anyway the specificity probably helps with SEO.

  • You don’t need me to tell you that Wizard’s Soul is heavily based on Magic: the Gathering, and how if you squint you can apply game knowledge from the latter onto the former.

    • I’m like 90% sure I could build a grixis (BUR) deck that is similar to Manaka’s, but I don’t play anymore.

  • Rare card scams, as depicted in the manga, aren’t far from reality, where people will often speculate on what will increase in value due to synergies in legacy formats.

  • The author comments between chapters make it clear that Magic: The Gathering isn’t the only card game that inspired Wizard’s Soul, as the The Prince of Tennis card game (based on the Weekly Shonen Jump series by Takeshi Konomi) gets specific mention. It’s a bit different, in that it’s about playing a game of tennis (singles or doubles) using your deck for players and shots, and a playmat for layout, but is a pretty fascinating card game, as anyone who’s ever played its official single player-only PS2 video game “Card Hunter” can attest to (Japan-only, sadly).

    • Notably the cards have major real estate taken up for the art, as the pretty boys are half the point of TeniPuri.

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary

  • Community

    • Tucker: The Heart of the Cards? Suffering

    • Maxybee: Tap your manga right to left

    • AuraPaladin: CGDCT: Cute Girls Doing Card Tournaments

    • blahmoomoo: It's the Drama of the Cards

    • Chemy: What jocks think playing TCGs does.

    • dackerson: Author casts: "The Reader's Interest Descends"

    • Diego The Phantom Seer: True love is all about cards

    • duderocks the earthchild stan: Should have been about the lesbians

    • Glornak Ironspawn: You'll NEVER be better than Yu-Gi-Oh.

    • GreyPotter 👑 King of Questions: Ichinose’s REAL deadly sin (playing blue)

    • Kpt.Kluless: Romance was exiled until last turn

    • LordAnubis, #1RedHoodFan/Mourner: The Two Year Curse strikes again

    • Meru: Shuffle target manga into owner's library

    • Portal man: 💖My heart is in your cards💖

    • Redblade: Sad bean learns to love again

    • Resident Warhammer Nerd: As a blue player, lmao counterspell

    • Sbubby: Manaka could’ve really used Ravioli tokens

    • Spike: Cancel series. It cannot be regenerated.

    • The Wolf The Wood The Trafalgar: The real Ichinose Family Sins manga

    • Thores: You’ve activated my SAD card, Kaiba!

  • David: Mangaka be: Draw, pass. Draw, pass.| failed to find an interesting direction | put’s the mid in mid range | vs interesting plot it's draw, pass

  • Jordan: you’ve activated my trap card: TRAUMA! 

  • Guest: 

• Flop or not

  • David: flop, read destroy all humanity