I’m gonna diiiiiiieeee!!!! Ok well here’s all of wide-ban 12. At once, at the same time. All 20 chapters. Don’t… expect this sort of thing to happen often. The only reason we’ve got this much at once is A. Because a bunch of chapters were partially or nearly done next last. B. 217 is the last gag chapter before it gets into the more action-focused Barbarian Arc which takes a lot less time to typeset. And C. Because I way over-did it and spend many hours every day this week on it.
BUT thanks to all that we’ve reached a huge milestone and now we’re, at long last, after several thousands of hours of work on this project, are heading for the end. There’s only 1 wide-ban, 19 chapters, to go. And then this project will be done, English-speakers and enjoy this masterpiece series in its entirety, and I can relax. I’ll probably work on one of several other things but I’ll definitely slow down.
Ok so let me try to give a few remarks about each chapter here.
209: This is a silly gag chapter about Shimabuu. It’s kind of a meta chapter about not having any ideas so you make a chapter about a mangaka who’s out of ideas. It’s honestly lots of fun.
210: This is a VERY silly chapter about kids who want new years money (otoshidama). Takeshi’s kind of even dumber than usual here. I got kinda lucky here in that we’re releasing this right near New Year’s. Also Toriko makes a cameo in this one! It came out the same issue of Jump where the original 2002 Toriko chapter came out. We’re gonna try to scanlate that soon.
211: This is a Kaori-sensei chapter! The second and last one. It’s a gag chapter about her going to driving school. And honestly it’s a good change of pace having a female main character.
212: This is a school gag chapter about kids needing to submit their notebooks to their teacher. After we’ve had arcs about characters fighting evil cabals, other-dimensional demons, and heavenly gods, we have a chapter that could fit snugly with the first handful of chapters of the series where they were ALL about this. In that way it’s kind of a fun throwback. Though it is a reminder about how this series isn’t really about the story “progressing”.
213: This is a fun event-based one-off chapter that’s a bit more sentimental than funny. It’s also the last Baba-focused chapter, though he does appear a bit in the Barbarian Arc.
214: This is a Valentine’s Day chapter! Also sort of lucky that it’s coming out sorta close with Valentine’s Day. It’s the last Nana-focused chapter I guess, though there’s only a couple of those. It’s pretty heartfelt and down to earth.
215: This one on the other hand is way less down to earth. It involves the world getting buried under tons of snow and aliens. This one’s a silly sorta sci-fi chapter where the kids don’t take it very seriously.
216: This one is very silly and involves Takeshi and the kids going after a flasher and for some reason they get super-muscular. I kinda wonder if Shimabuu wanted to get more usage out of his practice drawing muscular guys which he’d learned for Toriko.
217: This is a relaxed, gag chapter about Kojirou. I like i because there’s very little text. You could read the whole thing in like 30 seconds.
218-228: These chapters make up what is a little less than half of the final major arc and the climax of the series, the Barbarian Arc. I know a lot of folks have been looking forward to this, and I honestly really love it, too. The unique thing about the Barbarian Arc is that it’s basically entirely serious. There’s hardly anything you could really call a “joke”, so much so that it can feel eerie sometimes. Like Takeshi’ll show up and he won’t say anything funny and you’ll be thinking, “Aren’t you gonna get someone’s name wrong or downplay the seriousness of the situation?!” but he never does. All the characters are drawn in what is generally speaking a much more realistic style than they have before with more human proportions and more detailed clothing and facial features. Nobody’s a little two-heads-tall chibi dude wearing a t-shirt. Everything has a much more realistic physicality. This kind of feels like an arc out of Fist of the North Star. There’s also a lot of graphic violence. They go up against the final and biggest villain of the series, Andou Jinichi. The arc revolves around a number of mysteries about this villain and his identity and abilities, and his organization the Barbarians.
This arc concludes all the major themes of the series and all the lore elements that have been brought up before this point. Everything there’s left to know about the leaders, Takeshi’s dad and Grandma, Mummy’s backstory, and a bunch of other stuff I won’t spoil. Wide-ban 13 contains 16 more chapters in this arc, then there’s 3 gag chapters and the manga ends. So buckle up! It’s lots of things! Read it, you’ll enjoy it!
Wide-ban 13 will probably take longer than this before it’s done, but hopefully not too long. I’ve seriously put like, way too much of my free time into working on this series but I’m nearly at the finish line now. Also I’m not making individual chapter links for this because… why would you download 20 links when you could just download 1? I’d imagine there’s no much of a demand for making these into individual folders but I guess you could do that on your own if you really wanted to.
Okay, enjoy, everyone!
Also, we have a new Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/fxrmZufp
Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi! Wide-Ban 12 (Ch. 209-228)
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