Medaka Box [Manga]

[Tenchi Hou Take]

Originally Posted by Sol Falling

Nishio sure is having a bit of a hard time selling some of the original concepts of this manga. Medaka's somewhat lacking popularity; the lack of interest in Zen x Medaka; bottom of the barrel ToC rankings all throughout the main plotline/Zenkichi parts of the last arc, etc. If you want to say that Nishio's a failure if he can't make Medaka Box popular by focusing on Zenkichi (presuming that Nishio does in fact want to focus the story on Zenkichi), then well, it might actually be true that he is failing to do so.

On the other hand I am pretty much not worried about cancellation or dropping tankoubon sales, etc. 'cause if there was still one thing Nishio did right the last arc, that was Ajimu. If you look at the records for rankings and character popularity, etc. actually you'll find out that Medaka Box/Kumagawa didn't actually become popular until after the end of the Minus Arc. That is, even during the period while Kumagawa was the villain the whole time Medaka Box was still sitting in the bottom 5 pretty regularly. Both Medaka Box's rankings and Kumagawa's personal popularity (as estimated in the character polls) only started to rise in the period after Kumagawa's personal motivations were revealed and he joined the main cast as a protagonist.

And in fact, it's a pretty similar situation to what we have now: even though Medaka Box had crappy rankings during the period when Ajimu was most active as a villain, Nishio can now do some amazing stuff with her "reformed"/allied personality. The 600 spam skill chapter is just the first example; if Nishio can allow Ajimu to integrate and do things as part of the plot like Kumagawa throughout the Treasure Hunt chapters, he should be able to easily use her to raise Medaka Box's appeal and popularity. As a matter of fact, in terms of rankings, I expect chapters like 140 and 143 to do very well.

So, is Nishio a failure for creating popular characters (even if they aren't his main characters)? Well, I don't think so. Between Ajimu and Kumagawa, Nishio has surely put a lot of genuine thought into the characterization of his villains too. And in fact, actually to be honest with you, the more I think about them the more I start to see glaring weaknesses in both Medaka and Zenkichi's personalities which make me doubt if Nishio even intends/wants for Medaka or Zenkichi to be currently popular. If you ask me, even after all their development, both Medaka and Zenkichi still have somewhat a while to go before they can become fully likeable (i.e. "perfectly likeable" ) characters. In such a case, it is probably okay even if Medaka Box gets bad ratings so long as the manga sells and continues long enough for Nishio to complete what he has planned for the story.



Well now, I'm looking forward to the release of the chapter too, but we will have to see if there's anything in particular to be "proud" of regarding Zenkichi.

Wait so Medaka box has had pretty shitty rankings throughout it's life, even during a lot of Minus 13 arc. Hmmm I wonder how well the volumes sell since that's the only thing that really matters, since obviously the rankings aren't what's keeping this going.

Edit: Looking at volume sales even of last arc, nah Medaka Box doesn't have a remotest chance of getting cancelled, it may not of sold gangbusters but even last arc it sold more than enough to be in the safe zone. I doubt Nisio remotely cares about rankings that sort of way with sales like those. No wonder Nisio is basically doing whatever shit he wants.

[Homura7]

Discussing again about rankings and character preferences, you guys are tiresome.

[Tenchi Hou Take]

Originally Posted by Kurusu-Shirudo

Discussing again about rankings and character preferences, you guys are tiresome.

Same old since Westlo brought it up, but it was kinda enlightening, considering I realised just how little the shit rankings mean in regards to Medaka Box considering it sales means unless it somehow dramatically drops down, which is highly unlikely at this point there's pretty much zero risk of cancellation.

[Sol Falling]

The volume sales are something like 170k per volume as reported by Oricon, or 3 million over 12 volumes as of late 2011 as reported by press releases. Decent sales for sure, if a little stagnant considering that Medaka Box was already up to selling 100k per volume as of Vol. 2.

Regarding Medaka Box's performance throughout the Minus Arc, I don't mean to imply that none of the chapters fared well. It still had the occasional chapters jumping up to 6th or 7th place, and quite a few stretches of higher averages than most of the other arcs. It's just that it also wasn't uncommon for the series to dip back into the bottom 5 or even stay there for quite some time (8 chapters in a row in the bottom 5 at worst, versus 6 chapters in a row outside of it at best), so at best you could call it inconsistent.

[Homura7]

Rankings are meaningless, over 100k per volume makes a hypothetical cancellation non-viable and impossible. Even if the series stayed in bottom 5 forever (not gonna happen) sales is what matters in the end.

[Randrak42]

Curse you Bakuman! You've taught us so much, yet now all we see are rankings and sales numbers! Grrrr! [/exaggeration]

[Tenchi Hou Take]

Full raws are out.

fucking crazy ass girl is fucking crazy. All in all surpringly good fight.

[NeoDoom]

Originally Posted by Tenchi Hou Take

Full raws are out.

fucking crazy ass girl is fucking crazy. All in all surpringly good fight.

Could you pls send me a link to the RAW, cannot wait for cxc to translate this one! I will be morbid if Zenkichi's "Devil Style" was eaten by Shiranuis "real eater"!!!! Devil Style is my favorite skill in this whole Mary Sue manga.

[peterim09]

Originally Posted by NeoDoom

Could you pls send me a link to the RAW, cannot wait for cxc to translate this one! I will be morbid if Zenkichi's "Devil Style" was eaten by Shiranuis "real eater"!!!! Devil Style is my favorite skill in this whole Mary Sue manga.

http://www.mcanime.net/manga_enlinea...s/373377/1#ver

[Randrak42]

Screw you guys...here I am trying to resist the temptation and you go ahead and post links to the full RAW D:
I hate yall

Except Tenchi...cause he mah homeboy

[Tenchi Hou Take]

Originally Posted by peterim09

http://www.mcanime.net/manga_enlinea...s/373377/1#ver

I'd put that in spoiler tags as posting links to raws might be against the rules. Scans should either be soon today or tomorow though their "schedule" did state today...

[Darth SpiderDen]

I really want to know the reason for Zenkichi's hair-color change.
And it's good to see a straightforward battle between fists and weapons (yet, the oddest feeling of deja vu keeps invading me while seeing the battle).

[Homura7]

Mother of god, that had got to hurt a fucking lot.

[Soji]

Originally Posted by Kurusu-Shirudo

Mother of god, that had got to hurt a fucking lot.

Spoiler for just in case:

You mean zen wounds from the girl? Or you mean Zen bite to her? Or the thing she does to use all that blade or maybe the last one with medaka?. Wait...why this ch seem like M+ S play?

[Tenchi Hou Take]

Originally Posted by Soji

Spoiler for just in case:

You mean zen wounds from the girl? Or you mean Zen bite to her? Or the thing she does to use all that blade or maybe the last one with medaka?. Wait...why this ch seem like M+ S play?

Spoiler for spoiler:

No S + M play generally is pretty tame in comparison to this and diesn't involve such grievous bodily harm, what she did was more like a slow and painful attempted self suicide.

[Last Carpet]

Spoiler for my thoughts:

If Medaka's so strong, whay has she been captured. I wonder what the weakness of the Joker Team Zenkichi was talking about is?

I also wonder if there's supposed to be a more sympathetic light here? Like, maybe Namanie doesn't want to marry Medaka either and deep down wanted to be free to choose who she wanted to date/marry.

Namanie is.....twisted to say the least, especially with her fighting style using all those swords. But since Zen is friends with Kei and can deal with Mukae's crush on him, Namanie shouldn't be so far gone. Especially since she seems to like Zen.

I think I'll try to start a section for her on tvtropes.

And with that.....

RUKIRUKIRUKIRUKIRUKIRUKIRUKIRUKIRUKIRUKIRUKIRUKI

[Cruor]

iirc the chapters that started the Zen arc (118 I think? The 2 or 3 chapters where he had the shit beaten out of him by Medaka and was given the speech by Ajimu) were among the highest rated in the series' history. Its just the next few weeks didn't deliver as well as it should (well, more like every series at the time was revealing huge plots. So its more like it couldn't keep up with the other shit that was rolling with it).

[Sol Falling]

Originally Posted by Cruor

iirc the chapters that started the Zen arc (118 I think? The 2 or 3 chapters where he had the shit beaten out of him by Medaka and was given the speech by Ajimu) were among the highest rated in the series' history. Its just the next few weeks didn't deliver as well as it should (well, more like every series at the time was revealing huge plots. So its more like it couldn't keep up with the other shit that was rolling with it).

When talking about rankings you have to remember that the actual chapters each ranking corresponds to is 7 chapters back due to the delay. Also, you can't count colour pages. The chapters that started the Zen arc were "decent" (13th, 8th, etc.) but Medaka Box's actual best chapter was ch. 114 at 4th.

[Tenchi Hou Take]

Originally Posted by Sol Falling

When talking about rankings you have to remember that the actual chapters each ranking corresponds to is 7 chapters back due to the delay. Also, you can't count colour pages. The chapters that started the Zen arc were "decent" (13th, 8th, etc.) but Medaka Box's actual best chapter was ch. 114 at 4th.

Umm we don't actually know the delay, so you can't really state that either. We just know there's a delay. Hell we don't even really know the time period of voting, if several weeks worth our allowed, then obviously the rankings wouldn't be influenced by single chapter but more a period of time. Even if it was just in regards to that chapter. The overall lack of information about ToC makes pining pointing chapters of popularity worthless, you can only really use it to judge arcs and mini arcs.

[[HearT]]

ｈｍｍ...is it just me or is devil style now ineffective? Zenkichi was able to dodge the blade by the 'width of a hair', and also miss Ruki ended up being the 'weakest' of the suitors... so either zenkichi can turn off its effect, or he somehow got rid of it~

I prefer zenkichi's hair black♥