Highlights
- Discover how a viral meme turned a new manga series, Kagurabachi, into a phenomenon before its debut chapter even released.
- Dive into the world of Kagurabachi, a thrilling tale of revenge in a crime-infested Tokyo with enchanting swords and dark sorcery.
- See how the internet’s fascination with Kagurabachi created a wave of excitement that ultimately boosted the manga’s success.
One of the most frightening things the internet is capable of can occasionally be its greatest source of entertainment as well, that being its propensity for intricate, communally crafted falsehoods. One such narrative was spawned at the beginning of autumn last year surrounding the success and reputation of Weekly Shōnen Jump’s Kagurabachi, written by Takeru Hokazono.
On September 13, 2023, an X user posted “Enough time has passed” accompanying a Greater Than meme that placed Kagurabachi above Masashi Kishimoto’s Boruto, which started a wildfire. People began posting similar memes, hailing Hokazono’s manga series as one of the all-time greats and perhaps even a successor to “The Big Three,” but there was just one catch…
Kagurabachi Hadn’t Even Started Yet
The first chapter was released on September 19, but in the week leading up to the debut, people were praising the series as if it had been running for years. All the community had to work with was a somewhat generic synopsis and some color preview illustrations of the protagonist, Chihiro, in a long black coat, brandishing his katana. Unsurprisingly, much of this meme was born from a place of irony and heavy doubt about the future of this series. The synopsis is as follows:
Young Chihiro spends his days training under his famous swordsmith father. One day he hopes to become a great sword-maker himself. The goofy father and the serious son–they thought these days would last forever. But suddenly, tragedy strikes. A dark day soaked in blood. Chihiro and his blade now live only for revenge. Epic sword battle action!
For every manga that becomes a success in Shōnen Jump, there are tons more that get canceled early on and rarely spoken about afterward. Somehow, Kagurabachi happened to be the one new series to get singled out, with the undercurrent of the meme suggesting doubt as to its longevity. However, by the time Chapter 1 was released, the manga’s popularity had become less of a joke and more of a committed alternate reality on behalf of the community.
The Meme Became the Marketing
It spread across the internet and began pulling in people who weren’t in on the joke, leading to a lot of confusion, and the gaslighting didn’t end there. It wasn’t enough to exaggerate the reputation of the manga – surely, an anime had to exist for such a monumental work in this fictitious timeline. People began to pretend that a Kagurabachi anime project was greenlit and being worked on by a major animation studio.
Different memes imagined different studios, but the ones most savvy to industry trends naturally assumed that MAPPA acquired it, which, even as misinformation, feels entirely too believable. Some, like the above X user, went a step further by imagining that an anime adaptation not only existed but that the first season was already done. People had even fan-cast voice actor Aleks Le as the English dub voice of Chihiro, and fans of Le probably know where this is going.
The same day that the first chapter was released, Le reposted a TikTok edit of the manga but with voice acting, sound effects, and captions by him, fully committing to the joke. This meme was at an advanced stage where it was no longer simply a fiction playing off of reality, but an active participant in the cultural canon surrounding the work.
Why the Kagurabachi Meme Is So Fascinating
Almost a year before Kagurabachi became a meme, Tumblr invented a Martin Scorsese film that never existed. It was called Goncharov, “the greatest mafia movie ever made,” and it took the entire website, and the rest of the internet soon after, by storm. Every aspect of the film, from narrative to subtext, was constructed, all while users created artwork and music that evoked the idea of a classic that wasn’t real.
What made Goncharov special was that people weren’t just pantomiming their familiarity with art; they were pantomiming their appreciation of exceptional art. It wasn’t just a good movie, it was the greatest of all time. The meme practically produced an image board of the kinds of moments that contribute to transcendent works of art that reverberate through the ages.
Kagurabachi Ain’t Quite That
Kagurabachi is not on quite the same level as Goncharov because, for one thing, the manga that the meme is built around actually exists. Thus, the fandom was never compelled to artificially generate the building blocks of a hypothetical “greatest shōnen of all time.” If anything, the initial low expectations make it more akin to the ironic fanfare over Morbius, a common comparison among commentators of the Kagurabachi craze.
Yet unlike Morbius, which was critically panned and a failure, Kagurabachi has been successful, and if anything, the meme has served as the best advertisement for it possible. Besides, even if Goncharov isn’t real, the meme behind it shares the same premise as Kagurabachi‘s in that it is meant to be the greatest of all time. If the former meme was a reflection of the qualities that comprise timeless art, then this new one reflects the trends of shōnen manga and anime.
Recently, we put out a feature about Jujutsu Kaisen and how it symbolizes shifting standards and tastes within the shōnen genre. There wasn’t room to touch upon it there, but Kagurabachi, as a meme, feels like a response to this phenomenon. It hadn’t even started, and the fictitious narrative that predated the premiere painted a portrait of what a successful manga’s life cycle looks like, but with no time to wait.
But Is Kagurabachi Actually Good?
Yes, it is. Kagurabachi is a really fun time. A premise based on a family tragedy is quite tiring, but the biggest problem with the logline of this manga was that it suggests that the tragedy would dominate a significant portion of the introduction, and it truly doesn’t. There’s some fun father-son banter to introduce the characters and themes, but just as quickly, the reader is thrust over three years into the future into a crime-infested Tokyo teeming with dark sorcery.
The real story is about Chihiro working in the city to hunt down the wielders of the six stolen enchanted blades, with the help of a seventh blade, Enten. Volume 1 follows him as he protects Char, a young girl who is being hunted by the sorcerers of the criminal underworld for reasons she is hesitant to offer up. The slick artwork produces some gorgeous action, the supporting cast is entertaining, and the story moves at a brisk pace.
Chihiro’s design may look plain, likewise with a lot of the characters, but this comes across as an intentional effort to ground the designs in a sort of modern, stylish realism. It’s comparable to the way characters are designed in Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man. What the characters lack in larger-than-life design, they make up for in their writing – the sardonic humor of which lends the story a charming quality that saves it from being overtly edgy.
Kagurabachi‘s popularity is baffling, and it’s hard to imagine what the reception to this series might have been if it weren’t for the meme that preceded its debut. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been talked about much at all, which would have been a shame considering just how entertaining of a read it has been so far. The internet can fixate on the strangest things sometimes but thank goodness it fixated on something worth paying attention to.
Kagurabachi is available to read through Viz Media.
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