Another sports series bites the dust
Drawn to the Fire
(Masayoshi Satosho)
April 2026 to August 2026
19 Chapters
What I Liked
- Hina seemed cool
- The seniors seemed cool, even if I don’t remember their names
Where I Think Things Went Wrong
- Maybe being about basketball, which people already know well, means that it can be hard to make it technical without stating the obvious, but too technical would turn people off too?
- Not enough focus on the main team before shoving a whole bunch of rival teams at the reader
- Hina not being in contact with the main character felt like, but why?
Conclusion
Probably general comments on recent WSJ sports series, but I don’t think any of them spent enough time on the relationships between the members of the team. Thinking back to the last successful WSJ sports series (Haikyuu) and the currently running Oblivion Battery, a lot more time was spent on the characters just hanging out and bouncing off each other. Basically endearing the characters to the reader so they would actually care about if they won their matches or not, as well as understanding their strengths and weaknesses and being able to follow each character’s improvement. Why rush to inter-high? Once you get into the tournament season it gets even harder to have character moments…
Anyway, just like the other WSJ graveyard sports series, Manga Plus is doing great with sports series so this isn’t a big loss.
Categories: Simulpub Review
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