Before and After Ajin Volume 1
Since Tsuina Miura’s Tenkuu Shinpan is getting an anime now, I can’t help but think of the contributions they made to Ajin initially and what could have been. I believe they left the story to Sakurai after volume 1 as the chapter titles begin to change and the first chapter of Vol 2 is called ‘A Fresh Start’. I also notice a shift in how the characters act and are portrayed from that chapter onwards.
Also, note volume 1′s credits.
Just Sakurai from Vol 2, onward.
Out of curiosity, I re-read volume 1 and tried to look at the characters and events as Tsuina Miura might have intended, keeping in mind other works of them I’ve read such as the horror oneshot, Yumeoi and part of the long-running series, Tenkuu Shinpan.
Yumeoi is a suuuper short horror oneshot in which the protagonist dreams of a slender-man-like guy who kills people he knows and when they die in the dream, they die for real.
Tenkuu Shinpan is kinda hard to describe but here’s a synopsis:
High-school girl Yuri suddenly finds herself on the rooftop of a high-rise building. She’s trapped in a bizarre world surrounded by skyscrapers, where a masked man cracked open a man’s head with an axe before her eyes. Finding a way to survive this bizarre world, find her beloved brother, and escape becomes her top priority, but she is beset by danger not just from the mysterious Masks, which possess both inhuman strength and cruelty, but other survivors turned cruel or desparate by the insanity of the high-rise world.
For funsies, I took some screenshots and did some minor analysis. I can’t pretend this will be without bias because I love Ajin but I definitely want to avoid jumping to the conclusion that the story would not be as good if Tsuina Miura had stayed. One can only guess tbh. Anyway, take this with a grain of salt.
I have a document with this stuff but it’s too much to stuff in one post so I’ll split it into parts. SPOILERS AHEAD.
I will also be referring to Tsuina Miura as TM sometimes.
This post has three parts:
Right away, I think what all these stories have in common with Ajin is the horror element and a protagonist who tends to have a sibling that plays a part in the story.
origamiaround
annaxmalina
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
pixelskylines
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
