Roasting Apple Black, Chapter 1 (Part 1)

someone please tell me who this monument is for

We open with a lore dump. I wish I didn’t have to keep saying how much I hate series that open with a lore dump, but they keep doing them and there’s no sign of stopping.

Here’s the thing. Once all this lore becomes relevant, I will have forgotten everything on this page. The images on the page don’t particularly match up with what’s being said— so it makes the narration even less likely to stick.

The opening line reads:

Many years ago, humans acquired fruits called “Black” from a tree that descended from the skies. Black turned humans into sorcerers and all other living things into tools of sorcery.

If you’re not ready to show this big damn historical event, do something stylized— show a silhouette of the Black fruit glistening from the sky and landing on Earth. Hell, if you really don’t have any faith in your audience, do a slight art style shift to get the point across that this is not literally happening at the present moment.

Imagine if I opened my manga (or more likely, my latest trashy youtube clickbait) with a shot of Christ the Redeemer and started talking about the history of Mountain Dew. Could these two things tie together? Sure, that could work— but I’d have to start it with “Mountain Dew and the Catholic Church have a closer connection than you think.” And I’d also edit my shot so Jesus is sipping on a Baja Blast, just to really give it that extra punch.

But in this fantasy world. Who is this guy? Is this roughly equivalent to a big statue of Jesus, or is he Kim Il Sung?

I don’t know who this statue is supposed to be or why he’s important. Is there a connection between the Black fruits and this dipshit? I don’t know! I have no idea! Instead of visually showing us anything about the text, we’re given a shot of This Asshole.

Who I would guess is the same guy as the statue, but the way anime genetics work doesn’t leave me a lot of confidence.

Does he connect with the Black fruits in any way? Is he the one that sent the Black fruits to humans? Is this the sorcerer the text is talking about? Is he one of the prophets? You’re throwing a lot of shit my way, man. And you’re not enticing me to want to figure out why or how these two are connected.

Only now, as I’m writing this, do I realize that I completely forgot about the last text box on page 1:

Now mysteriously deceased, his research is wanted by everyone trying to rejuvenate their bloodline, resulting in absolute mayhem. Eli prophets believe this mayhem will lead to the Infinite Night, the greatest terror the world will ever experience.

Wow, that sounds intense. Too bad the art only wants to show us a shot of some doughball milling around. I sure hope I’ll remember that when it becomes relevant.

So dough ball (who I’m assuming is Protagonist Sano’s dad) gets ambushed. That’s when it’s revealed this was all Sano’s dream. Did Sano’s dream also include the narration explaining this world? Is this a narrative device for the audience? And since this is a dream sequence— and the opening scene of your manga— this really should be going bigger and crazier.

So not only do I not care because this is a lore dump, but I super-duper do not care because it’s a dream sequence.

Later in the chapter, we do learn that these dreams are planted into Sano so he’ll see his father’s death, and the dreams “feels more like I’m remembering rather than dreaming.” He continues to explain: “I get the feeling they were all designed to foster hate.”

The thing is, Sano Dad looks way the heck too calm and collected for this to feel scary or like this would foster hate. I conceptually understand that seeing your dad die in your dreams every night would fuck you up. But this is the sort of peace and calm a character shows before he teleports behind the bad guys, or before he accepts his death. We see Sano wakes up visibly shaken from the dream, but how am I supposed to register this as scary if SanoDad is looking cool as a cucumber?

But Sano rolls with it, wolfs down his breakfast and gets ready. Because today is Sano’s first day in the city.

saving this one as “couldve used a rewrite.png”

Sano’s been given the Rapunzel treatment: the only people in his life are Angelo (the twinky guy leading him around), Madam Naomi (gilf with enormous, sloppy cans), and Wiiwerth (his pet monkey). He’s lived in relative isolation his whole life, and now he’s gonna start high school so he can become a Cloak. Cloak’s duties fall between somewhere between a politician and a cop, which I only know because I read the spinoff light novel. This seems like an important detail but I guess we’re not getting it yet.

Personally I’d want to know if Cloaks actually get a cloak and why they’re called a Cloak. There’s a lot of bullshit fantasy terms being hurled left and right, and man, your nickname for an “elite sorcerer” who graduated from Hogwarts is “Cloak”? Come the fuck on. As much as I hate keeping track of a fantasy world’s super-special lore, calling this class of Elite Sorcerers “Cloaks” feels lazy.

So Sano is looking forward to making friends and being a little more, y’know, normal. He also wants to “figure out exactly what happened to [his] tribe.” Before we cut to an action scene, Wiiworth the monkey curls out a fat shit on Sano’s shoulder.

This is hilarious, no notes. I love monkey antics and all primate-related tomfoolery.

But we can’t get too silly. After this, we cut to a fight scene.

It lasts two pages and it’s just peacocking to show how tough this tough guy is. And we learn more about the power level rankings: “Even if you defeat us, we have stronger cloaks, lords, and dark lords whom you are no match for”.

Cloaks, lords, and dark lords. Are you supposed to be the good guys??

So we cut back to Sano, who’s struggling with the map, and Angelo brushes it off before setting him loose.

We cut to the classroom—which has a No Smoking Sign, but our badass teacher, Mikael, isn’t gonna listen to that.

I want to know why there’s such a huge “no smoking” sign outside of this classroom. Why couldn’t they put up one of those “Garfield says NO to Smoking!” Does this take place in the 70’s and the school has a smoker’s pit by the jungle gym? Why would you need to connote that this room, specifically, is non smoking. It’s a school. I would assume the entire campus is non-smoking, unless this is just more superfluous details being hurled our way to posture a character as a Real Badass Tough Guy.

Now, I know the author, WhytManga, is from Nigeria. He graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington, and as far as I know he’s still living in Texas. I know this because he puts it in his author’s bio everywhere (too bad he hasn’t been added to the “Notable Alumni” wiki page)

I’m hazy on exactly when he came to America, but my point in bringing this up is this: Could this No Smoking sign be a subtle cultural reference that completely went over my head, and I’m the asshole for snarking on it?

Well, a cursory Google search tells me that’s not the case.

I guess it’s just more setup to make a character look like a total badass.