Roasting Apple Black, Chapter 1 (Part 5)
how to fail the Kiki and Bouba test
I thought this post would kick off Chapter 2, but foolish, foolish me. There’s one more page. You’d think the protagonist making a grand declaration of his goals, Dog Ningen style, is the perfect spot to end your first chapter—
—but Whyt cannot stop running his fucking mouth because he has zero faith in his audience.
After the grand declaration to forgive, we cut to Ryuzaki the Bakugo and Symon the Reader, sneaking around with an invisibility cloak.
We’re teased for what’s to come in detention and explicitly told how they’re feeling. Because Whyt thinks we’re stupid. There’s no other reason to lay this out so plainly. He thinks so little of his audience, he can’t just let Sano’s declaration linger and feel confident that this will entice us to learn more.
Also after I wrote that last post, I tried to jerk off to Madame Naomi and I couldn’t get it up (Guess it's back to ol’ reliable). Now that I’m processing her as just another vehicle for info-dumping, she’s lost all appeal. But I noticed the emblem on her eyepatch. It looks kind of like the symbol for the Banburi Rebels.
I guess these are two different factions. I am not saying this with a whole lot of confidence since they look so similar.
Mikael has the same symbol as Naomi’s eyepatch on his hat. That tells us this isn’t equivalent to Grandma rocking an Anarchy-A to flaunt her rebel spirit. They’re part of the same club.
But I can barely tell this symbol apart from the Banburi rebel insignia. They’re both skulls with two appendages. Is this supposed to be foreshadowing that Newgarth fucking sucks and they’re just as bad as the rebel forces?
As always, I am once again autistically and inevitably steering the direction towards Pokemon Legends Arceus. If I showed you the symbols for the Diamond and Pearl clan, even if you’ve never played the game, you’d be able to tell which one’s which.
Go down to the nearest church, find the oldest boomer there, find the guy who’s never heard of a Pikachu and ask them to guess which one’s the diamond and which one’s the pearl. They will be able to answer correctly. Then go to a monastery and find the monks who built the place 300 years ago and have had zero contact with the outside world. They will also be able to answer correctly. I am able to say this so confidently because these symbols look like a diamond and pearl, because the fucking Kiki and Bouba effect exists.
But I am going to be incredibly charitable and guess that, Perhaps, the symbol worn by Naomi and Mikael means they’re bad news and this is all a clever foreshadowing technique.
In the light novel prequel, Apple Black Origins, Willow’s day and a half at school was pretty rough. She shows up for her first day, gets kidnapped, and eventually decides to drop out. I forgot if Willow went to Newgarth, because I sarcastically called her school “Hogwarts” because fuck you, it’s Hogwarts.
So I once again opened the ebook for Apple Black Origins. In Chapter 1, we’re told:
Today marked a pivotal day in Willow’s life, one that had been eagerly anticipated and held tremendous significance. It was the day she was slated to join the prestigious Youta Guild— an esteemed institution, both honorable and life-altering for someone of her tender age. In the vast realm of the Eden Continent, each country boasted its own Guild. In this sanctuary, budding sorcerers gathered to cultivate their supernatural talents, aiming to attain the coveted cloaks and garments that bestowed unique abilities upon their wearers. Cloaks, the esteemed title earned by those who successfully graduated from the Guild, represented a world of possibilities and responsibilities. Willow’s aspirations were firmly set on becoming one, for it was the sole avenue through which she could gain access to the Eden government’s esteemed administration groups, known as Fellowships. Her heart was set on the First Fellowship, a formidable force tasked with regulating the intricate political landscapes of each country.
I was a little confused about Newgarth’s relationship to the Youta guild, so I added to the chart. I’m keeping the old notes for posterity (new info starts on the second image):
My confusion over the link between “guilds” and “fellowships” was the biggest headache. I’m guessing a guild is to a bachelor’s degree and a fellowship is like the master’s. You don’t need to go to the same school/faction for your fellowship/masters (maybe!! Or maybe the light novel gave us conflicting information. Until Whyt actually talks about this damn book, I’m taking it all as canon to the Apple Black universe).
Since this was all a huge fucking headache, I went looking for a map of Eden. I could hazily recall seeing it on Whyt’s youtube, and when I searched, I got this-
I unleashed the most operatic 'fuck you' you've ever heard, with the kind of gusto that was, until today, exclusively reserved for when I'm arguing with my dad.
So there exists a version of Apple Black that doesn’t begin with a lore dump. Just Sanodad quietly working on his kanji (which sucks btw, and if these scribbles keep coming up I know I’m gonna launch into another tirade about this bullshit writing system). For whatever reason, in 2013, Whyt drew this, he exported it as a .jpg, and uploaded this to Deviantart, and felt this would be enough to tease the audience. And years later, the same page is pummeled with a headache of a text dump.
Unless “Page 1 Teaser” means he’s “teasing” Page 1 by not revealing the text just yet. Still! Somewhere, in his brain, he could envision this page without the text dump.
Apple Black’s writing style feels like an unpolished, train-of-thought first draft you’d find when someone just wants to get all the ideas out and they’ll trim it down later. But it clearly isn’t. Whyt started this in 2012, and this ebook was released in 2022. He had a decade to tinker with this and arrive at this conclusion— and I know he’s made drastic changes from his original version (the most notable being Opal, who was clumsily retconned to appear in chapter 2).
I’ve had plenty of nitpicks about the composition in this manga. The panels and layout feel clumsy. But I feel like I can’t begin to broach that when the entire time I’m internally screaming shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up, you do not need to be saying all of this, shut the Fuck up. And when I’m not seething and raging over the constantly clumsy sentence structure, I’m jotting down notes because I know I’m going to forget whatever vital information they just fed me.
Death Note and Hunter x Hunter are thought of as “wordy” mangas, because they are. But you know what?
This was not in chapter 1 of the manga. Hunter Hunter built to this moment. Whatever you think of this moment, Togashi didn’t come swinging in with this immediately.
Or how about Death Note. This is the wordiest page in chapter 1 of Death Note:
And we get the visual “breather” of Light in the bottom of all the text so we’re not overwhelmed. Even if he’s just sitting there readin the rules, it’s still balanced, it’s not the entire page.
A better shonen series to compare this to might be any of Nisioisin’s manga, and guess what! All of those suck! I hope I never read any of Nisioisin’s manga, and I’m saying this as someone who adores his light novels. Some comic artists work better as novelists. And I’d say that applies to Apple Black, but Whyt didn’t even want to read his own fucking book. So who knows! I just know I hate it.