Like many other iconic mangaka in Jump, though, Haruto Umezawa would have trouble trying to maintain anything remotely as successful in the magazine following BØY's finale. His follow-up series, 2000's Bremen (about a group of friends who want to become "rock gods"), would last a respectable 82 chapters across nine volumes before coming to an end in late 2001, but then 2002's Sword Breaker (a fantasy series with isekai/reincarnation elements) would last only a mere 17 chapters (including the original one-shot) before getting cancelled. Amusingly enough, Umezawa recently did return to the world of Sword Breaker when his 2021 manga Even in Another World Our Protagonist Isn't Afraid of Being Him!!! revealed late into its run that the lead was actually the reincarnation of Sword Breaker's hero; a clever way to revive a cancelled manga, in a sense. Anyway, after Sword Breaker's cancellation Umezawa would take a year off from making manga, seemingly to figure out what to do next, before returning in Issue #3 of Shonen Jump in 2004 with his next serialized manga for the magazine, LIVE (pronounced "Laiv", not "Liv"), which actually saw Umezawa sort of return to what he had done with the original Hareluya 12 years prior, only now the Son of God was replaced with a demon from Hell.
Unfortunately, LIVE would actually wind up lasting the same exact number of chapters as Hareluya did, a mere 10, before getting cancelled & ending in Issue #14, and this would actually mark the end of Haruto Umezawa's run with Shonen Jump, after 14 years (dating back to 1990's Shuten☆Doji, as Masato Umezawa). By the end of 2004 Umezawa would debut his next series, the Lamborghini-focused car manga Countach (technically pronounced "koon-tosh", but in Japanese is pronounced "cown-tahk"), in Issue #41 of Weekly Young Jump & it would wind up being Umezawa's second-longest serialization, running until Issue #41 of 2012 across 28 volumes; since then Umezawa hasn't had a serialization run longer than three volumes, max. So, to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of my Christmas Day review of Hareluya (i.e. the "start" of "Haruto" Umezawa's time in Shonen Jump), let's see how LIVE (i.e. the end of Haruto Umezawa's time in Shonen Jump) came out & if it's still worth reading today, as I feel that Hareluya is honestly an early cancellation that holds up rather well with time.
One night a teenager named Yutaro Onigawara can't sleep, so he heads out to the local convenience store to get something to help him sleep. On the way back he comes across the bizarre sight of one of his classmates, Kurai, kneeling the middle of an intersection with a butcher's knife, a hen, & a printout of a webpage from the "Black Magic Society". Kurai runs away after being seen by Yutaro, and out of curiosity Yutaro reads what's on the printout: "Elohim, Essaim... Hear my call!!". A car passes by & happens to run over the hen after Yutaro reads the printout, accidentally completing the blood ritual & summoning Slayer, a literal demon from Hell! Said ritual allows Slayer to grant three wishes to whoever summoned him, in this case Yutaro, and after using the first wish to revive the hen (followed by Slayer putting an in-construction building on fire to showcase his power) Yutaro starts to freak out over what he's inadvertently done. In a panic Yutaro demands that Slayer become a human just like him, which fulfills the second wish & transforms Slayer into a normal human, much to Slayer's own dismay & horror. Now Slayer has no choice to but figure out how to live life as a human alongside Yutaro, because despite how much the two kind of hate each other, & Slayer no longer has access to his demonic powers, the blood ritual contract is still in effect... which means that any damage inflicted on one of them is felt by the other, and if one of them dies then the other will too.
Similar to Hareluya 12 years prior, LIVE is very much a comedy manga with a strong delinquent manga aesthetic behind it, and in many ways feels like Haruto Umezawa trying to recreate that series with some minor differences. While the way each one found themselves in their situations are notably different, both Hareluya & Slayer are immensely powerful beings (Son of God & literal demon from Hell) who find themselves having to live as humans without any of their supernatural powers to help them out. Both are immensely cocky & overconfident in their attitudes, though Slayer does admittedly come off much less hapless & foolish than Hareluya often did. That being said, though, Slayer's conundrum of having his pain & life tied to Yutaro is a neat little twist that helps differentiate LIVE from Hareluya just enough, as Slayer does come to Yutaro's aid without much prodding or procrastination; admittedly, it's mainly because of said shared pain & life, but still. Yutaro is similar to Kiyoshiro Okamoto from BØY in a lot of ways, namely in how they're both willing to stand in the way of people doing bad things to others, though in Yutaro's case he definitely isn't much of a fighter in any way; Kiyoshiro wasn't known for fighting, either, but he could at least scrap, if need be. The only other real recurring character of note would be Tominaga, a female friend/classmate of Yutaro's that he clearly has a crush on, & is very much like Yamana from BØY, and while she's similar to Yamana is that she doesn't take any gruff she sadly doesn't get a lot to work with here, due to the manga's short length. So, clearly, Umezawa obviously tried to replicate a lot of elements of Hareluya with LIVE (& fair play, since so much time had passed since that series ended early), but still changed things up just enough, I'd argue.
In terms of any plot found within the 10 chapters that comprise LIVE, though, it actually differs from Hareluya a bit. Where Hareluya was mostly about three short storylines made up of two or three chapters each (plus the initial two one-off chapters), LIVE starts off with three one-off chapters before having the remaining seven detail a long-form story arc where Slayer, Yutaro, & Tominaga find themselves dealing with Ran Mido, the leader of a group of delinquents over at rival school Gokumon High. The one-off chapters are enjoyable enough, with Chapter 1 introducing how Slayer & Yutaro found themselves in their predicament, Chapter 2 showing Yutaro's good nature when he protects Kurai from a bunch of bullies, & Chapter 3 seeing Yutaro accidentally finding himself held hostage by a bank robber (who he mistook for Slayer, since he's vocally unopposed to doing evil), resulting in Slayer needing to save the day. However, it's the seven-part story arc with Mido, & later his boss Nagumo (a bald man with a spider tattoo on his head that attempts a literal drive-by shooting on Slayer after Mido's dealt with), where the manga really finds its focus. While it sounds slightly similar to how Hareluya ended with the the three-part storyline involving Kanzaki, it's much more straightforward in concept here (Tominaga is harassed by Mido & his cronies, Slayer fights off said cronies while Yutaro & Tominaga are kidnapped, Slayer then saves the day & later deals with Nagumo), though both Kanzaki & Nagumo are meant to be showcased as devil-like equivalents to our respective leads. It's just that in LIVE instead of being the thematic opposite of the lead Slayer has to show Nagumo who the real demon is. The ending of LIVE also goes in a bit of an opposite direction than what Hareluya went with, though still delivering a similar sense of pathos, and while conceptually I think it's fine I do feel that LIVE's ending feels a bit more forced & contrived, whereas Hareluya felt a bit more earned, even if both endings were the result of early cancellations.
That's not to say that LIVE isn't interesting on its own, though you can definitely see the little bits & pieces that Umezawa definitely took from his prior big hit, likely in an attempt at striking gold twice. While he's not literally pulling them out from behind his back, there are two distinct moments where Slayer notably grabs two seemingly random sets of objects (a pair of cinder blocks & two crates of beer bottles) to use in fights, similar to what (the non-Son of God) Hareluya was known for in BØY. While avoiding spoiling the ending, LIVE also does go for pathos as Slayer learns to truly care & appreciate Yutaro & his kind nature towards others, which in turn plays into what happens to Slayer in the final chapter, a la the finale to the original Hareluya. Now, to be fair, Yutaro & Tominaga aren't a literal copy/paste of Kiyoshiro & Yamana from BØY, though that's more due to neither of them really getting much of anything in terms of development here, and in fact Yutaro kind of regresses in a way for the ending, which in turn is what leads a little bit to the contrived feeling I got from it. Slayer, though, does remind one of Hareluya (either version, honestly), and I imagine that was done on purpose by Umezawa due to how memorable of a character Hareluya is in both the OG Hareluya & in BØY. Really, Slayer only truly differs in that regard by way of his willingness to want to do bad things (though he honestly doesn't act on any of that, in the end) & his hairdo adding in a horn motif (because demon, of course). If anything, LIVE feels like a fusion of the concept of the OG Hareluya, but turned on its head, mixed with the kind of story arc that you'd generally see done in BØY, and that more or less works out both to the benefit & detriment of LIVE, in the end. There's even a bit of wild escalation in the last few chapters, as Mido uses the hydraulics in his car to flip it over while he & Slayer are fighting in the car's seats, while Nagumo pulls out a freakin' Uzi, and these moments remind more of the kind of escalation you'd see in BØY during some of its later story arcs.
As for the artwork, that's something where LIVE arguably is better than the OG Hareluya, in general. When I reviewed Hareluya a decade ago I brought up how it was still easy to see elements of Tsukasa Hojo's style in Umezawa's art for that series in 1992, but come 2004 Umezawa had more than grown into his own art style, one that managed to become fully established during the near-seven year serialization of BØY during the majority of the 90s. Therefore, LIVE looks pretty good overall, with nice & distinctive character designs between the cast, good detail for environments when needed, & an easy flowing pace when it comes to panel layouts. As mentioned, Slayer definitely looks very much like Hareluya (minus small elements, like the horn-like hair protrusions & some very slight changes in facial features), but Yutaro definitely has enough differentiation from Kiyoshiro that you could easily tell one from the other, despite Yutaro definitely meaning to be like Hareluya's best buddy, aesthetically speaking. That said, Tominaga isn't too different from Yamana from a design perspective, though Umezawa's evolved art style does result in Tominaga not looking exactly like Yamana, but both Mido & Nagumo are at least unique enough as villains... though, due to them being delinquents, one could easily see them fit into the world of BØY just fine.
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| The tankouban cover imitates how an issue of Weekly Jump would look. |
Sometimes, when a mangaka's most iconic & popular work comes to an end said mangaka will inevitably make a subsequent work that winds up imitating said iconic work to some extent, and in most cases said imitative subsequent work doesn't last long. It happened with Tetsuo Hara (Cyber Blue seems to be, for all intents & purposes, "Sci-Fi Fist of the North Star"), it happened with Masami Kurumada (Silent Knight Sho is absolutely a knock-off Saint Seiya, in most regards), it happened with Norihiro Nakajima (eventually making baseball manga Nekkyu Suikoden would only invite comparisons to Team Astro), and it even (sort of) happened to Hiroshi Motomiya when he had no choice but to return to Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daisho in late 1972, after initially ending it the prior year; said return would only last 31 chapters, before the manga truly came to a definitive end. Therefore, it's not totally shocking that Haruto Umezawa would try something similar with LIVE in 2004, as just like when Kurumada debuted Silent Knight Sho in 1992 (which, coincidentally enough, debuted in the same exact issue the OG Hareluya ended in) the Weekly Shonen Jump that LIVE debuted in was very little like the magazine that BØY had finished in five years prior. In fact, there were only five manga that were running in both BØY's final issue & LIVE's first issue: Kochikame (which was also the sole link between Hareluya's run & LIVE's debut issue), Yu-Gi-Oh!, One Piece, Hunter x Hunter, & Shaman King. In that way it only made sense for Umezawa to try recreating what had worked back in the day, since the majority of Jump's readers in 2004 more than likely had never read either Hareluya or BØY.
Unfortunately, though, LIVE is only just OK. It's not terrible by any means, and there are indeed much worse early cancellations throughout Shonen Jump's history, but even if you have never read either Hareluya or BØY beforehand you just the feeling that something just isn't clicking quite like it should; the concept is there, but something's just missing. And if you are familiar with either Hareluya or BØY before reading LIVE then you can't help but tell that it's a bit derivative. As I said before, despite also being an early cancellation Hareluya is a really good short series, due in large part because of Hareluya himself, who is an absolutely entertaining character from start to finish, & his development from selfish Son of God to a truly benevolent figure is cool to see happen; that said, I still blame him for everything bad that's happened since 2000, since he is the God of the 21st Century. Meanwhile, BØY takes what worked in Hareluya, removes all of the "Son of God" aspects, and instead turns Hareluya Hibino into a truly unforgettable lead, one who can go from seemingly maniacal to benevolent on a dime & make it feel natural. In comparison, Slayer in LIVE just feels like a character who wants to be as memorable as (either form of) Hareluya but simply can't match up to that kind of character, and while Yutaro certainly tries to live up to Kiyoshiro's standard he sadly just can't. Again, I still enjoyed my time reading LIVE, though that ending definitely let me a down a bit, but in the end it just makes me want to read and/or watch Hareluya and/or BØY again. In the end I think LIVE was a perfect way for Haruto Umezawa to realize that it was time for him to move on from Shonen Jump, and considering that Countach would become his second-longest serialization of all time I think he made the right choice.
Merry Christmas, Ya Filthy Demons!
Manga © Haruto Umezawa 2004
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