The best way to get a piece of work noticed is to give it a lot of hype and build up people’s expectations. Without shooting for the moon, one can never know how far one will go. For some works, like Final Fantasy 7, Akira, or Terminator 2: Judgment Day, they hit their targets hard enough to create a new lunar crater.
Even being a disaster means people will still talk about it, even if the only thing it impacts is the creator’s reputation. But when a work fizzes out like a damp squib, all it gets is a sigh before the world keeps turning. These manga started off with such promise, but never reached their potential.
8 Tokyo Shinobi Squad
Yuki Tanaka and Kento Matsūra’s manga had some potential. Matsūra worked on some well-regarded one-shots like Sekka Iwata’s Pen Friend at the End of the World. He even worked as an assistant for Shiro Usazaki, the artist behind the infamous Act-Age. Thankfully, Yuki Tanaka didn’t tank TSS by committing a crime like Act-Age's writer Tatsuya Matsuki. He did it with underwhelming writing instead.
His story about a secret squad of shinobi defending the streets of Tokyo from crime wasn’t as cool as it sounds. The xenophobic overtones didn’t help, as it says Japan’s crime rate didn’t skyrocket until those darn foreigners started entering the country regularly. While the characters and action weren’t appealing or unique enough to match Naruto or Boruto. It came to an early end in December 2019 after 6 months on Shonen Jump’s pages.
7 Phantom Seer
But hey, at least Matsūra bounced back from Tokyo Shinobi Squad to draw Tōgo Gotō’s Phantom Seer! It lasted 8 months instead of 6, starting in Shonen Jump in August 2020, then ending the following April. It was about Iori, a shaman who’s not really into his job. But when he meets Riku, a shaman-in-training who unknowingly attracts phantoms, Iori gains new resolve. She may be the key to his revenge against the phantom Senjudoji.
At first, its reception was good enough to sell out its initial print run. But it slowly lost steam and ended prematurely. Likely because Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba already catered to fans of magic monster stories. They offered more too as many readers felt Seer’s writing ran out of puff by the 10th chapter. It had to be special to match those two juggernauts, but it wasn’t special enough.
6 Ayashimon
Ayashimon also fell to Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer’s success. It ended after 6 months in Shonen Jump, ending in May 2022. Created by Yūji Kaku, the mangaka behind Hell’s Paradise: Jigokuraku, it featured Maruo, a boy who wanted to be as strong as his manga heroes. Unfortunately, in achieving that, he became too strong and scary for employers to hire him for work. Then he finds a new opportunity when he saves a girl called Urara from the yakuza.
It turns out that both she and the group are ayashimon: shapeshifting spooks from Japanese folklore. She wants to set up her own yakuza family to fight back against them, and Maruo’s superhuman strength earns him a spot as its first member. The series received fair reviews and even got a little fanbase going. But as a successor to the successful Jigokuraku series, it didn’t quite hit the mark.
5 Time Paradox Ghostwriter
What’s worse than lasting only 6-8 months? Lasting only 3 months. Kenji Ichima and Tsunehiro Date’s Time Paradox Ghosthunter got a fair amount of hype, including support from popular anime reviewers like Geoff ‘Mother’s Basement’ Thew. However, after its big debut in May 2020, it was canceled and quickly concluded in August 2020.
Aspiring mangaka Teppei Sasaki finally gets success when his microwave suddenly gives him a copy of Shonen Jump from the future. He copies its biggest hit, White Knight, and takes its future success for himself, unaware its real author is still out there and has a bone to pick with him. While it interested some, some felt its plot about plagiarism was a little risky. Especially when its own premise combined Steins;Gate’s time-portal microwave and Bakuman’s manga-about-manga subject.
4 Zipman!!
Yūsaku Shibata may have manga and anime in his blood. His father Hiroki directed and provided storyboards for Sailor Moon, Digimon Adventure, and Bobobo-Bo-Bo-bobo among others. While his younger sister Hikari created My Son Seems to Have Reincarnated to Another World, a manga about a mother coming to terms with her child being ‘sent to another world’ via car accident. After working as an assistant at My Hero Academia, Shibata took a shot at making his own superhero manga.
In it, twin boys Kaname and Koshiro compete with each other over who can win the affection of their mutual crush Cheena. Their contest is cut short when Koshiro is seemingly killed in an accident, only to be reborn within his experimental Zip Suit. Or something like that. The writing was hard to keep track of, and it only got messier as it neared its end. Shonen Jump cut it short 5 months into its run in April 2020.
3 Super Smartphone
Hiroki Tomisawa and Kentarō Hidano’s manga was about Kyū ‘Q’ Sagurada and his special smartphone. By chance, it’s one of a small handful of devices that can run Googugu, a search engine that can grab information from confidential sources like people’s journals or even government documents. Once he realizes its potential, he thinks he can use it to help find out what happened to his missing brother.
The premise invited many comparisons to Death Note, what with it being a detective story about a boy and his fancy MacGuffin. Only it doesn’t have the spooky Shinigami, the intricate moral quandaries, and the twisted main characters. It might’ve been unfair to do so, as it was going for a much lighter and more comedic tone. Still, it was close enough to Death Note to be seen as its blander, more pedestrian counterpart. The strip was finished after 6 months, ending in October 2022.
2 Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru
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Ragging on manga assistants making their own series is a bit mean. Not everyone leaps into success on the first go. But what if a celebrated mangaka tried to make their next hit, only to get axed in less than a year? That’s what happened to Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru by Masashi Kishimoto and Akira Ōkubo. Best known as the creator of Naruto, Kishimoto had an idea for a sci-fi manga as early as 2015, soon after finishing his direct involvement in his ninja adventure.
It became a reality in May 2019 when it became a story about a sickly boy who dreamed of becoming a samurai. Viz Media even gave it an online trailer! So, why did it end prematurely in March 2020? In short: a cool reception and cold sales. The writing was criticized for feeling underdeveloped, and the art for being confusing. It’s a sad result for a work by the man behind one of Jump’s most famous protagonists.
1 Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface
Shirow Masamune created Ghost in the Shell, but Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 film arguably left a bigger impact. Masamune created all the characters, settings, technology, etc., but most fans today expect the movie's serious, metaphysical tone as seen in Stand-Alone Complex and subsequent series and films. Fans going back to the original manga would be surprised by the more comedic tone, the goofy expressions, and the occasional hardcore adult content.
Masamune continued this trend in 2001 with his sequel manga Man-Machine Interface. The Major was now solving cases by transmitting her consciousness to other cyborg bodies. It sounds interesting, but the story gets bogged down with technobabble, and the art suffers from bad CGI. There are a lot of naked, oily women too, but there were better sources for that even in 2001. Despite being the official sequel, it feels less authentic than GitS' anime adaptations.