The Jet Black Hedgehog: Shadow the Hedgehog (Manga)

I'll say what I've said several times this year...

I want a definitive account for what happened on the Ark, including whether Shadow himself was actually awake to see if, and I'm still not fully convinced this or Dark Beginnings show it. The latter is definitely a flashback rather than a definitive account and can still be an unreliable narrator, and it's looking like this may be too. The Windii translation doesn't clear things up (not her fault, she's the best), and it almost looks like the Shadow we see here is literally somehow the one from 50 years ago, rather than the game canon one.

Maybe I'm just biased and stubborn about it. Maybe I'll never get the answer I want. My current running theory is Shadow's memories evolve as he learns new information, perhaps to be more accurate, perhaps not, and that each version we see is still distorted, rather than a fully clear account.

Also, let me please remind people... when analyzing Shadow's story, do not use the English version. As much as many of us love it, a lot of things got lost in translated or distorted, especially in Sonic X and StH2005, where the translation and script were quite heavily altered. SA2 was actually a bit closer to accurate, but still has some issues.

Shadow's story makes the most sense if you see Windii's translations of all his 2000s era games/media, or at least what we know of it. Namely SA2, Battle, Heroes and Sth2005, and to a lesser extent his Sonic X arc as well (which loosely adapts some cut SA2 script content, though also creates a bunch of new content).

 

Why is the manga going for such a blatantly different story?

Is it because it was seeming redundant to have 2 supplemental Shadow stories that were seemingly focused on his past?

 

So far all the game manga adaptations since Unleashed have done their own thing. I think Superstars is the only one that got a more faithful one shot.

I would actually be surprised if this passes 3-4 chapters. Most of the previous mangas have been short as well and sort of end as "play the game to find out more."

 

I mean it's quite an uphill battle. They want to adapt game content that needs context from 3 other games, and the content isn't even about Sonic it's about Shadow. There's just so much baggage and they probably felt it's best to make it standalone. Otherwise it would just end abruptly.

Well, we are already on 2 chapters and if it's only 3 they would have probably said next month is the last chapter. I think it'll come to a natural conclusion, for once.

Surprisingly, those Dengeki DS manga lasted way longer than that despite none of them adapting the games fully.

The saving grace here is that they are already limiting the scope: There are 3 mcguffins and so Shadow only needs to go through 3 zones instead of the whole game's worth of content.

Edit: I think next chapter he will face off against current time Biolizard since chapter 1 had a smaller, younger Biolizard.

 

Well I truly detest making Black Doom the reason that soldier fired, but I can clearly see this story is going for it's own thing, so whatever.

 

Ngl I'm more interested in this twist about how it's the original, even-before-SA2 Shadow going through White Space and trying to bring Maria back to life.

 

Most manga adaptations of existing works tend to go a completely different route than their source material.

And this one is published in a magazine aimed at elementary school kids.

 

Hm. It's awfully quiet here.

I'm a bit late to the party but finally caught up with chapter 2. It's a good time. Fans of anime and manga will feel right at home with this kind of storytelling. That Gyoro character is so delightfully stupid, and Shadow, on the other hand, so incredibly cool. (I'm getting strong Cloud Strife vibes from him.) Maria's death turned out great as well.

Not sure however how they gonna (if at all) weave the story into the main canon. Maybe Sonic and co. don't even exist in this timeline?

 

Okay, so let me get this straight.

CoroCoro is refusing to publish this in English, because they don't want people to find out how shit it is?

I love it, I absolutely love it. This "Year of Shadow" has been just as unintentionally hilarious as I hoped for, perhaps even more so.

 

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And here I thought it was because they were a Japanese publisher with no english production capabilities.

 

No, that was a joke guess someone made after going through the untranslated second chapter.

The translated version was better received, as it turns out comprehending what's going on changes the context in a story (Who would have thought?)

 

For completion's sake, I typed off the speech bubbles again. So for those 0,001 % of you who prefer machine translation, there you go.

Part 2 hasn't been made available for free yet, has it? Maybe later down the line. We'll see.

Here's a link to the BookWalker store, in case you have trouble finding the latest issue: https://bookwalker.jp/de2c886012-2c40-448d-8566-7afbac49e369/

 

Chapter 3 is out. Remember to buy it from the usual suspects if you want to show support!

This one covers the ARK stage and fighting the Biolizard with the first Doom Power. Some very cool art. Will wait for the translation to see what's up.

 

Surely everyone has read the latest chapter by now, no? It's not "lore-accurate", as it often seems to be the case with video game-based mangas (e.g. the Twilight Princess manga series, where + - Link gets his arm cut off in the beginning   or + - Midna kisses Link before leaving the Light World   ) but nonetheless enjoyable. Shadow channeling his Doom Powers looks like an evil ritual for worshiping some evil deity or something and I love it.

Shame there's not more buzz around it, but also not very surprising given the lack of a localized version. Other series get localized all the time (I have a complete set of the Twilight Princess manga fully translated into German), can it really be that hard to bring them to the West? After the manga is finished, they need to make a sweet hard cover version of all the chapters in one book. I'd definitely buy a copy!

Here are the typed-out speech bubbles for chapter 3: Hooray! The crowd goes wild! As always, make sure to erase the line breaks per speech bubble.

 

Chapter 4 is out.

Maria having more of a reaction to “finally” being out of ARK was nice and cute

it’s interesting since this manga tell it’s story if it happened right after the Maria incident, so this is shadow from 50 years, as a result, his confrontation with Mephiles goes a bit differently, while in the game he basically destroys him, he does struggle a bit here, also find in interesting that he doesn’t remember Mephiles cause he literally haven’t met him yet, not cause any timeline erasure here, and that leads directly to Shadow not recognizing Black Doom at all in this time

 

Strangely enough I had a dream about this manga last night. In which I had somehow stumbled upon a new chapter in a Japanese beauty magazine of all things, it was in full colour, in English, and had Shadow facing off with the Supreme Titan from Frontiers in the middle of a city at night. Honestly no clue where I pulled that from my subconscious.

 

Finally got around to part 4.

Shadow doesn't seem to have a clue what's going on inside of Maria. He just keeps pushing and fighting.

So close, yet so far.