Hakutaku: Unedited Audio & Notes

Manga Details

• Title: Written as “white table,” but is a homophone of the hakutaku (白澤 ), a youkai originating from Chinese myth that is associated with knowledge and good luck

• Kouki Ishikawa

  • Notable people they were an assistant for

    • Yuki Tabata (of Hungry Joker fame) on Black Clover

  • Other works

    • This is Ishikawa’s debut serialisation, but they have previously produced a variety of oneshots

• Publishing

  • Run Dates: 

    • September 22nd, 2024 to February 2nd, 2025

  • Series it replaced

• Jujutsu Kaisen by Gege Akutami (30 vols, MEGA HIT)

• Series that replaced it

  • Nothing yet, weirdly. Three series ended, only two began.

• Series that started at the same time as it

  • Ichi the Witch by Osamu Nishi and Shiro Usazaki (1+ vol, looking like a hit)

  • Shinobi Undercover by Ippon Takegushi and Santa Mitarashi (1+ vol, doing okay)

    • (same team as Candy Flurry)

• Chapters/Volumes: 

  • 18 chapters/2 volumes (speculative, only 1 volume released as of recording, could be 3 vols with one-shots)

About the Manga

• Plot

  • Hikuma is being bullied by the class rep and his posse into doing stuff for them. Because he’s neurodivergent though he has convinced himself it’s all a game. One day however he runs into Noto, a weird girl living a goblin mode lifestyle who never shows up for school. She enlists him to make a game for their programming class to show the bullies who were pushing the whole project onto him. Everyone loves their game, causing Hikuma to have a braingasm. Next Noto uses her mysteriously vast connections to make an AR game where you take pictures with dogs for a local electronics store owner. Hikuma braingasms. 

  • The two then decide to go to a game jam where they meet Seo, a genius programmer, and together they make a really annoying version of Tetris with barn animals. Hikuma braingasms. They try to make Seo a permanent member of their team but he swore off games after they killed his brother by making him get hit by a car. He was only at the game jam as a favor to the guy who ran it. Noto and Hikuma use Seo’s little sister to guilt him into helping them make another AR game that turns the world into Minecraft. Hikuma braingasms. This brings Seo on board finally. Noto tells them that their ultimate goal is now to win Game of the Year at the game awards. 

  • Their next step then is to get their AR game into the gaming expo “Pixel Summit,” which they’ll attempt to do by impressing Hideo Kojima aka Nakaba Akamine. Noto and Seo confront the producer and programmer while Hikuma runs into Kojima in the bathroom. Kojima, surrounded by forest animals as usual, gives Hikuma some philosophical advice while Noto and Seo are turned down in encouraging ways, with Seo getting a business card. Noto then calls the other two over to discover that she set up a whole office for them using equipment from the electronics store. Noto says they’re “launching a counter attack.” And wants them to play a successful indie game called Route 6. She says they failed because she was too focused on pwning noobs kek to really make the best game they could. Next time tho they’re gonna gather a team together and make it to Comiket 2025 where they’ll really get famous. Good luck I guess.

• Characters

  • Daidai Hikuma

    • Wimpy game design boy  

    • Nice guy™

    • No friend just gamin

  • Raika Noto

    • manic pixie dream girl

    • Very mopey and edgy 

    • Professional girl rotter

    • Idea guy™

  • Zenji Seo

    • Programming wiz

    • Dumb smart guy™

    • How do you have a tragic videogame backstory like this

Why it Failed

• The author had no passion, I feel a cool idea would have been to show the narrator as like an NPC explaining something but it's just generic text boxes 

• I don’t like this approach about the other MC being the marketing, yeah it’s important but it’s not what the focus should be. Also she def lacks a ton of soft skills so how would she know?

• This plot just feels so disjointed like man can’t they just make a game at a game design and not all this extra BS

• This series is just lame

• This is like yugioh where everything revolves around videogames but it doesn’t make any fucking sense

• Do they really think a master programmer doesn’t have a career ahead of him?

• Ok this Seo shit needed like 2 chapters tops

• Ok the author legit just gave up actually showing game design or anything actually reasonable

• This AR Game is insanely advanced

• I thought at first they skipped a build a team arc and then nope

• Everything just fucking meanders like half the chapter is on pointless conversations

• Why are they so hard on a game made by teenagers for an indy showcase?

What it Did Well

• Sometimes the imagery is cool like looking like chess pieces on c2p1

• Hikuna actually isn't taking Notos shit

• I love how they seeded Noto being a sound effects person by having fart noises in her game

• Some of the game ideas sound fun like the weird tetris or werewolf on a train

• You in real time can see Hikuma physical decay which is perhaps the only attention to detail in this series

• The kyoto trip idea was a fun one

• Noto telling Hikuma he needs to think of this as a team activity

• It’s a nice touch about how being professional and respecting peoples time can also get you far

Where it Could Have Gone

• This is a cool idea for a series, why not give us game design challenges to think about each week

• This could have been edutainment 

• If Noto was a more sociable person she could probably help Hikuma work on his soft skills and not make the autism coded nature of the series so weird

• Feature some resources like link to a godot tutorial or something at the end

• I bet with interesting enough characters this could have been fun even if the topic was informative, be like Show-ha Shoten in structure about two dudes making games n shit

• There would have been an arc about speedrunning or something, in fact I bet a yugioh style world about speedrunning would have been a cool manga idea

• This reminds me how a manga about programming structured like eyeshield 21 would be amazing

• Have like a buildup, they didn’t need their like 3rd game to be this huge AR project like game design ramps up as a topic very easily

• They hint at how important soft skills are but it ruffles the message when their product is so strong it can counteract it, be cool to have seen a game not as fun but they got it done on time and under budget succeed 

Misc Thoughts

• Isn't the game in chapter 2 explicitly calling out the teacher on behavior that will get him fired?

• Why are all the trainers named saito

• That one college dude was legit “sir not appearing in this story”

• Do they ever actually show them playing games they didn’t make?

• Top guy in the princess game or whatever looks like Ginka

• Why did she need colab to build a super base when she could just have hacked the resources in?

• Maxy Bee thoughts:

  • Identifiable consoles on the first page:

    • Nintendo Switch

    • Nintendo Gamecube

    • Nintendo 64

    • Steam Deck

    • Playstation

    • Playstation 2

    • Nintendo 3DS

    • Playstation Vita

    • Playstation 5

  • Consultancy credit on Hakutaku goes to MyDearest Inc., a developer of VR games (including a VR port of popular indie game Exit 8), and their graphics programmer Junya Yamamoto. One wonders if this specialisation in non-traditional games is why the manga characters kept making Augmented Reality games instead of anything interesting. 

    • From chapter 10 ENDROLL, K.K. Also consult. They appear to make AR apps for phones, which is appropriate for what the characters keep making, I guess.

  • The FPS Noto and her acquaintances are predator rank on in chapter 3 is, of course, Apex Legends.

  • The game of the year award alluded to in chapter 6 is the one from Geoff Keighley’s  The Game Awards, and their iconic stage set is on view in the same scene.

  • Tucker has acknowledged elsewhere that Pixel Summit is a reference to Japanese indie event Bit Summit, this is just me also nodding to that observation.

  • The final chapter had a minor edit post-release in English. Originally, Noto ended a sentence with kek, now it ends with lawl. This change was presumably made to avoid association with members of gamergate, and as such the gross culture wars surrounding video games at any given moment. Or maybe they didn’t want you to think Noto played World of Warcraft, who can say.

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary

  • Community

    • Tucker: No one cares about augmented reality

    • Maxybee: beta version released as full product

    • Artil: It’s game over man, game over!

    • AuraPaladin: Because gaming killed my brother, okay?

    • Balth: Augmented reality indie game? Yeah, right.

    • blahmoomoo: Game dev doesn't work that way!

    • Chickenwarlord: ESRB Rated N for No One

    • CT3LA: Interesting idea ahead, beware lacking research

    • dackerson: I’d rather play Tidio Cement Factory

    • Diego: 1% completion manga cancelation successful speedrun.

    • duderocks: Not the most enjoyable cancelration speedrun

    • FunkyGreenOverdrive: Game development manga sans game development

    • Gene Shalit: Manga lies about own concept, crashes

    • GreyPotter 🖋: This game’s not even worth pirating

    • Isekai Sensei: It's really not "in the game" (please read that last part in the EA announcer voice)

    • Kinocha: I wasn't familiar with your game

    • Kpt.Kluless: Game was rigged from the start

    • LordAnubis: If it's not fun, why bother?

    • Portal man: tutorial unclear, glitching through the wall

    • Riley: How Hakutaku Went Wrong - Jason Schreier

    • Sbubby: Well, it lasted longer than Concord…

    • Spike: Game development? Skip to Game Over

    • T-Wolfwood: Even mods wouldn't fix this game

    • Thores: Geoff Keighley isn’t returning my calls : (

    • Unlinkingduck: The “Idea Guy” Got A Manga

    • Watchtower: Hakutaku Shonen Flop Episode Speedrun Any%

    • Xylon: Jack Thompson approves of this cancellation.

    • Ylissean: Frame One Touch of Death Combo

  • David: Unity in Snowdrop-ping this Unreal series

  • Jordan: trash girl helps boy have braingasms