Takama-ga-hara: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes

Manga Details

• Tucker:

  • I think the localizers added the hyphens so native English speakers wouldn’t lose their minds over a foreign word with more than four syllables

  • Takamagahara is the realm of the gods in Shinto mythology

• Jyuuzou Kawai

  • Notable people they had as assistants

    • Kenta Tsuchida (Lock On!, Toge Toge)

    • Tatsuyuki “Mikey” Maeda (professional assistant who’s done some stuff on youtube)

    • Manabu Yashiro (TANK CHAIR)

    • Kentaro Hidano (Super Smartphone)

    • Keisuke Gotou (One Operation Joker)

      • all on Takama-ga-hara (GOT A NOTE ABOUT THIS LATER)

  • Other works

    • 5080 (2021-2022, 1 volume, Big Comic Superior/Online)

      • Kawai’s return to manga almost a decade after Takama-ga-hara was canceled. A slice of life about a 50 year old living as a NEET (‘Not in Education, Employment, or Training’) dependent on his 80 year old parents. Started as a three chapter test serialization in Big Comic Superior before being moved online, where it ran eight more chapters and then just kind of… stopped.

• Publishing

  • Run Dates: July 9th, 2012 to November 5th, 2012

  • Series it replaced

• Magico by Naoko Iwamoto (8 vols, did okay)

• Series that replaced it

  •  Hungry Joker by Yuki Tabata (3 vols, flop,  Shonen Flop episode 15)

• Series that started at the same time as it

  • Assassination Classroom by Yusei Matsui (21 volumes, GIANT HIT)

• Chapters/Volumes: 17 chapters/2 volumes

About the Manga

• Plot

  • Yamato Yamada is the middle child of 5 strong brothers. While his other 4 brothers love to fight, Yamato only wants to draw manga. He dreams of winning the Tezuka award but unfortunately his manga is so bad that everyone who reads it almost dies. After being drawn to the roof by a delinquent with a pompadour named Fukakyon, Yamato ends up punching him and sending him flying into the sky. His substitute teacher notices and ominously says to himself that he has awakened his Kamizawa. Kamizawas are powers that every human possesses but very few actually discover. The next day Fukakyon approaches Yamato with a shaved head and swears his fealty, making Yamato the new boss of his gang even though Yamato wants nothing to do with it. When the gang is attacked by a creepy guy with a kamizawa that shoots utility knives out of his body though, Yamato shows up to save them. Mr. Suzuki finishes him off by using his own power to turn the knife guy into kanji and storing him in a book. He explains to Yamato that he is actually a teacher at a place called Takama-Ga-Hara, and invites him to come to the school; giving him a cool new uniform and spiky hair that activates when he uses his power. 

  • Later Yamato fights a guy who creeps on women and drains blood from other people to become big and “engorged” ha ha get it like a penis! Yamato  his childhood friend Mizuho from the weird gross engorged hulk guy. He’s approached again by Mr. Suzuki, this time with two “hunters'' who are to be Yamato’s classmates: Kumaso, a ventriloquist swordsman who makes his sword talk, and Izumo, a nice guy who can turn animals into guns. He says that the age of myth is coming and brings Yamato through a gate which disappears behind him. Yamato stands at the foot of Takama-Ga-Hara which is a giant mountain made out of school buildings. Yamato must first pass the entrance exam which involves knocking Kumaso off of a rock, which he succeeds in doing. The three then go to school where Suzuki tasks them with bringing order to the place. By taking down the leaders of the school they can get special jackets which will let them go home but until then they’re stuck here. After fighting off a huge gang of students, the three meet Udehara, a wimpy kid who is being used as an errand boy by Taiju, the boss of the gang, and asks them to bring them down. The three then confront Taiju, and Yamato fights him in single combat. 

  • Eventually it becomes clear that Udehara is controlling Taiju with his power, while Taiju is using his own power which silences everything around him so Yamato can’t tell his allies. However, Kumaso’s ventriloquism training allows him to read lips so he steps in and stops Udehara. It turns out that back home Taiju used to bully Udehara, using his silencing powers to prevent people from hearing his screams. One day however, Udehara punched him in the face which activated his control power. Udehara then used Taiju’s own power to silence himself and has been controlling him from the sidelines the whole time they’ve been here. After Yamato defeats him Taiju becomes free but apologizes to Udehara because he now knows what it’s like to be controlled. Flash forward and Mizuho wakes up to find that she has a penis and no boobs. She is then approached by some evil kamizawa users called “Yomi” who activate her power which returns her to normal and say that she has the power of reversing yin and yang which is important to their plan. Yamato, Kumaso, and Izumo, appear with the cool special jackets and fight them off with their new buffed powers. The leader of the Yomi turns into a big snake guy and Yamato punches him into a building. Yamato says he will use his strength to protect anyone within his reach and that’s kind of it yeah.

• Characters

  •  Yamato Yamada

    • No fight only make manga

    • Super strong

    • Tucker: the same as the family name of the imperial family (who are traditionally believed to be descended from the sun god Amaterasu) and is also the term used to refer to the “Japanese spirit” (Yamato-damashii)

  • Mr. Suzuki

    • Secret agent

    • Substitute school teacher

    • Kanji powers

    • Mr exposition 

  • Kumaso

    • Sword guy

    • Kinda a zoro-sanji relationship with yamato

    • Does ventriloquism so it’s like his sword talks

  • Izumo

    • Nice guy

    • Controls animals kinda

    • SQUIRREL GUN

Why it Failed

• The plot is a little forced like just a huge exposition dump character

• I just kinda am not sure at times what’ really going on with the series

• Mizuho is close but not quite there to being a competent female character in a shonen manga

• Sometimes the paneling is a little weird like sideways panels of someone standing above you so it’s rotated. I’d get what he was doing if that was also the MCs orientation while on the ground but it’s not

• This spent way too much time with the special school

• It kinda abandons the fun things at the start like the manga dreams and the brothers

• It just kinda feels like a slog after he goes to the school :((((

• What the fuck is the last chapter

What it Did Well

• This is just so dumb and silly like the gang following him in the bathroom 

• Lmao braking the table with super strength trying to draw manga

• I like it's about a rejection of call to action but isn't annoying about it

• The razor blade sound effects are a nice detail you can tell the author really put a lot of thought into it

• The art style when it works is dope like the blood sucking guy what a dope 2 page spread in chapter 7

• It’s cool how his ability doesn’t change so much at the start but rather he’s manifesting proper fighting techniques based on his brother’s training

• I do find the idea of the MC going to a delinquent school where everyone has superpowers hilarious, I just wish it wasn’t in an alt dimension

Where it Could Have Gone

• The art is kinda mid

• I always find secret society watching the protagonist as kinda lazy

• Keep it in the og school imagine a gag manga where only the straight man has superpowers 

Misc Thoughts

• This makes me think about how no one in JoJo ever tries to apply science to stands

• It’s just so odd how it’s a action manga with the energy of a gag manga

• This is what Chagecha should have been

• Maxy Bee thoughts:

  • Takama-ga-hara has a LOT of assistants credited, and that's because of what the author calls "a level of short handedness greater than any in the history of Weekly Shonen Jump". As such, instead of a regular crew of assistants, Kawai was supported by literally anyone they could get, be it an established author, a newcomer, or a professional assistant. He only managed to credit people who turned up more than once and STILL ended up crediting fourteen assistants!

  • The one-shot version of this series failed to win the 2011 Golden Future Cup, losing to Yuki Tabata’s Hungry Joker. Despite this failure it still managed to beat it to serialization by four whole months, until HUNGRY JOKER REPLACED IT.

  • The issue of Jump Musashi picks up in chapter 1 while chiding Yamato is the exact same issue Takamagahara debuted in. How meta.

  • Takamagahara is an actual thing in Japanese mythology, primarily the Shinto religion, as the abode of the heavenly Gods, connected to earth via the floating bridge of Heaven. It is mentioned in the Kojiki as the birthplace of the Gods, is considered to exist in the clouds above the sea, and is ruled over by Amaterasu, the Goddess of the sun.

    • Similarly, Yomi is hell.

  • Volume extras include:

    • Inter-chapter gag sketches

    • Assistant credits

    • A three-panel epilogue for our main trio

• Tucker thoughts:

  • As you might imagine, the series is stuffed to the gills with references to Japanese mythology. From the little hints and references at the end of the series, I strongly suspect that the original plan for the story was to borrow heavily from the myth of Izanagi and Izanami, which is the Shinto creation myth. It has a lot in common with the Greek tale of Morpheus and Euridice.  Basically, the god Izanagi's wife, the goddess Izanami, dies. Izanagi descends into the underworld, Yomi, to try to retrieve her, but he fucks up at the last second, resulting in a curse that introduces mortality to humanity. I bet you a thousand bucks that Yamato was intended to eventually break into Yomi to retrieve Mizuho at some point as an allegory to that legend.

  • BONUS: Izanami is also the goddess to which the title of the Megami Tensei ("reincarnation of the goddess") video game series refers to

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary

  • Community

    • Tucker: Japanese heaven is a high school?

    • Maxybee: Takama-ga-hara turns me into a Takama-ga-hater

    • AuraPaladin: Bizarre, yet somehow not bizarre enough???

    • blahmoomoo: Arbitrary school setting claims another victim.

    • Chickenwarlord: Divinely talented school recruitment embarrassingly forceful

    • Diego The Phantom Seer: SHOOT THEM WITH THE SQUIRREL GUN

    • duderocks the earthchild stan: Squirrel gun should have saved it

    • GenericMan: 6WS: Squirrel gun is pure Araki energy | Squirrels in My Pants by Candace Flynn

    • Glornak Ironspawn: Yamato's Bizzare Adventure: Shitpost Weight Lifters

    • Isekai Sensei-Sama 🎙: Tautological Kami Manga Garners Halfhearted Rationalization

    • Kpt.Kluless: (Joker from Ultimate) For His Neutral Special (Squirrel) Gun

    • LordAnubis, #1RedHoodFan/Mourner: Just one shot with squirrel gun

    • Portal man: reject martial arts, embrace manga arts

    • Quack.: Squirrel Gun! Save this doomed Manga!

    • Quetzal: Story? STRONGEST THERE IS! Ending? Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh

    • Redblade: Mangaphile Martial Artist then Squirrel Guns!

    • Riel: Ta Ka Ma Ga Ha Ra

    • Sbubby: What if SWOT was actually tolerable?

    • Spike: A A A A A A

    • The Wolf The Wood The Trafalgar: Terrible mangaka punches into unfortunate flop

  • David: when everyone’s special no one is | rough students, rough plot, rough rough

  • Jordan: Kid’s bad at manga not punching