Three days before the official start of 『JumpFesta』, on January 14th, the release of the 2000 Issue No. 1 of "Weekly Shonen Jump" arrived first.
At the same time, readers of "Shonen Jump" also welcomed a familiar new serialized manga, "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean".
"Stone Ocean" is the sixth part of the JoJo series, and it is the last part of the old world.
Because in the ending of this part, the main cast is almost wiped out, and the villain is killed only after almost achieving their goal, ultimately leading to the world being reset.
It is precisely because of such an ending that "Stone Ocean" remains highly controversial among fans even in later generations; some think the ending is great, while others think it is terrible.
Furthermore, it is said that the performance of "Stone Ocean" during its serialization did not look very good.
In short, it is a highly controversial work.
However, as a veteran author, Araki-sensei has been serializing the JoJo series since 1987, and now that it has reached its sixth part, it has truly become a golden brand.
Therefore, even if this part does not perform well, there is no need to worry about it being canceled like a newcomer author's work.
Therefore, Akira did not pay too much attention to it.
For him, the most important thing this week is naturally the serialization of "Fate/stay night" Chapter 22.
The story of Chapter 22 follows immediately after the previous chapter.
After leaving the Matou Family mansion, Shirou returned home, only to find that not only were Matou Sakura and Saber there, but Tohsaka Rin was also waiting for him at his house.
Upon Shirou's return, everyone reacted differently, and amid this, Tohsaka Rin and Matou Sakura had brief interactions, appearing faintly at odds with each other.
After some commotion, Shirou finally went to another room with Saber and Tohsaka Rin to discuss business.
Before that, both of them sternly reprimanded Shirou for acting on his own. Shirou apologized and then recounted the information he had obtained from Matou Shiori.
After listening, Tohsaka Rin was thoughtful, not knowing what she was thinking, but she did not believe some of Shiori's claims.
Saber stated that as long as Shiori was willing to withdraw from the Holy Grail War, she would not be considered an enemy.
Thus, after discussion, the group decided to first find the other Master in the school.
Having determined the next target, Tohsaka Rin prepared to leave.
Before leaving, Tohsaka Rin warned Shirou again to be cautious and not to act on his own.
Because of the recent coma incidents in the city, it is very likely that other Masters and Servants are behind it, and she had been investigating this matter as well.
Afterwards, Shirou continued to practice combat skills with Saber, then started to exercise his magecraft, and unknowingly fell asleep in the warehouse where he was practicing.
Shirou felt like he had a very realistic dream.
He dreamed that he was being called by someone, walked out of the house alone, walked on the deserted streets in the middle of the night, and walked all the way up the steps into Ryuudou Temple.
But in his heart, a thought kept sending signals of danger, telling him to stop quickly.
Thus, Shirou gradually woke up and was stunned to find that he had indeed arrived at Ryuudou Temple. However, when he wanted to stop, he found that his body completely refused to obey.
Just like that, he walked step by step into Ryuudou Temple and arrived in front of a mysterious woman wearing a cloak, revealing only the lower half of her face.
"Stop, kid.
If you continue to approach me, you will be killed, okay?"
The other person issued the order with a playful and mocking smile. Sure enough, Shirou's body stopped moving, as if completely under the other person's control.
At this moment, Shirou immediately understood the identity of the person in front of him.
The person who could cast magecraft on him from such a long distance and manipulate him to come here could absolutely not be an ordinary Magus.
Undoubtedly, the other person was a Servant, and the one most skilled in magecraft among the seven Servants — "You are — — — — Ca — — — —!"
To this, the other person smiled quite calmly and said:
"It is I, kid.
Welcome to my temple, Saber's Master."
End of chapter.
Chapter 22 is the eve of the battle with the Caster group, mainly foreshadowing the appearance of Caster at the end.
For Akira, this chapter was also one with a significant amount of changes, as it mixed parts of the plot from three different routes.
First, the part where Shirou is lured to Ryuudou Temple by Caster is undoubtedly the direction of the UBW route, and it is also one of the main plot contents he determined earliest.
And the earlier part where Tohsaka Rin also comes to Shirou's house, along with the interaction between Tohsaka Rin and Matou Sakura, including the conversation between the three, has a quite a complex source.
He extracted parts of the Fate route and HF route to fill them in; besides that, to ensure logical consistency, he adapted and created some parts of the content.
Combined, this ultimately produced the content of Chapter 22.
Additionally, while creating this chapter, he discovered a small clever detail from the production team of the UBW anime version.
In the original UBW route, Shirou just practiced with Saber for one night, and then went to sleep normally in his own bedroom.
However, in the anime version of UBW, the production team changed this part so that Shirou practiced magecraft in the warehouse and then fell asleep directly in the warehouse.
In the past, this adaptation seemed a bit baffling to him, but since it wasn't a very important change, he had never paid much attention to it.
But when he stood from the perspective of a creator and looked back at this adaptation, he realized that there was actually a lot of wisdom in this change.
Because this adaptation directly changed Shirou's attire!
If handled according to the original plot, then first of all, Shirou sleeping on a bed would not be wearing shoes, and it's hard to say if he would be wearing pajamas.
And the subsequent plot is Shirou being lured to Ryuudou Temple, the battle between the two groups of Servants breaking out, and then the crucial conflict between Shirou and Archer, even Archer trying to kill Shirou.
Then the problem arises — —
If handled according to the original plot, then in this long, serious, tense, and intense plot, Shirou would be interacting with others while bare-chested and barefoot the whole time.
Who could keep a straight face with that?
Even if Shirou were wearing pajamas, the image of him arguing with Archer while wearing pajamas and barefoot would still seem a bit too ridiculous.
It's hard to take it seriously, okay.
Moreover, this part of the plot in the original work never showed Shirou's character sprite.
It's hard to say whether it was because there was no need to show Shirou's sprite, so they didn't care about such an issue;
Or because they realized the problem, so they deliberately didn't show Shirou's sprite.
One can only say that ufotable's adaptation was flawless, and he naturally followed suit.
And besides the serialization of "Fate/stay night", another highlight related to him in this week's "Shonen Jump" is the publication of the second chapter of "Emiya Kiritsugu".