A long, long time ago, a war between gods and demons waged across the land of Wizdaregidor. In present time, everything is now at peace…until one rumor spreads. The Demon King, Neidvin, has apparently been reborn, and with his demon army in tow, he threatens to send the land into darkness once again. But fear not — with knights around and Holy Swords abound, there are heroes who look to end his evil.
While also using video technology and uploading them to YouTube WizTube.
Localization
Title: The Brave-Tuber (Haishin Yūsha)
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Translator: Thomas Zimmerman (Ultra Kaiju Humanization Project)
Letterer: James Gaubatz (One-Punch Man, Dragon Ball Super, Made in Abyss)
Editor: Shannon Fay (D-Frag, Orange, Plus-Sized Elf, Tomo-chan is a Girl!)
Adapter: Dawn Davis (Mythical Beast Investigator, Fragtime)
Designer: KC Fabellion (Bloom Into You, Spirit Circle, Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs)
Licensed: Seven Seas licensed the manga series back in Winter 2019. The first volume came out in print and digital format September 10, 2019. The last volume was released this February.
Background
The Brave-Tuber (Haishin Yūsha) is a two-volume series by Takahito Oosaki and Ikuro that began serialization in Mag Garden’s Comic Garden magazine in 2018. This is both their first official work. Oosaki explains in the bonus section at the end of volume 1 that the one-shot was entered into a competition. It didn’t win. However, the editors brought up serialization after they personally liked it and that’s how this became a full serialization. Ikuro was then brought in to aid Oosaki in the art department, and that, essentially, is a wrap.
Review
To be quite honest, The Brave-Tuber is really for a specific audience. The manga rallies around having fantasy heroes and creatures with internet service. That means all those manga, books, and shows that have enduring legends? Ginormous and evil creatures? Mythical lands to explore? Well, this basically has that, but what if any of them wanted to be internet famous? That’s The Brave-Tuber in a nutshell. From any form of social media, be it Twitter or YouTube, the manga is aping off of that.
We, the readers, however, start with two characters who suck at You–sorry, WizTube: Holy Sword Wielder Zane and the Spirit of the Holy Sword Kuku. Zane is a boring looking character that’s a cheat code. He has a Holy Sword, can one-shot anyone with ease, and has at least two transformations in his back pocket. Meanwhile Kuku is a small girl who takes videos of Zane’s feats. But despite them defeating monsters, even high-ranking members of the demon army, they get minuscule views, period. This manga depicts their trials and tribulations doing that.
If you know of YouTube and social media culture, this manga represents it very well. These two try and study why other videos and WizTubers are way more popular than them. They defeat a more popular streamer in battle (this demon was holding his laptop!). They try numerous gimmicks that suddenly become popular and find a way to fail each and every time. We even get stunningly accurate social commentary on Twit– er, Witter culture in one chapter.
Despite some things working out (and them garnering more haters on their WizTube channel), they still are really unpopular. They eventually try their luck and head to a supposedly scary forest that houses the demon princess. They show up and instead meet Hellheit, who is not quite what they were looking for. I mean, she tries to scare them away by lightly throwing acorns. That…might not even scare a child away. However, after a delightful talk she signs (on Zane’s arm) a contract, and now, she too will deeply understand why these two are unpopular.
So in two volumes The Brave-Tuber provides fun doses of comedy. The art is appealing, and even moreso when it spoofs off common YouTube elements, from the title cards to the actual design. Again, this manga’s enjoyment will heavily depend on understanding general social media and internet cues. Like, there’s a chapter in here where it almost gives a play by play of those two getting their video removed off WizTube. It gets real. Maybe to its detriment at times — the more you read it, the more it seems to wear out its welcome. It may or may not have do with these characters.
That’s likely why the highlight out of everything in The Brave-Tuber has been whenever the Demon King shows up. He occasionally trolls their channel with threats in the comments and ends up causing Kuku major trouble when he retweeted her very awkward-looking selfie. However, he himself gets two chapters and they are all hilarious. In his massive castle, he likes videos of everyone doing different types of things, leaves internet-like comments of encouragement, and once followed a newbie WizTuber before they blew up across social media weeks later. He also not only dislikes anything Zane and Kuku do, he even leaves them nasty comments. One video they did almost made him destroy his laptop in frustration — maybe that’s a bit too on the nose!
But in essence, this manga proves to be a laugh just about every time, and while it’s short, I can at least say it didn’t overstay its welcome. When this was announced the premise seemed to be a riot so I was looking forward to a good time. Was definitely not let down in that area. While there’s probably another manga that’ll come that does this better, for now The Brave-Tuber is a hilarious what-if you did have internet that allows a monster to stream their exploits to the world, and worth looking into.
Free Preview
A free preview for both volumes of The Brave-Tuber is up on BookWalker, but will leave you with part of chapter 1.
