The prospect of a new series by Naoki Urasawa is always exciting. Putting aside the fact that he hasn’t finished Asadora! yet, his particular style of mystery-driven storytelling always makes it a joy to follow in real time with surprisingly few exceptions. Even so, The Last Manga Classroom has one big problem: its length.

Coming in at just ten pages of story and one special illustration, this first “chapter” is extremely short. While the particular imprint of Big Comic Original where it is published is full of one shots and more experimental works, this was clearly marketed as a full-blown new serialization by Urasawa and not a shorter work. Part of the reason could be because it is drawn entirely in color, but that doesn’t change the fact that there is very little to go on here.

In any case, The Last Manga Classroom opens on a manga fan by the name of Ishimota Shimohara who has just finished reading the original first volume of a thinly-veiled Kamen Rider parody from an artist known as Gaki Mannouji. Just when he’s mumbling to himself about how he’d love to meet Mannouji one day, he realizes that the address of his idol is written in the back of the volume. One trip to Nerima Ward later and Shimohara eventually ends up becoming Mannouji’s apprentice.

Though short, many of Urasawa’s idiosyncrasies are on display here for long-time fans to pick up on. First of all, there is a reverence for the first generation of manga artists such as Osamu Tezuka and Shotaro Ishimori through both parody and outright references. Secondly, Urasawa’s distrust towards new technology that put a break on his works being available on digital storefronts for many years is baked into the very fabric of the story, with Mannouji forcing Shimohara to abandon his iPad to save his own life.

Prior marketing, including the front cover of this issue, made a big deal about how Urasawa would be tackling AI in this new work. If that is indeed the case, nothing concrete has emerged just yet, even though the aforementioned iPad incident could be seen as the start of a kind of criticism. My only hope is that Urasawa has something interesting to say about the technology, especially considering the outright support from some of his contemporaries.

Funnily enough, the first chapter of The Last Manga Classroom is actually followed in the magazine by three pages of text explaining some of the historical context behind the story, including whether or not the addresses of manga artists really used to be printed in the back of collected volumes. This could be seen as an attempt to educate modern readers, but also reeks of trying to make up a page count.

Speaking of… am I at 500 words yet? There we are.

Chapter One Club is a weekly column that aims to spotlight the latest in new series and one-shots from across a wide variety of different demographics and publications.