[Medaka Box] We Made It To Our One Year Anniversary And We Continue On

As you can see by the rare color pages from chapter 56, we have achieved a rare event. Medaka Box has reached its one year anniversary! This is actually a bit late because the series debuted in May 2009 and it got its acknowledgement a couple weeks back in Issue #30 of this 2010 calendar year. Never the less, I was not going to let my personal stuff get in the way of me properly recognizing Medaka Box’s birthday. Especially after all the battles that have been fought over the course of its serialization.

This has been a long road for this series. We have made it to a year despite the odds being stacked against us. We have had people constantly shoving disproportionate amounts of hatred on Medaka Box for some of the most asinine reasons I have had the displeasure of encountering. From the beginning there were haters who dismissed us. When those people who missed the signs that were building the story to its current form they formed a hate coalition and were rooting for it to fail because they somehow felt betrayed by the story’s goals. Even now, there are still people who are up to current scanlated chapters and have taken a look at the released RAW chapters and still don’t understand what and who this story is about. People from all sides wrote us off and said we were never going to make it to this point and constantly tried to pull the chicken little bullshit and claim the sky was falling on Medaka Box. Well, all I have to say is this. We are still standing bitches and we made it to a year and counting. For anyone who is wishing death on this series, your window of opportunity keeps closing as the weeks go by and we get closer to the 2 year mark where an anime announcement becomes more likely. We have gone up against these crowds countless times by now and won basically every round. It will be a thrill to win this one too.

Medaka Box despite all of the controversy has some impressive achievements. It is one of the few remaining manga from 2009 along with Kuroko no Basket, Beelzebub, and Hokenshitsu no Shinigami. Unlike the first two 09 series, Medaka Box has largely had to fend for itself and did not get the luxury of Weekly Shounen Jump constantly saving it with color pages when it ranked poorly or have it being pushed with a higher amount of colors than the other series in the magazine. Despite the lack of promotion Medaka has managed to survive and become the newest series in the magazine that can sell 100K copies per volume. Especially achieving that mark before I need all the fingers on one hand to count the number of volumes that had been released. Not bad at all considering Psyren still can’t get over the 100K hump and it took Sket Dance something like 10 volumes to exceed that point too. Impressive considering the series was so underestimated the first volume was under printed. Such a thing pretty much kills the argument of only a big name saving protecting this series. It managed to get a Vomic which can be seen as an initial step forward to getting an anime some time in the future. Surprisingly, it was awarded color pages for that which is rare considering Jump normally just leaves it to fend for itself. To top all of this off, it managed to survive a year which is very impressive considering how WSJ is known for killing its series left and right and just throwing them up against a wall hoping they stick.

We got over a major hurdle but we aren’t done yet. Once there is an anime to stabilize the ranking or at least ward off any potential notions of cancellation we can ease up. Until then, we can’t take what we have accomplished for granted and assume we are in the clear. Jump titles like Busou Renkin and Mx0 are the next benchmarks to exceed as both had lived more than one year but hadn’t gone beyond two for the most part. After that, the goal is that much closer within reach and the number of examples of cancellations is diminished.

Medaka Box has given us an interesting year to say the least. I hold this series very dearly since I’ve been there from the start and seen it come a long way so far. Hopefully, Medaka Box’s 2nd year is even more interesting than its first. Either way, I intend to keep enjoying the ride.