The West and Europe tend to have it on lock when it comes to competition shows. There’s a little something for everyone, whether your interests lie in watching people fall off of oversized obstacle courses or taking a hobby such as glass-blowing, weaponsmithing, or topiary to a new level. Now Japan has a new competition show that should interest the manga readers in your life. Enter MILLION TAG, the newest creation from Shonen Jump+.
Billed as a “battle competition” style show, the aim of the show is to take potential mangakas, pair them with a Shueisha manga editor and take on a set of challenges. The show’s hosts will include voice actress Ayane Sakura (My Hero Academia, Attack on Titan) and comedy trio YONSENTOSHIN. While the guest judges for most of the challenges haven’t been revealed yet, we do know that the guest judges for the final challenge will include the creator of Chainsaw Man, Tatsuki Fujimoto, and Hell’s Paradise: Jigokuraku creator Yuji Kaku.
The last team standing gets a prize of five million yen, serialization opportunities with Shonen Jump+, a physical copy of the manga, and an anime adaptation. While that’s an extremely hefty prize for any kind of competition, it does bring into question what Shueisha and Shonen Jump+’s follow-through for these prizes is going to be like once the competition is over and the winners have been crowned. Given that many artists are asked to produce a significant amount of content for these kinds of competitions, which may or may not belong to them at the end depending on the contract guidelines, it pays for most artists to be wary of anything promising such a large boost up into the industry.
MILLION TAG is scheduled to run for eight episodes on Shueisha’s official YouTube channel and will premiere on July 2nd, 6:00 p.m. JST. While there’s no word yet on whether or not captions will be available for any international viewers watching, it’ll definitely be interesting to watch as Japan puts its own unique twist on the competition show genre, and new creators give us a manga we can root for.
Source: Anime News Network
