Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches

Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches (山田くんと7人の魔女) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Miki Yoshikawa. It was serialized in Kodansha's manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Magazine from February 2012 to February 2017, with its chapters collected in 28 volumes. The series was published digitally in English by Crunchyroll starting in 2013 and was licensed in North America by Kodansha USA in 2015.

An eight-episode television drama adaptation was broadcast on Fuji TV from August to September 2013. A 12-episode anime television series adaptation by Liden Films was broadcast from April to June 2015.

Plot

Ryu Yamada is known as a delinquent in his high school. He has been bored with his classes after one year of attending school. One day, he accidentally falls from a flight of stairs onto Urara Shiraishi, the ace student at the school. Yamada wakes up to find he has swapped bodies with her. The two try to reverse the change and discover kissing triggers the body swap. On the suggestion of student council vice-president Toranosuke Miyamura, they revive the Supernatural Studies club. The supernatural phenomenon–obsessed Miyabi Itou soon joins the club. The club encounters other "witches" with different powers are activated with a kiss on the lips. A transfer student, Kentaro Tsubaki, becomes a part of the club after nearly causing a fire to the old schoolhouse. Upon discovering the identity of the seventh witch, Rika Saionji, Yamada supposedly has his memories of the witches erased, but it instead affects the witches and the students involved. While the student council tries to impede his progress, Yamada restores the memories of the witches with a kiss, and gathers the seven witches for a ceremony where he wishes for the powers to go away. He confesses his love to Urara and they become a couple.

He is recruited to the new student council where he learns he still has his witch copying power, but there are more witches. Although the student council tries to shield each other from the powers while discovering and allying with the witches, they find themselves facing opposition from students controlled by the Shogi (japanese chess) club, which has male students with new kinds of witch powers. The student council receives a vote of no confidence and must face a recall election. In the process of infiltrating the Japanese chess club, Yamada learns of a witch who was connected to his past. He works a deal with childhood friend-turned-rival Ushio Igarashi where he wishes for his memories to return; in exchange, Ushio would take seventh witch Nancy's ability. When the Japanese chess club continues to manipulate the campaign, Yamada uses his copied seventh witch power to erase the recent events, but Ushio beats him to the punch and they are both forgotten by the students.

Yamada returns to the Supernatural Studies club as the school has to deal with new witches following the new school year. He also learns there are gaps in his and his schoolmates' memories of what happened at the end of his first school year, including those of whom he was dating at the time. Yamada then tries to find out the truth of what happened. He ultimately gathers the male witches to hold a ceremony to restore everyone's memories. As he goes through his senior year of high school, he plans to apply to a prestigious university. However, when Urara suddenly disappears from his life along with the witches powers and everyone else's memories of her, Yamada discovers she was the original witch. Urara had agreed to the witch powers in order to have a relationship with Yamada, but on the condition her memories of him to be erased again when she leaves school. However, when she returns at graduation, Yamada finds a way to get her to remember again.

Ten years later, Yamada has become a successful businessman who is looked up to by his coworkers and keeps in touch with his high school friends, but has yet to propose to Urara. The two get married and some years later, share their story with their two children.

Production

Manga author Miki Yoshikawa's previous work, Flunk Punk Rumble (Yankee-kun to Megane-chan) ran in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine from 2006 to 2011, with a total of 211 chapters.[5] Her editor suggested for her next project that she write a one-shot for Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine. She developed two stories: a prototype story for Yamada-kun and The Demon's Classroom. The second story was initially chosen, but became difficult to run because the main character was a grade school girl. The prototype Yamada story eventually became the first chapter for Yamada-kun.

In the Comic Natalie interview, Yoshikawa said that she had thought of the body swapping idea in the Yankee-kun days, and had researched some medical books on the differences between men and women, both physically and emotionally, but generally went with it because she liked the idea. "It just kind of came to me, but I was wondering how a guy finding himself in a girl's body would react, and the reverse". She treats a body-swapped character as an entirely different character.[6] At Anime Expo 2015, she said that she initially thought about gender swapping first but later rejected that as a potential magic power.[7]

When it was noted that the main characters for both of her works were delinquents, Yoshikawa replied that those types of characters came easily for her, as she grew up in the lower end of Tokyo. The characters and their names are not based on her friends so that they can act crazy. At Anime Expo 2015, she said that the characters reflect different aspects of herself. She also said that the Yamada-kun characters go to a different school from the ones in Yankee-kun but that they live in adjacent neighborhoods.[7]

With regard to drawing, she tries to vary each kiss, but mostly uses the side angle to make sure it comes through. With regard to kisses between members of the same gender, she replied that was not intended to target any specific demographic but just "an inevitable outcome".[8] At the time of Anime Expo, she said she had five assistants. She does her drawing by hand in black-and-white, and uses the computer for the filling in colors. She spends about half of her time on story, and the other half on actual drawing.[7]

Media

Reception

By February 2017, the manga had sold over 3.85 million copies in Japan.[35]

Works cited

• "Ch." is shortened form for chapter and refers to a chapter number of the Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches manga by Miki Yoshikawa. Original Japanese version published by Kodansha. English version published by Crunchyroll Manga.
• 山田くんと7人の魔女 — スポニチ (Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches) drama, 2013, 8 episodes.

External links