Original cover by Haijimibu
Release Date: October 25th, 2006
Page count: 28
ISBN: 978-4757729971
October of 2006 saw the release of “Comic Beam (コミックビーム) Fellows!”, an anthology of one-shot manga by various artists collected in two volumes. As per the official announcement, the two volumes were bundled and sold together.
Goichi Suda happened to write one of the stories in the first volume, Death Sentence, with Kazuhiro Sasaki as the artist.
The story sees Chiru, a Japanese high school girl, moonlighting as an executioner. This one-shot follows one day in her life, as she recalls hunting down a group of kidnappers with her Beam Whip the previous night during a date with her boyfriend.
The one-shot was not picked up for serialization by the publisher, making this the only chapter of Death Sentence. For that reason, Chiru’s objective of amassing 500 million Lebanese Pounds is never elaborated upon.
After the original, two-volume bundle of “Comic Beam Fellows!”, the publication was re-launched as just “Fellows!” on October 14th 2008, and ran for 26 issues until February 15th 2013, when it was re-launched again as “Harta”, which is still ongoing.
We produced a fan translation for this manga. Everyone involved in the project is credited on the final page, including Arthur.
QUOTE OF ENLIGHTENMENT:
I still don’t understand why a Japanese high schooler would want to save up 500 mil Lebanese Pounds.
Does she want to be like one of those communist insurgents that ended up getting stranded in Lebanon?
– Cake
Not much is known about Sasaki’s later career; all I could find was “電人ボルタ” (Electric Man Volt), a six-issue series which was published in the first six volumes of “Fellows!” from October 2008 to August 2009, and “恋はいつも” (Love is Forever), an 8-page manga he drew for the “Music Fellows!” booklet, which was bundled with the 7th volume of “Fellows!” and later collected in the “Awesome Fellows!” volume. There is an animator from Studio Neun who shares his name, but to my understanding, the two are different people.
Curiously, the first volume of Fellows! also happened to include a one-shot by Syuji Takeya, “描ききれない夏” (A summer that can’t be drawn). Takeya was a regular contributor of Comic Beam, and would later collaborate with Suda on several projects, namely Kurayami Dance and the two spin-off manga of The Silver Case series.