Warning: Contains Spoilers for Aliens Area Chapter 16!One new Shonen Jump manga is becoming the magazine's most horrifying just in time for the Halloween season. This is especially exciting given that the manga, Aliens Area by Fusai Naba, has struggled to find a clear direction to go in since it began serialization. Hopefully, it will continue down this road, as horror series are something that Shonen Jump is distinctly lacking.
Aliens Area follows the adventures of Tatsumi Tatsunami as he joins the government organization known as Foreign Affairs 5, which is meant to enforce the laws surrounding alien activities in Japan. The series has spent its first dozen or so chapters showing all the different responsibilities this can entail, from protecting an alien princess from a ruthless assassin to stopping alien shoplifters. This has made the series feel like it was trying to be part of a variety of genres, from typical Shonen Jump action fare to chill slice of life. But with its latest chapter, Aliens Area is diving into another genre entirely.
In chapter 16, Tatsunami finally remembers his backstory and is recounting it to the Foreign Affairs 5 department heads to try and convince them to green light an operation going after the evil anti-alien organization A3. His flashback details the deaths of his parents, and it doesn't shy away from how horrific that can be. A shocking turn of the page transforms the kindly face of his father into a collapsing mass of burning flesh, which really hammers home how terrifying this experience was. And after this, Tatsunami is implanted with the alien cells that give this Shonen Jump hero his Luffy-esque stretching powers in another incredibly disturbing panel. The manga's sudden shift into horror is very refreshing especially considering how so few other Shonen Jump series are satisfying this niche anymore.
Aliens Area's Horror Fills a Unique Niche in Shonen Jump
Shonen Jump used to have a variety of manga that would lean into the horrific natures of their core concepts. For instance, Jujutsu Kaisen's curses were truly terrifying especially when that series' protagonists were too weak to deal with them. But that series' latest Culling Game arc has largely veered away from horror becoming a more typical Shonen battle manga. Likewise, pretty much all the other series that focused on horror have moved away from that, except for maybe Chainsaw Man. But that series is no longer in Shonen Jump, instead being published in Jump+. So seeing a Shonen Jump manga going in a more horrific direction is very exciting.
Aliens Area finally seems to be settling on exactly the sort of direction it wants to be going in, focusing on Foreign Affairs 5's battle with A3. Hopefully, it will also keep leaning into the horror tone that it experimented with in Chapter 16. If it does, Aliens Area has the potential to become the best horror manga Shonen Jump has published in some time and a perfect read for this Halloween season.
Aliens Area Chapter 16 is available to read from Viz Media.