News
Zekkyō Gakkyū: Tensei Anime's New Episode Warns of Fun at Theme Parks
posted on by Sarah Nelkin
A new short anime special based on Emi Ishikawa's Zekkyō Gakkyū: Tensei sequel manga aired on the Oha-Suta (Good Morning Star) variety program on the TV Tokyo network on Tuesday. The official YouTube channel for Shueisha's Ribon magazine also streamed the one-and-a-half-minute episode. The episode adapts the sixth chapter of the manga, "Akai Fūsen" (Red Balloon).
In the video, a girl and her friends go to an amusement park, where they encounter a boy who tells them that they're too noisy. Despite his complaints, the girl's friends tell her that there's no rule about how loud you can be, and they continue to have fun. However, they begin to notice that their photos continue to show a strange little girl in the background.
The same boy from before yells into the crowd, asking if anyone has seen a little girl who is pleading for someone to find her red balloon. To the girl's horror, the boy suddenly floats off into the air when he tries to escape the park. According to the girl's friends, a girl who died in an accident at the park was running around looking for something up until the moment she died. Finishing off the episode, the storyteller tells viewers to be careful at theme parks, because the more you get lost in the fun of the amusement park, the easier it becomes to get caught in a trap.
A different short anime special based on the manga aired on the Oha-Suta variety program last month, and Ribon's official YouTube channel also streamed the short.
Ishikawa's original Zekkyō Gakkyū manga follows a ghost girl named Yomi as she tells the reader various scary stories. Ishikawa began publishing the series in Shueisha's Ribon magazine in 2008, and the company published the 20th and final compiled volume in Japan in March 2015. Ishikawa then launched the Zekkyō Gakkyū: Tensei series in Ribon last June, and Shueisha published the second compiled volume (pictured at right) on March 25.
The manga received a "vomic" (voice + comic) video in 2010, a three-episode series of anime shorts that aired in 2012 inside the Oha-Suta morning variety program, and a live-action film that opened in Japan in June 2013.
The original manga won the children's category of the Shogakukan Manga Awards in 2014.
