Norihiro Yagi, the man who gave the 2000s its moodiest silver-eyed swordswomen in Claymore, has a new series out, and it begins with a fish falling out of the sky. Bartlet Fairy Basslet launched on Shueisha’s Shonen Jump+ on Monday 2 November, and the first chapter is free to read in English on Manga Plus and through Viz’s Shonen Jump service, released on the same day as the Japanese.
The official blurb is short and wonderfully odd. Brunhilde, a princess who is also Knight-Captain of her kingdom, has just defeated her nemesis when a mysterious shining fish drops out of the heavens. Shueisha is selling it as a “hack and slash fantasy epic”, and its Japanese promotion pitches a sword-fighting fantasy about a royal who commands the knights herself. A princess who leads from the front, rather than from a tapestry in the solar, is a promising start.
The fish is presumably the basslet of the title. Aquarium owners will know the fairy basslet as a small and aggressively purple-and-yellow reef fish that likes to lurk upside down under rocky ledges. Whether Yagi’s glowing visitor has anything to do with it, or whether he simply liked the sound of the words, chapter one isn’t saying. Either way, naming a dark fantasy after something you might win at a fairground is a bold move in a market raised on Berserk.
Yagi’s track record suggests the swordplay will be worth turning up for. Claymore ran from 2001 to 2014, filled 27 volumes and got a 2007 Madhouse anime that still has a devoted cult following. Before that came Angel Densetsu, his comedy about a kind-hearted boy cursed with a face that terrifies everyone he meets, and afterwards Ariadne in the Blue Sky, which ran in Shogakukan’s Weekly Shonen Sunday from 2017 to 2023 and reached 22 volumes. He tested the waters at Jump+ with the one-shot Shell & Knight in December 2024, and it looks as though the editors liked what they saw.
Chapter two arrives on 9 November. Early reactions on X have been warm, with most fans simply relieved to see Yagi drawing very large swords again. Here at SFcrowsnest we’ll be keeping an eye on the fish.
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