Pandemic: Research Notes

Tucker:

Title: Pandamikku パンダミック

•  You can just pronounce it like “pandemic” but with “dam” instead of the “dem”

Author

• Temote Nozomi 手持望

  • Definitely seems like a pen name to me, though I’m not finding anything online about it after a (very cursory) search.

  • Family name is written as “held/possessed in the hand” or “handheld.” Personal name literally means “hope/desire”

Characters

• Kokage Minita [?][?]小太

  • Ko-kah-gay, Mee-nee-tah

  • The “Minita” thing is a play on how kanji can be read in many ways, and how in the past decade(s) it’s become trendy to name babies using kanji with readings that break from tradition. There’s an impression that this trend may be going too far, that new baby names can be written with kanji that are totally disconnected from their readings, and that all of these new-fangled names require tedious, in-depth explanations. I’ve even heard a joke that gets told in Japan about parents who have seemingly given their kid a normal name, but it turns out that the kanji are supposed to be read as “Pikachu.”

  • In this case, the character 小, which means “small” and would be expected to be read as “shou” or maybe even “ko,” receives the very weird reading of “mini,” as in “miniature.” I’m not sure if this would lead to the level of bullying we see in the first page of the manga, but it’s definitely something kids would give you some level of shit for.

  • Not sure how “Kokage” is written in kanji, but it definitely sounds like it means “small shadow.” In Japanese, “shadow” also often refers to someone’s influence over others.  Someone who casts no shadow leaves no impression or impact.

• Ishibashi

  • Ee-shee-bah-shee

• Kousen-kun

  • Koh-sen-kɯn

  • The kanji on his head is “light”

• Pandamon

  • Pahn-dah-moan\

  • Writing on chest says “nakayoshi,” meaning “buddy”

• Nanaka Ichi’umi 

  • Nah-nah-kah, Ee-chee-ɯ-mee

• Tsugumi Noda

  • Tsɯ-gɯ-mee No-dah

• Hacchan

  • Hah-chahn

  • Name comes from combining “hachi” (eight) with the -chan honorific

• Kaede-chan

  • Kah-ay-day

• Rina

  • Ree-nah

• Kiichi Nirasawa

  • Kee-ee-chee Nee-rah-sah-wah

MaxyBee:

Manga Details

• Nozomi Temote

  • Notable people they were an assistant for

    • None known

  • Notable people they had as assistants

    • None known

  • Other works

    • Cult no Omoide (2013, 1 volume)

      • A fictionalised version of the author’s own experiences joining a cult, published by Kadokawa/Enterbrain. The only complete work by the author.

    • Any other works I can find are either one-shots, instructional exercise routines, or abandoned after a couple chapters, and aren’t really worth the oxygen of explaining. The author seems to be a serial giver-upper. 

• Publishing

  • Run Dates: 

    • January 19, 2015 to November 11, 2015

  • Series it replaced

• Not how Comic Earth Star works

• Series that replaced it

  • Not how Comic Earth Star works 

• Series that started at the same time as it

  • Not how Comic Earth Star works

• Well how does Comic Earth Star work?

  • Comic Earth Star was a monthly shonen magazine that lasted 3 ½ years, before becoming a webcomic platform, which is what it was when Pandamic ran. Web manga platforms basically just run stuff without concern for what else is running, so this whole section is just kinda nothing. 

• Chapters/Volumes: 

  • 10 chapters(kinda? Maybe?)/1 volume

Manga Itself / Misc thoughts

• Volume 1, the only volume that was ever released, only contains 6 chapters and a short bonus comic. The whole series, if we can call it whole, has never been fully collected, but can be read over on the Jump Rookie service, a website and app where budding creators can upload their stuff in the hope of courting Shueisha/Jump’s attention.

  • What’s interesting is that there appears to be an ELEVENTH chapter on the service, but it’s literally just the bonus comic from the end of volume 1. False hope for mascot sickos, I guess. 

• PANDAMIC is not to be mistaken for PANDAMIC, the Japanese idol group formerly known as Panda Miku, founded in 2016, who changed their name in 2019 to PANDAMIC after sufficient member rotation. Completely unrelated. 

• In the time since PANDAMIC, Temote pivoted into NFTs like a fucking scrub, and is mostly doing nothing much in particular on twitter (currently known as X).

  • Despite bandwagoning onto NFTs, Temote has a note on their profile declaring that AI harvesting of their work is forbidden, so I guess they have their limits on what obvious scams are acceptable.