Manga / Samon the Summoner

"This is the story of my descent into HELL!"

— Teshigawara in the opening narration.

Teshigawara is an Ordinary High-School Student, who is regarded as an angel by her fellow classmates due to her kind demeanor. She reaches out to the New Transfer Student Samon, who has become somewhat ostracized by the class after proclaiming that his hobby was summoning demons during his introduction, and tries to get him to join a club. Samon becomes interested in Teshigawara's reputation as a "good person, and soon tells her that he can't stand people like her, and that he hates her. Unfortunately for Teshigawara, Samon's other favorite pastime is watching people become corrupted, and even worse he is actually capable of summoning demons to carry out his desires. So begins Teshigawara's constant torment from the demons that Samon summons to tempt her into sin.

If things were't bad enough, Samon's constant summoning of demons for whatever task he desires greatly annoys the demon world, which causes them to send their own demon assassins to kill him, and anyone close to him, unfortunately, that means Teshigawara. Samon however, decides to defend her from these attacks, stating that he won't allow her to die, until she has been completely corrupted by greed.

From the above description, it sounds like a horror manga, but frankly, that couldn't be further from the truth.

Samon the Summoner is a comedy manga series written and illustrated by Shun Numa, serialized in Shonen Jump. The first three chapters were translated into English by Viz Media as part of the Jump Start initiative, but as of now no further attempts have been made for localization. The series ran from 2015 to 2017 with 10 volumes.

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This series provides examples of:

• Accidental Kiss: A downplayed example, while Samon has been turned into a child, Rin kisses him on the cheek only for Samon to return to his usual age in the middle of it.
• Art Evolution: The art style of Samon-kun was a bit more proportional in the beginning chapters, and the lines used for characters were thinner. Later chapters have the style become more cartoonish and thick, emphasized by giving the cast more expressive reactions.
• Beach Episode: Chapter 49 has the cast go to the beach, along with Mrs. Teshigawara.
• Book Ends: The series begins and ends on Solomon High's rooftop, where Tesshi first meets Samon in the first chapter, and where she decides to go to hell with him in the last chapter.
• Brick Joke: The first popularity poll has Samon say that he'll give his "horn" (ahoge) to the person who wins, which just so happens to be Tesshi. The chapter that came out in the wake of the poll had Samon's life essence go into the horn, with Tesshi wearing it for the duration of the chapter.
• Call-Back: The volume 7 cover turns out to be a picture that the Rogues Gallery took together, and shows them getting out of the poses in Chapter 68.
• The Cameo: The hero and heroine of Numa's previous work before Samon-kun show up on one panel while Samon and Tesshi are walking away.
• Chekhov's Gun: The copy machine that Teshigwara was fixing in the first chapter is later used by Samon to print out 100 Will-o'-Wisp summoning circles to defeat a demon that was trying to kill Teshigawara.
• Cute Glasses Girl: Rin, back when she was in middle school.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Despite being, well, demons, many of them are actually kind and respectable people.
• Distant Finale: The last chapter takes place years after the crew has finished high school, and shows what kinds of jobs and lives they ended up living.
• Dub Name Change: In the Spanish translations, Samon's name changes slightly to "Simon", presumably to keep the same intonation.
• Ecchi: The chapter focusing on Tesshi getting Samon's horn was full on ecchi, a genre very divorced from this gag-heavy series. Apparently Numa reported it was his editor's idea.
• Genre Shift: Towards later episodes, the series will occasionally shift into more traditional battle shonen arcs.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each manga chapter is a sentence describing Samon, following the naming convention of "Samon-kun [does X activity]".
• Informed Attractiveness: Teshigawara once said that Ya-san, her friend would be the most attractive girl in school if she didn't talk, though due to the art style, she doesn't look much more attractive than the other girls.
• Invisible to Normals: Played with, demons aren't always visible to people, though what determines what determines the invisibility is unclear.
• Japanese Delinquents: The delinquent oni, Ibaraki Douji has this theme, and even leads his own gang, though his appearance is so old fashioned and ridiculous that no one can take him seriously.
  • Tesshi's little sister is also one of these, and a pretty threatening one to boot. However, in the Teshigawara household, she's small fry in comparison to her mother and her elder sister, who keep her in line as long as she's within eyesight.
• Meaningful Name: The name of the high school is "Solomon High", likely a reference to the book of demons, the lesser key of Solomon.
• Mistaken for Romance: Often happens to Samon and Teshigawara since he hangs around her so much.
• Mob War: A small example happens in chapter 28, where rival gangs of Japanese Delinquents, one led by Neberios the other by Rin, who Samon has been working with. Later Ibaraki Douji's gang and Yada also get involved however Teshigawara gets everyone to go home before any actual fighting starts.
• Motive Decay: Towards the end of the manga, the ordeal about "Corrupting Tesshi and getting her sent to hell" becomes less important, and Samon is less concerned about it.
• New Transfer Student: As expected of a high school manga series many characters are introduced this way, or transfer in after their official introduction.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The final chapter reveals that there were a lot of important battles that were skipped over because of the Time Skip, such as a final battle with Mastema and Anri. As the series was Cut Short, we may never know what happened for sure.
• Opposite Day: There are a few demons that have this effect.
  • The Changeling takes the form of people, but with the opposite personality, like a cruel version of Teshigawara, or a kind and sociable version of Samon or Kuzuryuu.
  • Guison can invert a person's popularity, making hated people proportionately loved.
• Power of the Void: The demon Abaddon is a giant mouth that can eat people, which imprisons people in the abyss.
• Rescue Arc: Occurs midway through the series, where Teshigawara is kidnapped by Mastema, a demon who has been stealing the souls of humans who give in to temptation and fail his test. The arc plays out like a traditional battle shonen, where Samon and Nebiros fight several opponents before the final battle.
• Running Gag: Whenever somebody (often a woman) looks at the main characters in a group, Kuzuryuu is often obscured with the word "trash" covering his face.
• Summoning Ritual: A rather light variant, summoning a demon simply requires drawing a specific summoning circle, however, once it is used, it is destroyed.
• Ship Tease: A little going on between Tesshi and Samon. During the chapter where Tesshi's evil clone (specifically stated to be a doppelganger that would do everything the exact opposite of the real deal) was running around, she specifically tells Samon that she hates him. Being what she is, it takes a moment for Samon to process that, and he is not amused.
  • Besides this incident, the two of them get along fairly well (or at least as well as they possibly could), and it's very subtly implied that Teshigawara actually has a thing for her tormentor.
• Shout-Out: The series has quite a few of them.
  • Chapter 3 has Samon compare his relationship to Kuzuryuu as Faustian, or like Nobita as a plaything to Doraemon's whims.
  • During the chapter where the gang is part of a band, Samon starts to parody Jimi Hendrix.
  • The pep talk Emi gives in volume 5 is a reference to Shuzo Matsuoka's infamous "Never Give Up" speech.
  • To Full Metal Jacket in one chapter, where Rin goes full Drill Sergeant Nasty on Samon during one of their training sessions.
  • In one chapter, Anri mentions that she read somewhere that when humans eat delicious food their clothes rip to shreds. (Kuzuryuu even cooks a meal that has this effect on Samon).
  • When Kago begins trying out several clubs and learning techniques by watching the club members, she gains the nicknames, Perfect Copy, and Copy Ninja Kotori.
  • Samon ends up summoning Michael Jackson in one chapter. Not a No Celebrities Were Harmed version, no, the actual person.
  • In chapter 79 After Beelzebub asks Anri to marry him the chapter ends with the To Be Continued arrow from the Jojos Bizarre Adventure anime.
• Teleportation: The demon Gaap has this ability, which Samon can use to visit other countries.
• Take That!: To idolhood, courtesy of Tesshi.
  "Are you guys really fine with this?! It means we gotta dance while making stupid poses and forming hearts with our hands! I can feel 5, no 6 years of my life being sucked away every time I have to do them!"
• Time Travel: The volume 10 extra has Samon and Kuzuryuu travel back to the time before Tesshi's sister became a delinquent.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The final chapter explores the adulthood activities of the main cast, and where they went from there.