Black Torch is a series I mostly started on a whim. I vaguely remembered it was getting an anime and I kept seeing in on the Shonen Jump app. It had a cat, a basic shonen premise about ninjas and spirits, and was fewer than 20 chapters so I thought, why not?

"Powerful idiot boy who can talk to animals saves a cat who's actually a powerful mononoke" is a pretty basic, but solid premise. It's funny, the art is cool with a heavy use of black color (it's a black cat after all), and I pretended to not notice the slight perv moments that are an unwelcome staple to the shonen genre like sticker burrs stuck to my clothes after a hike.

I did not realize the series was canceled until I had 5 chapters left, which was obviously a bummer to learn and made the anime announcement perplexing, but the heads up before the very rushed ending was appreciated. With the canceled caveat, I will give the series some grace for not getting a chance to flesh out characters and arcs.

What little we got of the characters was interesting but none of it really stood out in a pretty crowded genre. The plot was so bog standard it's barely worth delving into and I will say that the aloof powerful cat spirit Rago and Jiro's bickering relationship was probably doing a lot of heavy lifting as far as my enjoyment of it because there wasn't time to explore much of anything else.

But I had fun with this quick read and I'm intrigued with what the anime will do to address the story considering its cancellation.

my brain would not stop correcting Rago's name to "Ragu" every time

Of all the abandoned arcs due to the cancellation, I'm most bummed that Reiji never got to yell at his bum of a brother that deflecting his grievances with his upbringing and pressure to live up at the older brother onto him was cowardly and loser behavior...justice for Reiji

Also justice for Ichika just for having to be the only woman in the trio who's immediately neglected