>>280720829The biggest warning sign for a 1st chapter is confusion over the 3 major points. Even Platinum End made it clear. You know Mirai is the protagonist, you know the plot is about deciding god from 13 candidates, you know the conflict is Mirai's pro happiness anti killing in a death game (boy I sure hope he develops more personality later).
With Earthchild we aren't sure of the protagonist, the only conflict is my wife/mom is dead, and there's no plot hook beyond a nebulous "earthchildren gotta do stuff." When chapter 1 dropped most readers expected a major timeskip since this chapter was already full of them. But that's just IOUing the above points for a future chapter to re-establish — essentially the manga already needs to work overtime to catch up. Like what even is this ad? The earth is his child? Isn't it the opposite of the tone at the end here? Where's the baby? You can tell it's going to keep sucking off best dad at least. It's like the mangaka was handed the title and asked to draw what he thought his own series was about but didn't have an answer.
I don't like the one-shot comparison either. When people say "this feels like a one-shot that got extended into a series" it's typically high praise for a great premise that didn't close its loop at the end of the first chapter. This feels like a literal one-shot with no intention to continue which the mangaka accidentally submitted to the wrong meeting. And it only got good responses for throwing a bunch of cheap emotional moments at us in rapid succession. Fuck this manga I dropped it every week.
