Chapter 63 - 62

On the official Aurora Manga Awards site, every paying reader gets exactly one chance to rate a manga. Ten is the highest score. One is the lowest. But thanks to the regional restrictions—no rating titles from your home prefecture—the results tended to be more balanced. Less emotional. More honest. Over time, an unofficial scale had emerged: A manga scoring below 6.0 was usually ignored—buried near the bottom of the rankings. Between 6 and 7? Solidly average. Nothing to be ashamed of, but not something people remembered, either. A score in the 7s meant very good—the kind of work readers talked about, even if only briefly. Anything in the 8.0 to 9.0 range? That was where things got serious. These were the standouts—the ones likely to survive early eliminations and push deep into the competition. And above 9.0? That was a different league entirely. In some years, not a single entry crossed that line. Even Blazing Feather—the high-profile frontrunner from Kyoto—was currently holding at a 9.0. And with another month left in the voting period, there was no telling if it would hold. The more readers weighed in, the more those numbers tended to drift downward. But this one... Rurouni Kenshin: Remembrance. Rating: 9.8. The number practically glared back at Akira. In all the years he'd followed the Aurora Awards, only a handful of titles had ever even touched a 9.4—and every one of them had gone on to become legendary in the industry. A 9.8? What kind of monster was this? Was someone manipulating the rankings? That sort of thing had happened before. In the early days, there were whispers about publishers hiring people to mass-vote their own work. But ever since the Awards site introduced real-name registration, identity verification, and single-vote restrictions, the system had tightened up fast. These days, trying to game the votes came with real consequences. Every account needed a verified phone number and payment method. Every vote was tied to a traceable ID. And with millions of users on the platform, any tampering would light up red flags almost instantly. Still... that number. It didn't sit right. Akira hesitated. Then curiosity won out. He clicked into the manga's detail page. The first image loaded—slowly, then all at once. A young man stood in the rain, dressed in a kimono, a sword resting at his side, eyes distant. Next to him, a woman held a paper umbrella, her expression unreadable. Above them, in bold brushstroke calligraphy: Rurouni Kenshin: Remembrance. He blinked. The art was rich, subtle, and absolutely atmospheric. Everything—the characters' clothing, their stance, the muted palette—spoke of an old-era samurai setting. The influence was unmistakable. He recognized it immediately. These weren't generic "historical" costumes. This was attire—something deeply rooted in Japanese culture. And while some manga fans adored that aesthetic, stories this traditional usually didn't score high in nationwide competitions. People tended to favor familiar settings. Characters they could see themselves in. Manga steeped in another era—especially one this specific—usually struggled for attention. So how was this pulling a 9.8? Was the score legit? Or was someone inflating it? He scrolled down to the comments. The top post had hundreds of upvotes. The moment he read it, his brow furrowed. "Anyone here from the old Mangastream forums? Check in below!" Akira frowned. Mangastream? Why did that name feel familiar? He clicked. --- The first comment at the top of the thread came from the original poster: "I honestly thought after Mangastream banned all Kenshin threads, I'd never see this series again. And now it's here, right in front of us on the Awards site. No question—I'm supporting this. I hope you all do too. Let's show the author some love and give it the score it deserves." Replies flooded in almost immediately. "+1" "+2" "+3, absolutely. I was reading it back when it was serialized on Mangastream, and it was such a waste that it was only available in a niche magazine over in Osaka. Now that it's part of the Awards? No hesitation. Every old Mangastream reader—let's push this thing to the top!" A new reply popped up, clearly confused: "Wait, Isn't this a new release from Osaka? Your profile says you're not even from there—how do you know this series already?" Another user chimed in: "Haha, an Osaka native in the wild. I'm jealous... I tried ordering Manga Echo online, but the shipping fees from overseas were brutal. The store I found on Tenmado charged me a fortune. I'm still in junior high, and I ended up spending a third of my weekly allowance just to keep up with Kenshin..." As Akira scrolled through the flood of replies, things began to make sense. So this was the origin of that 9.8 score. Apparently, Rurouni Kenshin: Remembrance had once been shared in full on the Mangastream forums, building up a cult following of thousands of dedicated readers before the moderators shut the thread down. Once it was removed, the fans scattered. Some discovered Manga Echo, a small overseas publication where the series had actually been running, and started ordering it through niche online stores. A loyal few had kept up with it even then. And now? Now those same readers had found it again—officially entered into the Awards. Word spread quickly, and within hours, the old fanbase had reassembled, rushing to the contest site like a flood breaking through a dam. Akira remembered the Mangastream recommendation section. He used to browse it too, back in the day. But that was years ago. These days, he barely had time to read works from his own prefecture, let alone hunt down pirated titles from across the sea. So, this was why Remembrance had that absurd score? Still, something didn't quite add up. There were over a hundred works in the Awards lineup. Most were top-tier series from major prefectures. Many of them had been discussed on Mangastream in the past, including Blazing Feather from Kyoto, which had once had entire threads dedicated to it. But none of those titles had a fanbase this devoted. None of them had rallied together so strongly that they went from underground forums to actually paying for the work just to leave a score. And the Awards system was strict: only readers who had paid for a title could vote. Akira continued scrolling, reading more replies. After a while, he came to a quiet conclusion: There was no sign of vote manipulation here. If the score had been fake, if bots or hired hands had been behind it, the comment section wouldn't be this... unified. So many different voices. So many stories. Readers who had followed Kenshin for months, maybe years. No one was claiming the work was overrated. No one was trolling the score. No one was arguing that it didn't deserve a 9.8. Which meant... Everyone truly believed it deserved that score. Unbelievable. A 9.8 score? In the Aurora Manga Awards? Sure, the contest had just started. Only a few hours had passed. It would run for six weeks in total. Plenty could change. Maybe the current flood of ratings was just the loyal fanbase. Maybe it would dip once casual readers began to vote. But there was one thing Akira knew: Even casual readers seemed to be rating it highly. For a score to hold that high, it wasn't enough to rely on the diehard fans. You needed even the indifferent readers from other prefectures to be impressed. Akira leaned back in his chair and exhaled sharply. No point in speculating anymore. He scrolled up, left the comment section, and clicked into the manga itself. Time to see it for himself. What kind of manga could earn a 9.8? Well—let's see if it could live up to the hype. Shout out to Adjarho kparobor, gundam, Michael Thomas for joining my patreon! your support means everything to me. (TL:- if you want even more content, check out p-atreon.com/Alioth23 for 50+ advanced chapters)