Waver(s) - Informal Bookclub

[VikingSchism]

Welcome To The Waver(s) Book Club!

This is an informal bookclub for people who are reading or want to read Waver(s).

What Is Waver(s)?

Waver(s) (alternatively ウェイバーズ) is an ongoing supernatural mystery manga being serialised in Harta Alta (Harta’s online publishing site). The premise is as follows (taken from the series page on the Harta Alta website):

雪深い山奥の学校で、ひとりの教師が殺された。
浮かび上がった容疑者は28人、全員超能力者――。
『生き残った6人によると』の山本和音の最新作は、
超能力者たち（ウェイバーズ）による学園青春ミステリー。

Loosely translated version:

A teacher is killed at a school deep in the snowy mountains. There are 28 suspects, each has supernatural abilities.
From the author of What 6 Survivors Told, Kazune Yamamoto, comes a school mystery revolving around psychics (Wavers).

I’m making this club as I’d like a place to discuss thoughts on chapters as they come out. Hopefully others will find it interesting and want to join in too!

This Sounds Interesting, Where/How Can I Read It?

It’s on the Harta Alta website, and it’s free! (digital only currently)

Please note - only the first chapter and the latest few chapters are available to read at any given time. At time of writing (27th of January, 2026) only the first chapter has been released. But there should hopefully be some volume releases later on (this section can be updated if and when alternative means of reading become available).

How Difficult Is It?

It’s hard to give an estimate because there’s so little content right now, but there is not a lot of furigana which has me leaning towards calling it an intermediate level of difficulty. There’s also (currently) no Natively entry for it.

Is There A Schedule?

I’m making this as an informal club so there’s no set schedule, but since it’s an ongoing manga I will post when new chapters come out.

How To Handle Spoilers

Since I won’t be making a new thread for each chapter, we’ll need to be mindful of spoilers. Please make use of expandable sections and make sure you clearly mark what the spoiler is about
For instance:

Chapter Example

Spoilers spoilers spoilers

Additionally you can make use of blurred spoiler text, but please also mark what you’re spoiling
(Chapter Example) Spoilers spoilers spoilers

And since this is a mystery, I’m sure there’ll be speculation, so be mindful of others (the line between speculation and spoilers can be quite fine) and mark your speculations too if you can!

Fun Poll

As a reward for reading to the end, take part in the fun poll

What Supernatural Ability Would You Want Most?

• Telekineis
• Telepathy
• Pyromancy
• Chronomancy
• Divination
• Teleportation
• Flight
• Geomancy
• Enhanced Senses

[VikingSchism]

Thoughts on Chapter 1

What a strong opening! The body found in the snow, and being lifted up were great visuals to start on. I am quite liking Fuji as protagonist so far - she has a bit of a mouth and I can see that getting her on the wrong side of some people. Her conversation with Matsumoto-sensei was interesting - I wonder what advice he gave her that she omitted from her recounting of events. Her power seems like it’ll be fun for a mystery story like this, but the limitation of needing 12 seconds for it to work should keep it from being too convenient. She’ll need to think of some way to maintain contact in order to pull it off. I really liked how the power is visualised with the kanji being projected.

An interesting bit of Japanese here was the conversation between Fuji and Yokota-sensei, in which Fuji asks:

松本先生の死体はどこ？

To which Yokota-sensei responds:

遺体ね

I didn’t know that 遺体 was considered more respectful than 死体 (though, fortunately, I haven’t really needed to talk about corpses in Japanese all that much). There was a similar exchange on the same page where Fuji asks for the 死んだ場所 and Yokota corrects her to 亡くなった場所. I did know about this dichotomy, though. That got me thinking about how you’d translate that exchange to English and came up with this:
“Where’s the place he croaked?”
“The place where he passed away?”

[eefara]

A manga like this sounds right up my alley. Do we know how often chapters will be released?

[VikingSchism]

I think monthly, but I haven’t actually seen anything confirming that. Harta is usually done on a monthly basis so that’s why I’d guess monthly. I’ll check the site on Monday next week though, just for safety

[GolyBidoof]

@VikingSchism

Harta is usually done on a monthly basis so that’s why I’d guess monthly.

isn’t it like, 10 times a year, and the next issue is in a month or two? The last was December ^^

but yeah, really pretty illustrations, i read the first chapter and might consider reading the next chapters as well, thanks for starting this book club C:

[Tonitaco]

Is there a rule on using telekinesis on myself to fly ?

[meme456]

I choose Divination. I want to make predictions on different events that could make me monies so I could travel the world and buy all the books I want​ JK but it would be cool to be able to look into the future

And I really want to join this bookclub since this manga seems so interesting but it’s way out of my reading level

[rodan]

@GolyBidoof

@VikingSchism

Harta is usually done on a monthly basis so that’s why I’d guess monthly.

isn’t it like, 10 times a year, and the next issue is in a month or two? The last was December ^^

To fully clarify the publishing situation, new chapters of Waver(s) will be exclusively published (temporarily) for free on ハルタオルタ（Harta Alternative） (until tankobon collected physical and digital collected editions come out as another way to read them, and as new chapters stop being new and are removed from the site).

That website has a schedule wholly unrelated to Harta the magazine, and it updates for free every Monday (at some time, or possibly Sunday night, but the website says 月曜日更新, and at least in my timezone of PST I always check for new chapters Monday morning), generally with a new chapter from 1 or 2 each of the (currently 6) ongoing series, and/or occasionally other stuff (like a short story, series debut, or a rerun of a Harta series).

I would be surprised if any individual series is held to a super strict update schedule given there’s presumably not as concrete of a deadline as there would be with the magazine, but it seems like the ongoing series on the site update roughly monthly. For four of the already running series, the gap between the last two (still visible) chapters is 28 days. For the fifth, 35.
(I’ve been reading since the site began and although I have not been paying attention to this datapoint I have detected no particular unusual variances in publish rate except for one series that ended and then began for a second phase, and one rerun series which was published weekly, so I would say all of them otherwise being about monthly feels right to my vague impression)
Oh and the length of chapters I would say varies wildly also.

Incidentally, Harta the magazine is indeed published 10 times a year, and it has series that publish chapters every issue, as well as ones that only publish chapters 6 times a year. This author’s previous series was a 10 chapter a year one, for whatever that’s worth.

The Harta Alta website unfortunately does not have very much information about itself on it, and any updates at all about upcoming chapters are for better or for worse restricted to Harta’s X account. (previews for the next month’s slate of collected editions, including Harta Alta ones, are also first announced there, along with a preview of that month’s magazine).

All that is to say:
A new chapter of Waver(s) will probably come out around Monday every four weeks or so on https://www.harta.jp/hartaalt/, and probably that’s all it can be boiled down to.

I like the website as a thing to check at the beginning of the week each week and see what updated - don’t know one way or another if that would still be enjoyable if only interested in one series / since catching up with series on there is particularly a pain.

(Figured I’d provide all the information on the subject I could possibly think of).

[VikingSchism]

@meme456

And I really want to join this bookclub since this manga seems so interesting but it’s way out of my reading level

You can always come back to it when it feels more approachable! And if you do want to try it and have questions about the Japanese, feel free to ask in here

[eefara]

Wow, thank you for the fantastic overview, rodan!

[rodan]

Chapter 1 response

@VikingSchism

An interesting bit of Japanese here was the conversation between Fuji and Yokota-sensei, in which Fuji asks:

松本先生の死体はどこ？

To which Yokota-sensei responds:

遺体ね

I didn’t know that 遺体 was considered more respectful than 死体 (though, fortunately, I haven’t really needed to talk about corpses in Japanese all that much). There was a similar exchange on the same page where Fuji asks for the 死んだ場所 and Yokota corrects her to 亡くなった場所. I did know about this dichotomy, though. That got me thinking about how you’d translate that exchange to English and came up with this:
“Where’s the place he croaked?”
“The place where he passed away?”

For what it’s worth, my gut would say that she’s only being a little bit blunt / overly direct here, not quite exactly outright rude. I’d say she’s just using words that directly reference death rather than euphemistically skirting around it ever so slightly.
(It’s probably just difficult to turn off my translation-edit suggesting habit from the pro wrestling thread but…) I’d maybe suggest as a translation something like: “Where’s the corpse?” “The body is no longer on the premises.” (…) “Then tell me where he died.” “You mean where he passed.” “Same thing.”
“croaked” just comes across as a touch too outright disrespectful to me - not that I’m really in any kind of position to say authoritatively of course though.

(anyway, I agree, really strong start! And the power visualization is indeed really cool. I’m maybe most curious to maybe learn a little bit more of what 松本’s deal was. His young, sort of androgynous design seems interesting for what could have come across as more of a creepy professor in the interaction here. But maybe I’m just curious about the bespectacled loner who was in charge of the library… Such a comfy sweater to have mysteriously vanished somewhere.)

[VikingSchism]

Summary

This is probably why I’m not a translator haha, but I see what you mean. Maybe it’s just my impression of Fuji and me being British but I see her being fairly slangy and euphemistic in general. Either way, it’s an interesting scene to me linguistically

[VikingSchism]

Since I wanted to share this with some friends I took a stab at translating the chapter, but there were a few bits that eluded me or that I just wanted to double check my interpretation so wanted to ask about them here:

Translation troubles

For this sentence on page 8, I was unsure on how exactly to translate 消す. The way I interpreted the scene is that she’s saying she’ll get some idiots like the other two to do it and then bump them off (消す) because it’d be a bother if someone were to know the truth. Does that feel correct?

Related to the above:

This one is more just, not sure how to word it in a way that’s somewhat consistent with the speech balloons here.

This exchange between Matsumoto-sensei and Fuji gave me trouble. Not really sure what a good way to translate 困る/困れ would be

Probably doesn’t matter too much but can’t quite work out this book title.

I can’t work out this bit on page 26 - I’m stumped as to what マルチセミナー could mean (multi-seminar? What’s that?). And why he’s saying he’d watch 18 hours of videos of them in a day.

Then on page 28, this is more just a “how do I phrase this in a way that fits the bubbles” question.

Finally, from page 38

In the first bubble, is Fuji referring to herself? (“If only I’d been stronger?”)
In the second, is there a good way to translate 師匠? I’ve mostly left 先生 as “sensei” (the meaning of that feels well-known enough). A literal translation from 師匠 to “master” feels like it would sound odd. Maybe “mentor”?

First time I’ve really tried something like this, and I’d only be sharing this to friends so not like it needs to be perfect.

[downtimes]

@VikingSchism

Probably doesn’t matter too much but can’t quite work out this book title.

It’s 緩変動電位研究. Something something slow cortical potentials something EEG according to Gemini

@VikingSchism

I’m stumped as to what マルチセミナー could mean (multi-seminar? What’s that?). And why he’s saying he’d watch 18 hours of videos of them in a day.

Heard of multi-level marketing before? Seminars for that would be my guess. (pyramid schemes)

@VikingSchism

A literal translation from 師匠 to “master” feels like it would sound odd. Maybe “mentor”?

Master is how it’s normally translated. Don’t have enough context since I’ve not read the manga to give advice on how to best translate it here though

[rodan]

Ooh fun! I hope they enjoy it and you find it rewarding!

Translation comments

@VikingSchism

For this sentence on page 8, I was unsure on how exactly to translate 消す. The way I interpreted the scene is that she’s saying she’ll get some idiots like the other two to do it and then bump them off (消す) because it’d be a bother if someone were to know the truth. Does that feel correct?

Yep, your sense matches mine. The trick would be to decide how to phrase it with the right balance of euphemism that it’s clear but the exchange makes sense.

My approach would be something like:
“and once they’re done, get rid of them.”
“That’s certainly a humanities-based approach… but what exactly do you mean by ‘get rid of them’?”

@VikingSchism

Related to the above:

This one is more just, not sure how to word it in a way that’s somewhat consistent with the speech balloons here.

It might depend on if you’re presenting the translation in the original space and have to format it to fit the balloons or not, how much contorting you have to do.
Some rearranging the clauses might be helpful…
I think my best attempt is:
“… It’s trouble,” “when someone knows the truth.” “All kinds of trouble.”
or
“… When someone knows the truth,” “it’s trouble.” “All kinds of trouble.”
or for that matter
“… It’s trouble,” “all kinds of trouble,” “when someone knows the truth.”
(can’t quite decide which I prefer).
I also considered “when someone knows too much” as sounding a bit smoother - but it’s probably too much in that direction I think (into cliche) and the obvious foreshadowing and resonance with what happens in the rest of the chapter is lessened.

There are probably other ways to fiddle with it or to try to make it sound more natural though and your mileage may vary.

@VikingSchism

This exchange between Matsumoto-sensei and Fuji gave me trouble. Not really sure what a good way to translate 困る/困れ would be

This is probably a good example of a situation where rephrasing your sense of what’s happening in English and looking for a good way of phrasing that naturally may be helpful. (I tried to articulate that in a way where it might be generally helpful advise but I’m not sure I was successful - I guess I’m saying like, try stepping back and approaching from the big picture of the situation in English if getting caught on a specific word, then rephrasing until it feels good)
Like if I try to phrase what he’s saying, it would be like:
“I’ll be put out. Since I’m the one in charge of the library.”
with her retort like
“So then be put out.”
(as in like, “ok so what, deal with it, don’t bother me”)
Then I can try to wrangle that into something that feels maybe more natural. (made maybe a bit more difficult since it’s a little hard to intuit exactly in what way he would 困る - like I guess he’d just have to stay later?)

“It’s disruptive for me. Since I’m the one in charge of the library.”
“So be disrupted.”
Maybe works? Can’t decide which of the two options I prefer.

Trying another option:
“I’m the one inconvenienced. I’m in charge of the library.”
“OK, be inconvenienced.”

Anyway, maybe these are some helpful options at least!

@VikingSchism

Probably doesn’t matter too much but can’t quite work out this book title.

緩変動電位 appears (from googling around) to refer to “Slow Cortical Potential” so a bland translation would be “Slow Cortical Potential Studies Vol. 37”

@VikingSchism

I can’t work out this bit on page 26 - I’m stumped as to what マルチセミナー could mean (multi-seminar? What’s that?). And why he’s saying he’d watch 18 hours of videos of them in a day.

I think he’s saying like - (somewhat jokingly), if he wanted to be able to detect lies from sight alone, he would watch videos for hours on end of material where people would be saying fishy things constantly (like multi-level marketing seminars), to train that muscle, so to speak. Like these powers are something that can be built up over time, and she would likely be able to hit that goal of hers in time. (Then his actual specific advice is of course elided).

@VikingSchism

Then on page 28, this is more just a “how do I phrase this in a way that fits the bubbles” question.

I don’t know if horizontal English is ever too graceful in these kinds of bubbles really…
“To think of that…” “… saddened me.”
Would perhaps be my attempt. Sorta loses the 少し but perhaps the gap does most of what it was doing anyway.

@VikingSchism

In the first bubble, is Fuji referring to herself? (“If only I’d been stronger?”)
In the second, is there a good way to translate 師匠? I’ve mostly left 先生 as “sensei” (the meaning of that feels well-known enough). A literal translation from 師匠 to “master” feels like it would sound odd. Maybe “mentor”?

Yes, I would say she’s referring to herself. And I think “mentor” does work for me here.
I would say she’s saying like, (since they were talking about her improving her powers) “If only I’d been a little stronger,” (like, stronger mentally - “more resolved” or something like that could also maybe work) “I would have liked to call you ‘mentor.’” (or “call you my mentor”).
(“Master” I do feel like might have different implications in English that would come to mind first in this context…)

[soggyboy]

Ahhh I need to remember to read this this week! Looks really fun.

[rodan]

For anyone who’s started checking https://www.harta.jp/hartaalt/ for the sake of Waver(s), it may be worth mentioning that this week’s update included another new series debut, 佐藤英子(32)はヒーローになれたのか by 八十八良.
I believe that author’s previous Harta series was finishing up right as the issues started to be available online, so I haven’t read it yet and can’t vouch for the author, and the series is quite violent and I don’t know exactly what the tone will be, so I wouldn’t say it’s as exciting of a potential onboard point as Waver(s). But this first chapter sets up a premise that’s basically the first episode of a tokusatsu show with some House of Leaves-ish horror-y elements mixed in, which has me at least intrigued, so if you’re already looking at the site, it might be one to at least try out as well.

[VikingSchism]

I love both tokusatsu (assuming we’re talking about the henshin heroes kind, like Kamen Rider/Sentai/Gavan, though I also enjoy other sorts too) and House Of Leaves so that description definitely catches my interest. Thanks for the heads-up!

[soggyboy]

Alright, first impressions!

Chapter 1

Seems really atmospheric, especially loved the art towards the end when she went to the site where the body was discovered. The art also seems more detailed and a little less stylized/blocky than What Six Survivors Told. My only complaint- some of the teachers look so young, they look like teenagers I mean maybe they are teenage genius teachers, but somehow I doubt it…

Difficulty-wise, this felt more difficult than What Six Survivors told with the sci-fi lingo and so on. I skimmed a couple words for sure so I may do another pass on this chapter when I have a bit more time.

@rodan

His young, sort of androgynous design seems interesting for what could have come across as more of a creepy professor in the interaction here.

I had the same thought, like is this a creepy professor situation?

@meme456

And I really want to join this bookclub since this manga seems so interesting but it’s way out of my reading level

It will probably be released in regular collected volumes later, you’ll have to put it on your wishlist! I think it’s great to have series you aspire to read later, that way you can come back to them every so often and see how your skills have improved.

[meme456]

@soggyboy

It will probably be released in regular collected volumes later, you’ll have to put it on your wishlist! I think it’s great to have series you aspire to read later, that way you can come back to them every so often and see how your skills have improved.

That’s a great idea! I should do that, thanks!

And I’m wondering how does the collection into volumes happen. Do they get published in magazines by chapters then if there is enough interest they take all the chapters and make them into volumes of manga? Does this happen to all manga or certain genres.