A single manga panel that has circulated online for years as an all-purpose reaction image — usually captioned with the line “I had a strange certainty…” — has turned out to come from an entirely different genre than most people assumed. The source is Jitsu wa Watashi wa (“Actually, I Am”), a romantic comedy by manga artist Eiji Masuda, and its publisher is now making it free to read for a limited time.
On October 25, Championcross, Akita Shoten’s web manga platform (recently relaunched from the former Mangacross), announced that every volume of the series except the final one would be available to read for free for 72 hours. Masuda himself followed up by pointing fans directly to chapter 63, the episode containing the now-famous panel, joking that the scene “really is from this manga.”
Jitsu wa Watashi wa follows a boy who is physically incapable of keeping a secret, paired with a girl who is secretly a vampire trying to hide what she is. The meme panel in question depicts an intensely dramatic, high-stakes moment that, out of context, looks like it belongs in a survival thriller rather than a school rom-com.
The reveal struck a nerve online. Replies to the Championcross and Masuda posts were full of people admitting they had seen the panel shared countless times without ever knowing where it came from, with several saying they had assumed it was from a death-game or battle-royale series. Others said they recognized it instantly as “the most famous scene” in the manga, while longtime readers used the free campaign as an excuse to revisit a series they called one of their favorite romantic comedies, praising its emotional final stretch.
Who is Eiji Masuda?
Eiji Masuda is a Japanese manga artist whose other works include Toumei Ningen no Tsukurikata, Sakura Discord, and Shuukan Shounen Hachi. He is currently serializing Kesa mo Yurarete Masu in Bessatsu Shonen Champion, with its fifth collected volume released on September 17. Jitsu wa Watashi wa remains one of his best-known earlier series, with the chapter 63 panel having taken on a life of its own as a reaction image long after most people forgot, or never knew, its origin.
Author’s Comment
I love this one, because it’s basically the internet’s id in action: a picture gets passed around a million times, everyone nods along like they understand the reference, and nobody actually checks the source. Turns out the ‘this is definitely a death game’ panel is from a vampire will-they-won’t-they rom-com, which honestly tracks — half of Twitter’s most dramatic reaction images are just shoujo manga characters having a feeling. Respect to Championcross for turning a meme into a 72-hour sales funnel; that’s smarter marketing than most ad campaigns I’ve seen this year. And respect to everyone in these replies admitting they’d been using this image wrong for a decade. We’ve all been there.
