Pokemon the Movie: I Choose You! Review

Posted on July 8, 2017 by dreager1

It’s time for a one shot manga that helps get you ready for the latest Pokemon movie. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing that one get dubbed since it’s going to bring back all of the old Pokemon nostalgia. The manga takes the interesting choice of making it a flashback that Alola Ash is having. It would sure be some twist if the movie is just a dream that Ash is having, but fans would certainly not like that. It’s a fun enough story and does what it can with the 20 pages that it was allotted.

Lets start with the story in the current timeline. Ash is still a little too happy and comic relief esque in the new region if you ask me. He doesn’t have a lot of time for his shenanigans, but still manages to get consistently wrecked by the Totem guardian. It seems like these Pokemon are effectively the gym leaders of the region. Still, Pikachu doesn’t go down so easily and manages to take the opponent down in one hit. This is how I picture every fight with Pikachu to go down by the way as he isn’t known as one of the strongest Pokemon of all time for nothing. He’s in a whole other league and has certainly been trained long enough to be ready for this. I’m not sure about the whole Z move thing that the heroes spam nowadays though. The pose isn’t really necessary and seems like it’ll just leave you open during a fight. I also don’t think Pikachu should even need it.

In the flashback, the chapter plays it pretty straight regarding Ash’s origin. He wakes up real late and after struggling to get out of bed finds out that all of the Pokemon have already been taken. Pikachu is still here though so Ash decides to take him, but the Thunder Mouse doesn’t like Pokeballs. Honestly, I can totally understand the sentiment since it takes away your freedom. Ash allows this since he doesn’t have much of a choice and picks a fight with a Spearow by accident. Ash gets wrecked again, but fortunately Pikachu saves him just like in the modern day timeline. Pikachu was always the MVP of the Pokemon anime and it’s good to be reminded of this. Where would we be now without the little guy eh? It’s a fun story and while they didn’t change anything, it’s been a while since I’ve seen this so that’s cool. I definitely wouldn’t mind a faithful manga adaption of the anime that follows Ash and pals. That would have a lot of potential.

The art is all right. You can tell that this is a tie in as it isn’t anything all that special or detailed. The characters are easily recognizable and the art is simple which helps with the fights. That’s about all that I can say for it though. It just doesn’t feel like there was a whole lot of effort behind it. I have a feeling that this chapter was churned out really quick to make it in time fr the movie. That’s not necessarily a bad thing and I’m glad that we have it, but I always feel like they should at least make this into a full volume as opposed to just one chapter.

Overall, If you’re a big Pokemon fan then you should check this out. It’s a good way to get you hyped for the movie. It’s essentially your standard Pokemon story so it’s not going to change your world or anything, but just seeing the familiar faces and environment again should be enough. I’m ready for a big Pokemon manga as the Adventure chapters only come out once in a while and most of the other titles are either finished or in the same boat. I want a weekly Pokemon manga that I can look forward to every week. Considering how popular the franchise is, I’m surprised that we don’t have one yet. Ah well, maybe one day.

Overall 7/10

Toriko Review

Posted on June 30, 2017 by dreager1

It’s time to look at one of the more recent Shonen Jump titles. Toriko got pretty big in its prime and arguably became known as one of Shonen Jump’s top 3 ongoing titles. It even got to play a role in a crossover episode featuring Luffy and Goku as well. The series has a fairly unique premise and I like the focus on food. That being said, the premise is also what ends up hurting it quite a lot as there is a considerable amount of animal violence and the series took a long while to actually get any traction going. I wouldn’t call this one a success although it had one of the best Shonen Jump climaxes of all time. At least it ended with a bang!

The story follows Toriko, a legendary Gourmet hunter. He is known as one of the very best and has taken down just about every animal out there. Gourmet Hunters hunt down food but a lot of that food comes from animals of course. Alternately, they find things like rare honey in volcanoes and underwater foods. It’s a rough job. Komatsu is a local cook and he wants to be the greatest cook in the world. When Toriko offers to take him around as a cooking partner, Komatsu leaps at the chance. The two of them go on many adventures and bond by the end. They’ll have to deal with significant gourmet threats though like Midora, Aliens, and Starjun. Whatever happens though, they’re ready for it!

Lets get this out of the way. One of the huge problems with Toriko is the nonstop action violence. It’s a series about hunting animals after all so you can bet that the series does this constantly. A positive score was out of the question right away from this, but at least the series played its cards right to at least get itself a spot at the middle of the rankings. That will have to do I suppose. The animal stuff is such a downer though.

It’s a shame because the series ends on such a high note. The last arc is essentially just nonstop fights involving all of the big characters of the series. The 8 Kings, Midora, Toriko, Starjun, Jiro, The Nitro, etc. Everyone gets a piece of the pie and here is where the 40-50 volumes of hyping up the characters all paid off. It was everything that I could want in a climax and it could possibly be the best one for a Shonen. It may not have necessarily been my favorite cast, but it was just so ambitious and it was almost half a year of nonstop epicness. The main series that could rival this one would be Reborn! as that also had a really epic climax.

Unlike Reborn! Toriko wasn’t consistent up until that part though. A lot of the arcs actually weren’t that great. We had a whole arc about trying to steal someone’s balls after all. I mean that literally by the way and the series reveled in weird plots like that. The humor can also be gross as part of the plot was that they had to…well I’m not even going to go there. Just remember that the hunters will eat anything. One of the big plot points of the series is that eating rare foods makes the main characters stronger. Their hair sticks up and they get on edge while yelling a lot. These people take their food seriously and practically explode every time as we’ll have whole pages of them barely being able to stay conscious from the pure joy of it all. It’s all so extreme that you have to wonder how they’d react to a good slice of pizza. The main characters also have demons inside of them which like food and take control sometimes. Toriko’s even turn real at times and show up to help. It’s fairly meta, but the author never actually finishes this plot up. I guess it’s up to the fans to pick up the pieces.

The Century Soup arc was probably the first time where the villains finally popped up and it felt like a plot was brewing. That one was handled well. I also enjoyed the 4 vs 4 Beasts arc as Toriko and friends fought some giant monsters that were actually all part of the same monster. Of course, the stronger heroes could have ended those arc in an instant if they wanted too, but I suppose they just wanted to see how Toriko would handle it.

By the end of the series, I like how the author tried to cram in as many feats as possible. I feel like he was making it as exaggerated as possible on purpose just to try and show up the other titles. Characters surviving millions of years going by in an instant, breaking planets and going massively FTL? These feats basically start to throw them ahead of DBZ with ease, but it all feels too easy. It also invites a lot of plot hax by the end though with the inclusion of Neo who can eat anything and Food Luck.

Food Luck is basically a plot button that allows any character to survive any situation because they were destined too. Food Luck can nullify attacks and nullify attacks which makes it very handy to use and it has no limits. It can run out, but that just depends on how lucky you are. I could have done without this part to be honest.

The series is pretty good about not having much fanservice. It’s pretty much nonexistent for the most part. Even when we get some tired tropes like Toriko getting turned into a girl, it’s not played up too much. This is good since the series already has more than enough problems at its plate (See what I did there?) without adding any more. Take away the animal violence and this would be an easy 8. Take away a lot of the gross humor and it could jump up to a 9. It has enough positives and epic scenes to pull it off, but to be a 9 you certainly can’t have a bunch of negatives either.

Lets talk about the characters. There are quite a lot of important ones so this section is going to be very long. Toriko is the main character and he’s a fairly good one although he can be annoying at times. It’s a little hard to hold the fact that he’s a hunter against him and he makes sure to eat whatever he hunts….but it does make it hard to like the guy. He also prioritizes eating over everything which can be extreme. At one point the world is literally being destroyed around him, but he doesn’t care since he’s going to have a feast. He takes the most annoying traits from Goku and Luffy and places them together. Granted, he does have a lot of hype moments as well and can be serious when necessary. He’s the kind of charismatic guy that would be easy to be friends with, but would be a lot harder to be with long term. He does put everyone in danger constantly. Going on a journey with him like Komatsu did for several years would be way too stressful. As it stands, he’s not the best main character. He’s good enough where he doesn’t hold the series back, but just isn’t downright great. By the way, Toriko’s powers are effectively that he’s really strong. He can use his muscles for incredible punches and even turns them into projectiles. It’s nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.

Komatsu is the main sidekick and unfortunately I can’t really say that he is a likable character. He is very annoying at all times. He can’t fight, but he has a lot of food luck so he can survive just about anything. His knife is so sharp that it can cut foods so well that they are ready centuries ahead of when they’re supposed too. He gets a lot of hype for sure, but it’s like having Usopp as a main character. It just doesn’t work and to be honest, I prefer Usopp. I dunno, Komatsu isn’t very funny and he’s certainly not all that useful. It’s good that Toriko and friends have a cook of course, but they’re cool with eating things raw so they probably would have survived anyway. I was actually waiting for Komatsu to get a super form or something, but it never happened. Ah well, that’s the way it goes I suppose.

Sunny is another one of the 4 Kings along with Toriko. His hair is his special ability as it can turn into a fairly unbreakable barrier or be used as a very versatile attack. His hairs can move at incredible speeds after all so they are difficult to properly evade or block. Add to that the fact that he has monster strength and speed like every other character and you have a tough contender. I’d consider him to be the 2nd most dangerous member in the group. He’s a decent character. His gimmick about not liking ugly things and avoiding them isn’t half bad. It’s one that I can get behind at any rate and I wouldn’t say that it’s overplayed.

Zebra gets a lot of hype and is supposed to be the strongest of the 4 Kings. I dunno, for some reason I just couldn’t buy into it. It was hard to ever really consider Zebra as a threat either since Toriko always appeared to be even stronger than him. His sound abilities are nice though as Zebra can make barriers with them or let his voice travel across large areas to help others out. It has a lot of versatile applications to the ability to be sure. He’s not a bad character, but he just ends up lagging behind the others.

Coco is the final member and he is arguably the weakest. He makes up for this with his useful poison abilities that get around the whole strength angle. After all, it doesn’t matter how strong or weak you are against him. If you’re in range of his poison you’ll be dropping dead very quickly. It’s a very handy ability and it surprisingly continues to work even towards the end of the series. Naturally it can’t do anything against the 8 Beasts or any of the final bosses, but it serves Coco well in just about all of his fights. He’s a nice enough guy.

Rin is the main heroine, but she surprisingly doesn’t appear much at all. You know that she is the main heroine based on the ending and she is always going after Toriko, but she rarely ever contributes to the plot. I don’t even know why the author added her at all. Maybe just to have some kind of romance just to tick off the box. Regardless she has to be one of the most bland heroines out there and I was not a fan.

Ichiryu was a great character and ended up being one of the best in the series. He’s also one of the strongest characters without a doubt as he was able to hold his own against opponents like Midora without even using his spirit animal. In this universe that’s essentially like going into a battle without any weapons or special abilities. His physical abilities and stats were insanely off the charts. His Minority World ability is what makes him even more dangerous as it reverses anything. This allows him to fly by reversing gravity and he can make a full recovery from any injury by reversing it. Moreover, he can reverse the injury over to his opponent and this ability has absolutely no limits. Ichiryu can reverse anything, life, a battle’s outcome, etc. He only ends up losing because he fights someone who also has Minority World so it’s a battle of who can reverse at the last possible instant. The series got pretty high tier for sure and again it’s worth mentioning that Ichiryu fought without his monster the whole time and never ended up getting serious. He’s a pretty stand up guy even if he didn’t take the stakes seriously enough.

Starjun is another one of the big villains of the series. Gradually he becomes more of a rival though and he works as one a lot better than Zebra. He is actually a threat for a while. Naturally he starts to get surpassed once he stops being a full villain, but that always seems to happen. His flame abilities are good and beyond that his physical abilities are on par with Toriko. He’s a pretty solid character and is probably the second best villain. I’m glad he got to have a final with of his own as many of the supporting characters weren’t so lucky. Starjun earned his.

Grinpatch is a bloodsucking villain who is pretty strong. One good hit from his straw and you’ll be missing a fatal amount of blood. It’s a very unique weapon since I can’t think of anyone else who uses straws. That being said, it’s a little tough to take the power seriously. Grinpatch is super tough so underestimate him at your own peril, but he wasn’t exactly my favorite villain. Especially since his ability was usually used for animal violence scenes.

Tommyrod is one of the first big villains to show up in Toriko. He attacks using a lot of bugs and sort of is a bug as well. It made for a very intense fight between him and Toriko and he later fought Sunny as well I believe. I don’t care much for his powers since using insects means that some will always be injured in the process. His personality is fine though and he’s an interesting villain. He’s certainly lethal and quite memorable. I also liked his design and the super forms that came with him. The series was always particularly strong in the villains department.

The Nitro started off as a one time villain monster, but gradually we learned of a secret Illuminati version of them. There are 8 and they essentially want to roast the planet. Given the heavy influence on food in this series it was definitely a fitting plan. Most of them never ended up getting much in the way of personality and it’s one of those cases where the anime would need to flesh them out a bit more. That being said, they made for really good villains. I liked the designs and these guys were immensely powerful. It was just their bad luck that they had to go up against Jiro. They may have had a good shot against Toriko, fighting all 8 of them probably would have been too much for him.

Midora is my favorite character in the whole series. He’s just awesome and the character kept on getting cooler and cooler as the series went on. He’s one of the big villains, but he never really gets to fight Toriko. That part was interesting as the two just don’t cross paths much. He ends up holding a larger group against the Nitro monsters and turns his attention to them. He definitely has the saddest origin story from the cast. While he is a villain, he’s not being evil just to get a good meal like Acacia or doing it just to rile everyone up like Joie. It’s all about getting people to appreciate good food and if they won’t do so willingly, he’ll have to destroy them. His ability is also very similar to Bass.exe’s which is an extra bonus. He can copy any ability after seeing it or being hit by it. He is virtually invincible and really cannot be defeated. Of course nothing is absolute in a series like Toriko. Midora just stole the show and it’s amazing how much character development he got. You could argue that he was the main cast at the end of the series instead of Toriko. He got fight after fight after fight.

Chiyo was one of the big villains in Toriko before the final arcs. She may be an old lady, but she can certainly fight. She had an epic battle with Setsuno and she is certainly very aggressive. Her fighting style reovlves around continuous attacks and simply overpowering her opponents. She’s incredibly powerful and a very cool enemy. Setsuno is essentially her heroic counterpart. The two of them are extremely similar, but Setsuno has the slight edge in combat. Who would have thought that two old ladies would give us such amazing fights. A third old timer is Chin Chinchin who can’t quite compete with the other two, but he never goes down without a fight. His battle with Chiyo was definitely very emotional even if you probably could guess the outcome from the beginning.

Froese didn’t get to appear much as she died prior to the series beginning, but her legacy plays a huge role throughout the series. Her death was a sad one and it set quite a few characters off on their paths. She believed that once everyone had a good meal, all war and strife would end. The problem is that some didn’t appreciate her cooking and Midora made it his mission to strike them all down. Her body wouldn’t be able to rest either as she ended up being possessed by Joie. Joie is one of the major villains in the series and she is incredibly powerful. She has a significant amount of food luck and also has a jar that can capture virtually any opponent. She is skilled at using mind games to aid her position as well. Her design was good and she always had a lot of confidence. Joie is definitely a fun villain and is certainly one of the most sinister ones in the whole series. Of course, provoking the characters who can ruin planets and solar systems with ease probably wasn’t a good idea in the end.

Tengu Brunch isn’t a major character, but he got a surprising amount of screen time at the end so I figured he was worth mentioning. He has some thunder abilities. He never really gets to use them in combat, but it’s still useful I guess. I dunno why this character was created to be honest. Takimaru is a nice character. He’s a young Gourmet Knight who does his best to gain more experience and become a useful part of the organization. He’s pretty genuine and also knows how to fight. The guy never became one of my favorite characters or anything, but I didn’t mind him.

Match was a gangster of sorts and he keeps to himself. He really just cares about protecting his friends and colleagues and isn’t the kind of guy who goes out of his way to save the world. I actually liked him a lot, but I can see why he was written out of the series by the end. There just wasn’t any way he could compete with all of these ultra powerful characters who kept popping up by the end. It’s just something that inevitably happens after a while when you’re only human. Still, he did a good job while his power level was still high enough to make a difference.

Melk is very skilled at repairing weapons. She gets a fairly small role, but was influential in helping Komatsu. We also got to see Melk The First who is incredibly strong, but not too smart and got lost for a very long time. The fact that he can also whisper is a little strange. The two were fun characters though so it would have been nice if they could have actually gotten to fight a little. I suppose it just wasn’t to be this time though, but the fact that they were memorable already puts them above a lot of other characters.

Teppei was one of the stronger heroes until he got brainwashed. Then he attempted to destroy Komatsu and invited Toriko’s wrath. His abilities are quite impressive as he can stun characters with a single hit and even held his own against Toriko. I didn’t care for a certain twist he got about the whole mind control thing though. Perhaps it would make some more sense next time I read it, but the plan seemed extremely risky and not all that smart. He made for a much better villain than a hero I’ll admit though. He was a good threat.

Lets talk about the 8 Kings. These are the animals who rule the world at the moment and their abilities are incredibly overpowered. They get so much hype that they don’t get a serious fight until the very end of the series. Whenever Toriko challenges one, he typically loses in one hit. It’s definitely pretty humbling for him. The Monkey King gets the largest role from all of the Kings as he gets a whole arc to himself. He can throw rocks around the planet in a second and has a lot of crazy physical feats like that. He doesn’t need any special abilities because of this as he overwhelms all opponents with his pure power. He even has a true form which makes him even stronger.

The Horse King is another big one and her power is so great that she developed a special ability out of it. Just by breathing she can generate a whole ecosystem. If she breaths in, then all the oxygen is sucked out of the area and everyone dies in an instant. By breathing out she can rip people in half as she even ripped Toriko in two and can blow the planet up as well. It’s fun how comically overpowered these guys are. There’s also the Dragon King who can harness extra dimensions into one energy blast which can destroy multiple planets in a single shot and still have enough momentum to keep on going. The blast is instantaneous so it is virtually impossible to dodge. The Wolf King can uses its senses to find out everything about you from it and can also mess with your soul. Aside from that its strength and speed are uncanny as per usual.

The Bird King can use shadows to trap you in them next to a fake sun so you boil to death. Beyond that it is also crazy strong. The Snake King is so large that it covers the entire planet yet it is also faster than the speed of light. It can destroy you before your mind knows it is destroyed. This is one of the more overpowered opponents once again. The Deer King may be the strongest of the 8 Kings. It can activate a back channel when its opponent is near. It’s larger than an island so the range is pretty good. It can then speed time up so that millions of years pass by every second for its opponent which means that unless you are totally immortal you’ll die instantly. Even if you are immortal you’ll be weakened from not having eaten or drank anything in that time. It is immune to its effect of course and will attack in the meantime. Finally, we have the Whale King. This one is supposed to be the strongest and I suppose it does have a good ability. Anything near it dies instantly. It’s an automatic ability and one that has no counter. Of course, the multi planet buster laser from the dragon king was able to take him on so I guess striking from afar is your best bet. Still, get anywhere near the huge Moon sized whale and you’re doomed!

Acacia is essentially the final boss of the series and he gets a lot of hype. He taught Jiro, Midora, Ichiryu, and the others after all. One common theme of the series is that the older you are the stronger you’ll be. Toriko and friends are actually quite young so they start the series at the bottom. Then you have guys like Setsuno and Chinchin and higher up are Ichiryu, Jiro, and Midora. Then at the top is Acacia. The series goes out of its way to make the guy as unlikable as possible as he’s extremely mean and gives negative twist after twist. He definitely got a lot of hate at that point and it’s hard to be a fan of this guy. He’s definitely a very powerful figure and has some great battles, but I can’t really say that I like the guy. There were a ton of twists back and forth, but ultimately he was just a little too far gone for me. He had some cool super forms though.

Neo is the monster inside of Acacia and his whole purpose is to eat. His very existence is only there to consume things. Think Galactus but on a larger scale. He plans to eat all of reality and gets stronger with each thing that he eats. He is virtually unstoppable and takes on an onslaught of attacks from the 8 Kings. Neo isn’t made to be sympathetic or anything which is certainly good since I wouldn’t be able to buy it. Sadly his scenes almost always involve animal violence. I would have preferred for Acacia to have just been the main villain so we wouldn’t need Neo, but the latter ended up being the real threat. It also involves the Nitro’s real mission that also doesn’t stop them from being villains. Murder billions to save trillions. I dunno, at that point you’re still murdering so many people that it becomes moot.

Jiro is one of the strongest characters of the series and a good ally to have. From the big 3 he is my least favorite, but that’s more of a compliment to Ichiryu and Midora then it is a slight against him. Jiro gets a lot of hype and delivers on it with his great fight against the Nitro. He also puts up a good fight against Acacia and Neo. His “knocking” ability is essentially like Ki in DBZ or Haki in One Piece. He can punch something which “knocks” it out of existence or knocks it into place. It effectively paralyzes opponents and is almost impossible to recover from. His true form is also very intense.

Zongeh is the comic relief character of the series, but he didn’t work very well. King from One Punch Man and Hercule from DBZ are two examples of characters who actually served their roles quite nicely. The problem with Zongeh is that he is never funny and also never contributes to the plot. The other two characters actually have their moments and help out when possible. This guy’s just wasting pages whenever he appears and I don’t think the author used him very well.

Terry, Kiss, Quinn are monsters that the main characters use. Terry is the only one who ever gets personality though. Toriko bonds with him near the beginning of the series and Terry really grows by the end and got to be very powerful. I like him a lot and he’s definitely one of the best characters in the series, but I was also sad to see him since the villains naturally go after him quite a bit. Terry is destined to grow up as one of the strongest animals so that is definitely nice, but I’m glad we didn’t get to have too many fights with him. That would have been a little brutal to watch. Terry really is awesome though and I have to say that the name is actually amazing.

I do enjoy Toriko’s art. It feels like Dragon Ball Z a lot of the time. The fights are really intense and the character designs are simple, but effective. It’s always easy to understand everything on the page in an instant and that’s a real credit to the series. I’d consider the art to be very high tier and it helped make the climax that much more exciting. It affects the whole series.

I should warn you that the manga can be incredibly violent though. Throughout the series it is a lot more intense than the average Shonen and gets to Hunter X Hunter levels with people getting ripped apart constantly. The characters are also cannibals for the most part so the final battles involve eating each other. Especially since Neo is the big villain and that’s his whole thing. He eats quite a few characters by the time it’s all over. Tommyrod’s fight with Toriko is certainly brutal and basically any fight with Midora. After all, one of Midora’s big attacks is that he stabs you repeatedly with his tongue. This can also lead to some rather gross characters like Neo. He gets more and more deranged as he fights and just looks like a lot of bumps. While the characters are always bleeding and being filled with holes, the simplistic style of the manga helps it not get too graphic. It’s definitely a full step over something like Bleach, but I definitely wouldn’t say we’re at the point of something like Berserk yet. The anime did a real good job of toning this down considerably while still keeping the fights epic so that’s another alternative for you. If they did the same for the animal violence then I have a feeling I’ll certainly like that version more. Of course, that’d be a review for another day if I ever start that show. So just bear this in mind, the series is pretty intense and that helps it complete its image as a retro Shonen. From the character developments to the fight scenes, it’s like a return to the more brutal days of Shonen Jump.

Overall, Toriko was a fun manga although it ended up shooting itself in the foot far too often. In the end, a manga about hunting animals is never going to go very far. They should have played up the natural ingredients part and have the heroes just go after foods like Jello and such. That would have been a lot safer. The series inevitably started going after animals less as the plot began and humanoids appeared anyway. The series should have just accelerated the early stuff. After all, when the series got intense, boy did it go all the way. It’s one of the most hype titles I have ever read. It’s really exhilarating. Despite that, I can’t really recommend it all that much. You’ll be better off with just about any other Shonen Jump title. This one’s just pretty weak and as a whole it wasn’t constructed as well as most of the others. I do appreciate the author’s attention to detail though and how he planned everything out. It was very ambitious and there were certainly a lot of concepts thrown around. Ultimately, it just couldn’t pull enough of them off.

Overall 5/10

Ultimo Review

Posted on June 29, 2017 by dreager1

Ultimo is one of those manga titles where the concept should write itself. Giant robots running around fighting each other should be pretty awesome. Add in a cosmic threat and you’re set. Unfortunately, the manga gets unnecessarily complex, throws in time travel which really hurts the story and just goes in a lot of odd directions. As a result, it wasted a bunch of time so then when it was effectively cancelled it had to rush everything to the end. The ending is very original and will remind you a lot of Madoka Rebellion, but it’s not exactly the ending that many of us were hoping for. It’s just a very odd story.

Yamato is a guy who is fairly down on his luck. He is always caught in awkward situations by his friends and he can’t work up the nerve to talk to Sayama…especially after these incidents. One day he notices a robotic kid called Ultimo or Ulti for short. Ultimo seems to be an antique, but he randomly wakes up one day and takes on a giant robot named Vice in the middle of the street. Both of them are severely damaged, but then Yamato finds out that he is Ultimo’s master. There is apparently a war going on between Doji (That’s the official robot name) of good and evil. I believe there are 12 total with 6 on each side. A mysterious being named Dustan created these Doji so he could see once and for all which side will ultimately emerge victorious. Yamato doesn’t totally understand all of this, but he can’t let the Earth be destroyed so along with Ultimo he gets to work on stopping these guys.

That plot actually isn’t half bad. The first few volumes were pretty good as well as Yamato gradually meets his allies and enemies. The fights are good and I thought the series would be fun. Then the Rune plot happens which I’ll delve into later. Then the low point of the series happened…the time travel. Time travel is typically a really good thing, but this one completely wrecked it. Yamato gets taken to early Japan where we find out he was a Yakuza or something. Every character is doomed to infinite reincarnation by Dunstan and the heroes and villains were deadlocked there. Not only is this a complete waste of time that doesn’t go anywhere, but it is immensely boring.

Yamato finally makes it back to the present, but he arrived too soon so we have to relive a few fights and action scenes again. They’re a little different of course, but not enough so that it really matters. Also, Yamato has control over time so he can just rewind it whenever something happens that he doesn’t like. As a result, it was a little hard to get interested in the plot. That and the fact that the rest of the cast weren’t too interesting despite their overpowered abilities.

Lets talk about the characters. Yamato is the lead and I suppose he isn’t too bad. He’s not quite as tough as you’d imagine despite his punkish design, but he does his best. He learns the abilities after a little while and is then able to fight with the best of them. From there on he did good and at least he always shut Rune down. He does have a tendency to get kidnapped and placed into awkward positions though. Ultimo is a better character even if he can be a little confusing. He is meant to be the ultimate hero, but is actually the shadiest of them all. He lets rage consume him quite a lot and acts like Optimus Prime in the Michael Bay movies. He just wants to completely eradicate all evil and is consumed by this desire. He starts to turn evil during the middle of the series although Yamato has a talk with him about that. He can be real intense, but that’s part of why I like Ultimo. He’s a cool hero and I like the confidence that he has. He may not be too strong without an operator, but shows that he still has a nice degree of skill. The series did a good job of showing why he deserves to be the lead.

K is the human operator of Vice, the ultimate villain counterpart to Ultimo. Unfortunately, he is a really bad character. He just likes eating instant ramen and is always being ordered around by Vice. He’s a total comic relief character, but is also pure evil. It’s a really weird combo and I’m not totally sure what they were going for with his character. Either way, I don’t think it really worked. I did like Vice though. He had a really good design and at times he reminded me of Bass. He’s naturally not as cool as the latter, but he is definitely in my top 3 favorite characters of the series. He super forms are all really good and he was a very persistent enemy. Vice just kept getting back up over and over again for as many times as needed. He was one guy that would never give up and also didn’t like being a pawn which was a good motivation for trying to go after Dunstan. Too bad that guy was just a little too strong.

Rune is one of the characters that makes the series a little dicey. After Yamato got to experience his original self along with everyone else since they are endlessly reincarnated, Rune also kept her memories. The problem for her is that she was reincarnated into a male body this time, but still wants Yamato to herself. So her female soul is literally trapped in a male body. I don’t think we needed this plot and I know that I definitely didn’t want it included. It gets a lot of screen time and creates some awkward situations that have nothing to do with the plot. I never cared for Rune as a hero, but she isn’t much better as a villain either. This is Jealousy

Dunstan is the big villain of the series but he is comically overpowered. He is made to look just like Stan Lee which is pretty interesting since the guy helped to write this series. He has the powers of all 12 Doji and can use them all at once. The guy can alter time as a result and his physical stats are off the charts. The main cast can’t do anything against him even if they all team up. It’s a rather odd twist to the whole thing since that means their goal of stopping him is unattainable from the start. Either they’ll have to win him over to their side which is possible since he claims to be impartial, but that would also mean that he wouldn’t pay for his crimes. It is a direct result of Dunstan’s actions that a ton of people died after all. Alternately, they can fight him, but they’re doomed. Despite the fact that Dunstan is probably too strong, he makes for a pretty fun villain. He rarely ever gets to appear, but he seems like a nice enough guy. That’s probably meant to help us not look at him in a poor light which doesn’t work, but I’m at least glad that he is a likable villain.

Musashi is a space cop who travels time. He sounds a lot cooler than he actually is. Despite running through time, he doesn’t really seem to have a clear idea of what to do and he’s also not that tough. He looks good during his initial appearance, but fades into the background after that. We did see a brief glimpse of the future I believe which was fun, but the series could have done more with him. However, like the rest of the humans, he was ditched by the end. His Doji Sophia is pretty useful since she can mess with the 5 senses and even affect the 6th one. It’s hard to hit anything when she’s around since she’ll have you seeing double or everything in reverse. It’s a great ability to have for sure but since every Doji has great abilities it doesn’t necessarily mean that she is the best.

Sayama is the main heroine and it’s definitely hard to get a read on her. She acts nice enough at first but seems less innocent and oblivious than most. She has a pretty big twist at the end and gets some good fight scenes. Her motivations may not make a lot of sense at times, but she seemed like a reasonable character. The twist actually works pretty well if you ask me and makes her more of a deep character, she’s no longer just here for the school scenes.

I keep mentioning how strong the Doji are so lets quickly talk about their abilities. Here are the hero abilities. First off you already know Ultimos. He has complete control of time. This allows him to weave in and out to the past and future to dodge attacks. Unlike other series this does not create alternate dimensions so it can be spammed as much as you like. Unfortunately, Yamato is typically distracted and rarely uses it. When he does, Ultimo is unbeatable which is why he commands the hero group. Service is also a powerful hero. She can manipulate a Doji’s power which includes the time stop. She can simply nullify its abilities along with any other. In a sense, she could be the ultimate fighter as long as she can defeat the enemy. Some of the villains are still more powerful than her even without their abilities after all. Regula’s ability is complete memory manipulation. It can erase all of your memories in an instant and replace them with others. Since he is a hero he doesn’t do this, but you can see how it would be useful in a fight. If your opponent forgets how to fight and thinks you are now an ally, then the match is already won. There are some counters to this though like the emotion Doji as a person can fight with their emotions rather than memories. Pardonner is a healer that can heal any injury in an instant. It can also place illusions within the soul of your mind so that it fools all 5 senses. He’s a great support fighter as he can keep healing all of his allies at any time. Slow has the classic Fate Alteration ability. She can simply alter fate so that an attack which landed actually missed. Altering fate has no real limits, but it takes up a lot of energy so Slow can’t afford to have a long drawn out battle. It’s really hard to counter this, but if you keep attacking without letting up, Slow can run out of energy. Of course, your fate could be to miss and stab yourself by mistake. Finally we have Goge. He manipulates emotions to prevent you from battling or to make you erratic. It’s very similar to the memory manipulation so getting hit by both at the same time would be intense. It’s another very valuable ability to have.

Okay, those were the heroes. Did you memorize all of the abilities? They’re all extremely great and overpowered so the villains have to have really good powers to match. Fortunately they do so lets dive right into them. Vice is the leader so he’s got some good powers. He can steal and copy an opponent Doji ability so he can potentially gather any. He has incredible speed and power and can fire omnidirectional spikes that hit in all directions and can also block any attack. His overall ability is called incompetence which is absolute destruction, but the ability is rather vague and even the wiki doesn’t seem to totally know what it means. Taking it at face value, maybe his opponents will be unable to use their full strength since they’ll be incompetent. Desir is another ability nullification type who can shut down all abilities in decently sized radius. This includes allies though and Ultimo’s time travel seems to be immune. It doesn’t seem as useful as the hero version. Edile has super strength. It’s actually pretty laughable next to everyone else since all Doji have a measure of super strength. Lets move on. Avaro can duplicate himself. He claims that he can fill the whole planet with copies of himself but take that claim lightly. It’s not a bad ability, but not great either. Paresse has a lot of spikes to stab people with. It’s another really weak villain. Wait…the villains must have some good members right? Rage has electrical abilities and was even able to overwhelm Ultimo in a fight. It may not sound very impressive on its own, but I suppose manipulating electricity always has a lot of uses. He can move with that level of speed after all and since the Doji are all robots in a sense, his attacks can be super effective. Jealousy can read the hearts of his opponents. This allows him to know what they will do next with 100% accuracy. This is actually a very good power since it is effectively knowing the future and unlike the mind reading strategy where a character can fight without thinking, your heart always knows what’s up. Finally, Orgullo has fire abilities. Eh…that’s not too impressive although I like fire.

After writing all of those powers down I think it’s safe to say that the heroes should have a massive advantage. However, they end up dying most of the time so Yamato has to retry the battle. It’s like a video game in that sense. The villains surprisingly have better teamwork at times and it is easier to power up their Doji. That’s because it’s easy to be evil while it’s hard to be good. That’s actually a pretty interesting concept that they decided to tackle and it was actually handled relatively well.

The whole series has a lot of discussion on good vs evil. The characters try to blur the lines between these two and even Yamato starts to be unsure of whether or not there is really a good side. He starts to think that everyone is part good and part evil which is probably the wrong conclusion to have. It’s hard for anyone to switch sides for this reason. The heroes are still trying to destroy the villains after all rather than taking them hostage and they’re doing it all effectively because Dunstan is forcing them into this situation. It’s definitely pretty interesting and the fact that Ultimo keeps acting evil doesn’t help matters. I believe more in the rationale that there is a clear line between good and evil and that line isn’t hard to see. I believe that’s a superhero quote that I saw in a recent article, possibly by Destroyer14 but I can’t remember which.

Now the ending is certainly one that we should talk about. There are some spoilers….to put it lightly, in this paragraph so skip now if you don’t want to see. Are you out? Here we go! In the end, Dunstan wins. Yamato got all of the heroes and villains to unite, but Dunstan just one shotted them all and laughed a bit. He then rewinded time so everyone was still alive and decided to try it in a different setting. He’s going to continue the games, but this time with everyone being friends and we’ll see how it turns out. Yamato can finally hang out with Sayama so he doesn’t seem to care. It’s very similar to Madoka Rebellion where Homura won in the end and everyone is content to live in her world. The difference being that most of them didn’t know about it there. Yamato certainly realizes it here and I believe Sayama does as well. It’s possible that the others did have their memories wiped though. It’s just a very odd and somewhat depressing ending based on how you look at it. Dunstan showed that his power is leagues above the rest of the cast so they never even had a prayer of beating him. The fact that the character looks exactly like Stan Lee is also interesting. He effectively wrote himself into the series as the strongest being ever. Stay humble.

The manga can get a little crazy, but one thing it is good at is bringing in a lot of nonstop action. You can make a lot of comparisons to the Bayformers movies, but this one is certainly better than those. The plot just takes a backburner at times as we get fight after fight and then the plot is given through exposition as opposed to actually telling us about it. Honestly without the time travel nonsense which basically introduced the Rune plot (Since she wouldn’t have regained her memories without them) this series could have actually been real good. It’s futile to look at hypotheticals like that, but interesting to think about nonetheless.

The fact that each of the characters are so powerful and made to be unbeatable also helps make the series a little more entertaining. I still think the heroes should win and having time control is way too overpowered for Yamato, but that helps us bring in the plot hax. Also, the power levels matter a little more since virtually anyone can beat another in one hit. It just depends on who strikes first. Yamato limiting his own power reminds me of Angelic Layer which I’ll talk more about when I get to that review. I suppose it would be too easy otherwise though as Yamato could just stop time and finish everyone off.

Each Ultimo was already strong so the introduction of the God Ultimo forms and then their second modes was cool as well. They just kept on getting stronger and stronger to the point of no return. Again, it’s a shame that parts of the manga were so weak like the characters (I basically liked all of the Doji, but none of the humans were particularly good. If I had to pick a favorite human it would probably be Musashi or Yamato, but that’s not saying much) and the time travel since otherwise parts of it felt like Hunter X Hunter level writing. There was a lot of strategy during the fights to counter the abilities and a lot of potential for directions which the series could go in. Since it was a full war of 7 vs 7 and players could keep on changing sides there were just so many interesting variables.

I’m glad that the pre arc phase ended early on though. As I mentioned, most of the human characters aren’t so good. There are a bunch of them running around, but most are either unlikable, bland, or forgettable. The last two are similar I suppose. The school friends never actually contributed anything and the heroic Doji owners made it hard to root for them at times. One thing I like is how everyone is bloated with self importance as they never give Yamato straight answers, but while amusing, that doesn’t help make them likable. The villains aren’t either although they’re not supposed to be. As I mentioned, you’re really reading this for the action and feats more than anything else.

The art is really good for the most part. The characters look good and I like the designs of the Doji. Their ultimate modes look quite good as well and you can tell that the artist has a lot of experience. What does bring the art down a bit though is the fact that it gets a little too chaotic during the fight scenes. Each page gets very cluttered to the point where it is hard to follow the fight scenes. You will need to spend a long time with some panels to actually see anything. One positive is that each volume takes a lot longer, but I feel like the fights could have been scaled better. I think the author had a problem with showing the scale of the fights while still making them small enough to fit in the actual scene. The trick to that is messing with the background, but I am sure it is difficult. In the end this lowered the art’s ranking overall, but most scenes still look good.

Overall, It really has been a long time since I read the series. I read volume one almost a decade ago and all of the volumes were separated by very long waits. It took ages to finally read the final volume so you can imagine that my recollection on the early parts is rather iffy. It’s definitely better to read something like this in a marathon batch like with Pandora Hearts. I remember not enjoying it all that much more than I remember why I didn’t enjoy it much. That’s the tricky part since other parts of my memory seem to remember the series being rather dynamic and interesting. I think it’s probably because the concept was cooler than the execution so I still think about what it could have been. For all I know there could be animal violence scenes that I’m forgetting or a bunch of hype moments that I can’t remember. It’s a tricky case and I may re read it someday, but certainly not in the near future. What I can say is that if you’re looking for a mecha series with fighters who are comically overpowered then this may be the title for you. It gets chaotic, but that helps it feel like a summer blockbuster. On the other hand, most action titles just handle all aspects of themselves better than this one does. You’d be better off reading DBZ, Kenshin, Black Cat, or any of those other titles. I’d slightly recommend this one and the positives are a little better than the negatives, at least as far as I can recall. It’s certainly nostalgic looking at this title since it’s been such a long time, too bad it never got an anime. At the very least I’m sure the visuals would have been really cool.

Overall 6/10

Psyren Review

Posted on June 17, 2017 by dreager1

It’s time for a pretty fun manga that went under the radar and had to hurry to a rushed conclusion. It’s a shame, but I can see how people never gave it a chance. Personally, I always thought it was a manga about competitive hip hop dancing. I don’t know why, but it just looked like one thanks to a screencap on Mangastream. I didn’t learn better until I got to read a few volumes from the library. It’s a series that takes a few different twists compared to your average Shonen and the series was very ambitious. Unfortunately, it just couldn’t last long enough to unleash its full potential.

The main character is Ageha and he’s your average Bully hunter for hire. He takes out the bullies as long as you can pay him. One day he notices Anamiya getting bullied by a few other girls and saves her wallet. She dashes off, but not before asking him for help. The next day she goes missing and the town goes on full alert. Ageha decides to call the number of a mysterious card that he received and solves its puzzle so he can get some answers. The next thing he knows, he is whisked away to a desolate world that is overrun by monsters. Anamiya is here, but with a completely different personality as she is very cold and antagonistic to the rest of the characters. Still, she needs Ageha to help her clear the game. If you die in the game you die in real life!

There are a few rules. One: They just have to live through it. Two: Clear the daily missions. Three: Tell nobody. As long as they follow those 3 rules, they will be allowed to leave the game in peace. Of course, this is difficult since there are monsters everywhere as well as an evil organization that is bent on taking over the Earth through any means necessary. Fortunately, this world amps up everyone’s natural psychic abilities and you can gradually learn how to use it for combat. Along the way, a kid Ageha used to bully, a rockstar, and a random joe are brought to the world as well. Technically, a bunch of people are brought in, but the rest are all slaughtered almost instantly by the monsters. Hey, you can’t save em all right?

At first the manga plays out like a survival horror. The humans have no business fighting giant monsters and basically just have to run and hide. Anamiya is the only one who can fight them and even she can’t take on too many of them at once. If the series had stayed like this, it could have certainly gone for an Attack on Titan vibe. Honestly, it could have maybe worked, but I’m glad the manga shifted gears into full action instead. Once the characters all got powers and the monsters were phased out in place of humanoid opponents, the manga truly began to excel.

It plays out a lot like Hueco Mundo in Bleach. The heroes get in really large scale battles against the enemies. The series jumps between the present and the future a lot. As you’d probably expect, the future has all of the best scenes and fights. The technology doesn’t really change this time, but everyone is just a lot stronger so the visuals are more spectacular. This series really knew how to draw your attention the whole time. Lets quickly go through a bunch of the characters.

First up is Ageha. He’s a good protagonist even if he definitely doesn’t care about being a hero. Lets move past his childhood where he was apparently a bit of a bully. He does act like your typical main character for a while as he tries to save everyone and does his best to complete the game. What separates him from most is how absolutely ruthless Ageha is. He’s totally on board with destroying any opponent who gets in his way. Some of the villains comment on this as Ageha will go for a kill shot right off the bat. Given the stakes and all, it’s easy to see why, but not something that all main characters will go for. He embraces his dark abilities from the start and never enters into a self doubt phase. All of these elements together make him a very engaging lead. You can draw a lot of similarities to Yusuke Urameshi.

Amamiya is the main heroine and she was always rather odd. We find out the reason why by the end as she has a split personality. One side of her is very shy and timid while the other is aggressive and outgoing. She starts to lose control of her other personality by the end, but eventually gets it back. You could say that the two sides of her made a truce to share the body and each gets a turn now. It’s an intriguing concept anyway. For the most part, the more aggressive one is naturally better although the flirting can be a bit much. I’m glad that Anamiya can fight, but she’s just not a very charismatic heroine.

The same can be said for the big rival of the series. That is Asaga and he is probably the most soulless rival I’ve ever seen in a series. He barely even counts as a rival since he is never in Ageha’s league to begin with. He has a lot of brute strength and that’s how he wields his psychic powers. He just has no real personality though besides possibly liking the main heroine. Ageha’s gravity abilities are both stronger and more versatile. There’s just nothing Asaga can contribute to a fight and he was basically written out of the series for a while as he had some adventures on the alien planet by himself.

Next up is a character whose development never really got to end. Oboro is a famous pop star who got into the game and began to excel. He can heal others which is incredibly useful and his abilities began to morph into disintegration. He can also heal others too well which results in them merging with other monsters and dying. The series was really hinting that he was going to turn evil and he was beginning to fit into the rival role. Then…the series just ended and he never really got to have any closure. I think he barely even got a final fight if he did at all. I did think the character had a lot of promise though and he was probably the best supporting member.

Kirisaki’s essentially the scaredy cat of the group. Every series seems to need one and he fits the bill. His ability is that he can sense the future as long as he is in danger and this allows him to dodge any traps. Think of it like a very good Spider Sense and you get the general idea. This isn’t the kind of character that I’m typically a fan of though so I’ll have to give him a thumbs down.

Now lets talk about some of the villains. Miroku is the big villain in the series and he’s certainly a strong fighter. He doesn’t have a whole lot of personality and can come across as generic, but I’d say that he’s good enough. His design’s not bad. Grana is the strongest member of the main villain group so he’s second only to Miroku for most of the series. He’s sort of like Zaraki from Bleach and I like his personality. He’s always itching for a fight and he can dish it out as well as he takes it. That makes for a pretty good villain if you ask me. Unfortunately, as the story goes with most of these characters, he didn’t get to do a whole lot.

Junas was one of the most impressive villains. He went up against quite a few of the main characters and kept on rolling. His design is on point and he made good use of his abilities. WISE was very fortunate to have him on their side. There’s not much to say about Uranus. He’s another member of the group who puts up a good fight, but doesn’t get nearly as much screen time as Junas. Finally we’re up to a villain who did get a lot to do. Dholaki was probably Ageha’s first real challenge and the guy kept coming back for more. He would train and learn new abilities to stay relevant. He had a good work ethic for a villain. Shiner was another member of the group and he also got a good role. I’d say that he was maybe a little nerfed by the end of the fight, but he did a good job weakening the heroes.

Mithra is basically the real final boss. She’s a very imposing entity and her true form helps increase the stakes of the series. I definitely think just about all big action titles should end with a big cosmic being suddenly showing up. It makes the final battle really feel like a final stand as opposed to just another fight against the bad guys. Mithra didn’t appear all that much, but she is memorable.

Yusaka is technically a pretty minor villain as he doesn’t appear much, but he was a pretty critical traitor against the heroes so he was memorable. He takes down a lot of humans in a rather brutal action scene and proves to be a lethal opponent. He’s not really my kind of villain, but he made for a good fight scene. While his design isn’t as impressive as most of the villains, it makes sense since he is basically just a human.

There was a group of kids in the future who were the last defenders of humanity. They were a pretty fun bunch and all of them got some good screen time. Frederica is a fire expert who’s extremely confident and she always managed to live up to the hype. I’m not sure I’d call her the strongest member despite her boasts, but she’s definitely fun to have around. She’s effectively the leader of the team. Marie is the nicest member of the team which also happens to mean that she is basically the weakest. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really a fan of hers. She’s not a bad character, but rarely seemed to help out all that much. She did contribute of course, but I would have liked to have seen more action from her.

Kyle looks up to Ageha and pretty much modeled his fighting style after him. Kyle’s a hand to hand specialist who attacks with incredible power. I’d say that he is the most powerful member of the group and he sure did a good job whenever he would appear. He definitely grew a lot from his days as a kid. Shao probably got one of the best fight scenes in the series as he fights with strategy as well as power. He’s about as strong as Kyle and really helps the group have an edge over the villains. Every time you get a strong fighter like that, it really helps everyone’s odds. He’s rather quiet, but it’s not about confidence. It’s simply a choice in his case and he lets his actions speak for him.

Nemesis Q was more annoying than helpful. I still don’t understand what the point was of calling everyone to the game world, but destroying them if they told anyone. By the end of the series we learn that she is basically stuck in a wheelchair and just gets her thrills out of mocking Ageha. She got some kind of origin story, but it still seems like the best plan would just have been to tell the heroes what was going on. They could have changed the past a whole lot easier if they knew the details.

Matsuri was one of the only players who ever got out of the game alive. As such, she knows about it, but isn’t really allowed back. She can still help in the real world though. Her abilities are potent, but not quite as deadly as most of the main characters. She essentially got surpassed by everyone as the series went on, but did well in the mentor role. Kagetora is her friend and essentially a bodyguard who also got some psychic abilities. He handles psychic crime in the real world, but has a tendency to get in a little over his head at times. His regeneration ability at the end is really handy though since it fits in with his constant aggression.

Tatsuo is a friend of Asaga’s who got stuck in the game. In the real world he was super frail, but he was able to excel in this other world as a hybrid monster. At first he is evil from the experience, but gradually learns to accept the situation and becomes a hero. He’s a fairly decent character, but one that still just feels more like a trope than an individual. Asuka is Ageha’s father and he actually shows up to fight by the end of the series. His ability has a lot of drawbacks and can’t be used for too long, but it’s very powerful. He is one of the only characters in the series who is able to use a certain burning/ascendence which amps up all of his stats. The series may not have explained too much about why he knows so much about the psychic wars and all, but it was nice to see him help out. He’s not a very nice guy at times though so that hurts his likability.

So the character cast is fairly decent. I like Ageha and the Actor worked fairly well as a shady rival. I don’t think the author initially planned for that subplot to just end like it did, but you never know. The rest of the heroes were rather weak compared to most titles though, but fortunately the villains held their own. They were all pretty cool for the most part even if I started to mix them up. It’s important that Ageha was good since if the main character had also only been standard, it might have had more of an effect on the series. What helped to compensate for this was the solid artwork throughout. The artist has a nice clear style that works well with the series. It’s also nice since Ageha’s powers could have easily turned into something very wavy and chaotic. With a lesser artist It would have been easy to get lost during the action scenes.

The series could get pretty intense like the massacre inside the government base. You couldn’t help but feel bad for the government the whole time since they were just so out of their league but they kept on trying anyway. At the very least, you have to admire their commitment. We even got the cops involved at one point as they try to arrest Ageha, that was fun. There’s a lot to like in this series which is why it’s a shame that it never hit 20 volumes.

Overall, Psyren is a fun action series. It won’t go down as an all star like Dragon Ball Z or Kenshin, but I’d say that it did a really good job. The idea of fighting in the future is always a good one. Reborn! probably did the best job with it, but many titles have pulled it off. The action was large in scale and Ageha readily embracing his dark abilities was nice as well. It’s a shame that the series ended so suddenly since it still had quite a lot of potential left in it. Sometimes we just don’t get to see it all though. That’s just the way it goes. I’d definitely recommend checking this manga out. It’s pretty epic and I’m confident you’ll like it if action is your genre of choice.

Overall 8/10

Nisekoi Review

Posted on June 1, 2017 by dreager1

It’s time to review a very different manga series. Seriously, it’s not one that you’d have expected me to read. It’s my first complete harem manga. There are some titles that can act a bit like a harem at times like Sword Art Online, but this is a full blown one with comedy hi-jinx around every corner and a lot of situations that will make you suspend your disbelief. So I can’t say that I had high hopes for this series at all. Luckily it plays up the comedy angle first and foremost. There isn’t a great deal of fanservice here as it’s pretty mild for the most part. There are some tricky moments though and it’s certainly not perfect, but it’s likely the best adaptation of this genre. I can’t imagine another one handling it quite as well.

The protagonist is Raku and he is the heir to a local Yakuza organization. He doesn’t want to lead the group though as his passion is to be a civil servant who lives in a very fair and balanced way. It’s an honorable aspiration and the gang members don’t mind this as they figure that he’ll grow bored and decide to lead the gang in the end anyway. His life changes forever when a girl named Chitoge moves into town. She is in a very similar situation and her gang does not get along with Raku’s at all. The two gangs decide to form a peace treaty by convincing Chitoge and Raku to pretend to be dating. Only the top executive of each gang knows that it is fake so the rest believe that it is legitimate and do their best not to get into fights. Naturally, this has serious social repercussions for both characters since they have to keep the act going 24/7. Raku was hoping to live a normal high school life and Chitoge wanted a great start to her school year, but neither were to be.

Quite a few more complications would enter the fray though. The main characters are all in the same class and it just so happens that most of them know Raku in some way or other from the past. Onodera was one of Raku’s best friends back in the day and Raku secretly admires her. Unfortunately for him, the Chitoge situation has shut the door on any hopes for him since he is officially taken and Chitoge has to find a way around that as well. Her best friend Ruri has decided that overcoming your rivals is necessary in a case like this and tries to push the two of them together. Meanwhile, Chitoge has a bodyguard named Tsugami who is forced to come to class as well to protect her mistress. She believes that Raku is not fit to protect Chitoge but gradually realizes that he is tougher than he looks. A rich transfer student also shows up who is a pre-arranged fiance for Raku. This hurts his reputation even more and she is the most overt with her constant advances towards Raku. Not to be out done, a transfer teacher also shows up named Yui. She grew up with Raku as she learned how to be an effective mob boss and then went her own way. Well, now she is also back to claim Raku. Finally, we also have Onodera’s younger sister. She doesn’t want to get in Onodera’s way but that becomes more difficult as her friend tries to push her into some tricky situations.

So, we’ve got quite the cast and you can see how this is clearly a harem title. There are 6 different girls going after Raku and he has to try to stop all of their advances while he chooses one over the others. While the reverse harem title Gentleman’s Alliance (I believe that’s the right name) did a cop-out by having the heroine choose 2 guys to alternate with, I can safely say that there is none here. The series wraps up with each girl getting her own story arc and one by one Raku completely rejects them tournament style. It’s pretty interesting and at least he was direct about the whole thing. Of course, the series is 25 volumes long and those arcs don’t really start til around volume 19. The first 18 are for good ole comedy shenanigans along with a plot about Raku’s pendant. See, he has this pendent which can only be opened by a girl that he promised to marry when he was a kid. The problem is that from the 7 girls, 4-5 of them have their own keys. They can’t try them out either since Raku conveniently breaks his pendent. Oh well, they’ve got a lot of time to figure it out right?

For a story like this, the two most important aspects are the characters and the writing. Those two things are handled pretty well and the art also helps a lot. You may notice that all of the pictures in this review are from the same fight. That’s because the art for this fight was just so good and it came out of nowhere. This was the only serious fight in the whole series or at least the only one that was of a decent length. It shows what the series could have been like if the author had decided to pursue Nisekoi as an action series. It would have had quite a lot of potential. The art is consistently good throughout and I’d consider it to be fairly high end even counting all other manga titles.

If there’s any part of the art that’s weak, it’s that parts of it can seem recycled. So that’s not a quality thing, but just a byproduct of the genre. It’s something that you tend to see in comedy titles a lot since the characters always have exaggerated expressions. You’ll see what I mean if you flip through a volume. The characters make the same faces constantly. You can’t go through a single chapter without someone yelling or panicking. At least not until you’re in the climax of the series. The overreactions can definitely get old pretty quick.

All right, lets talk about the characters. First off is Raku, our lead. He’s a nice guy who wants to help everyone out, but just has a lot of natural charm so everyone wants to hang out with him. Raku does his best not to lead anyone on and is pretty oblivious to the situation as you probably would expect. I can’t say that I’m really a fan of Raku though. While he handles most of the situations fairly well, he can also make them worse at times. Other times he’s a little slow on the uptake and tends to insult other characters at inopportune times. He calls Chitoge a gorilla as a joke while she calls him a bean sprout, but often times Raku will use this insult quite randomly and it makes you wonder what he was thinking.

Chitoge is the main heroine and one of the better characters. She’s probably my second favorite behind Tsugami. Chitoge is outgoing and does her best to make a lot of friends during her school days. She helped to bring the whole gang together and is always ready to help the others out like Raku. She’s pretty selfless as well and tries not to get in the way of the other character’s goals. Chitoge can also fight to a mild extent which helps quite a bit as well. Next up is Onodera, one of the other major characters of the series. Unfortunately, I was never a fan of hers. She’s a really shy character who has a hard time talking to Raku and her friends often have to push her into action. She means well though and is also a very nice character, but the shy character type has never been my favorite. Just about all of my favorite characters are outgoing or have generally tough personalities. I feel like it makes the character more interesting.

Next up is the worst character in the series, Shu. This character had no point being in the series and it feels like he is just here to make Raku look even better. After all, Raku is heroic, noble, and treats everyone with respect. Shu flirts with everyone and is always thinking very sketchy thoughts as he tries to get everyone into sticky situations. His romance plot was also the worst since it basically exonerated everything he does. The series ends with him refusing to change his ways and his partner just deciding that she can live with that. It’s just terrible all around and I’d wince whenever he was on screen. Bad things were always sure to follow.

Ruri is Onodera’s friend so she never really counted as one of the people interested in Raku. Things get tricky for a second, but her bond with Onodera is a lot stronger and another guy ends up appearing for her. Ruri was a pretty decent character until her romance plot started wrapping up. The series kept hinting at it whenever she would appear, but I just hoped that the title wouldn’t go down that route. Unfortunately it did and Ruri got the worst pairing possible. Anyway, she’s a nice friend who helped Onodera a lot, but the latter was just too timid to really make use of the assistance.

Another supporting character is Claude. He doesn’t like Raku and constantly makes plans to humiliate the kid or get some dirt on him that could be used as blackmail. Naturally he’ll never find any dirt on the perfect main character though and most of his plans backfire because his subordinate Tsugami breaks it by mistake. Claude gets a pretty decent action scene towards the end and he is one of the best characters. While he is really bias against Raku, he does ultimately mean well since he just wants to protect Chitoge. He makes his share of mistakes, but I can sympathize with this guy.

Back to the main characters, we have Chitoge’s bodyguard up next. Tsugami was the best character by a long shot as she’s a great fighter and makes all of the right choices. She puts her feelings behind Chitoge’s happiness and safety consistently. She can be a little too naive at times to be honest and the series really exaggerates this character trait of hers, but when it comes to being a bodyguard she is prepared for every contingency. She saves the day on multiple occasions and Raku definitely wouldn’t have lasted so long without her. She gave the series quite a few of its best scenes so it’s safe to say that the manga as a whole would have dropped without her as well.

Tachibana’s personality is one that you probably wouldn’t assume would work well but she’s actually one of the better characters. She’s the most direct and upfront about her plans for the future and she lets Raku know about this constantly. It’s a little refreshing when you compare her to everyone else who constantly ducks the questions with the classic “Don’t get the wrong idea!” lines. Her story is probably the most tragic of the bunch, but it has a fairly happy ending. Tachibana also did have the absolute best arc of the series so that was pretty cool. She also came out to help in the last part of the final arc. I’d place her as the third best character and she definitely made the series a whole lot livelier.

Honda is Tachibana’s bodyguard. She isn’t quite as skilled as Tsugami, but she comes close. The images that I’ve attached in the review are of her fighting Tsugami so you can see how she put up a really good fight. That being said, I definitely don’t like Honda. She is the opposite of Tsugami who knows when to disobey an order and where her priorities lie. Honda follows the orders no matter what and is very strict when it comes to the rules. This leads to her making a lot of the wrong choices throughout.

Haru is Onodera’s sister. She wasn’t a bad character, but I can’t say that she really added anything to the series either. You could cut her out and nothing would really change. Haru starts out as the most antagonistic character to Raku, but gradually warms up to him since he’s such a nice guy. She knows that Onodera is trying for him though and steps aside which is pretty self less of her. She wants to be a pro baker but goes through many adversities along the way. I was glad for that subplot though because I do like seeing snacks. I could use a good Chocolate Chip Cookie myself right about now.

Finally we have Yui. She is the leader of a gang and used to live at Raku’s gang base when she was a kid. She doesn’t have any family left so she looks to Raku as a brother. We get a pretty iffy subplot where her admiration morphs into something else, but by the end they agree that this would be a mistake so they keep the status quo as it is. It’s certainly a weird dynamic when you have her as the teacher though. Fortunately she got out of the arranged marriage thing so now she has time to rethink about what she wants to do. She was also a little unnecessary to the series and didn’t bring much to the table. I think I prefer Haru so the question is who was the worst heroine….her or Onodera? I’m probably going to give Onodera the slight edge here, but it’s reasonably close.

There are a few other supporting characters of course. Chitoge’s Mom shows up a few times during the series and she’s a good character. She lets her business get in the way of family time for a while, but Raku shows her how to balance it so she can hang out with Onodera more. The gang leaders show up a few times like Raku’s Dad, but they never really do much. There are ninja, classmates, friends of friends, and more characters but we covered all of the major ones.

This goes without saying, but one of the negatives of the series is the fanservice. It’s not all that excessive or frequent, but it is around enough where it still needs to be addressed. It’s an issue that most titles just can’t seem to get away from completely. Another issue is naturally the constant romance. As I mentioned earlier, the series is at its best during the normal adventures where the characters are just having fun and hanging out. The cast is actually better than some of the Shonen action casts. Perhaps it’s because we see them hang out more so getting used to the characters happens a lot quicker than when they are fighting and we don’t get to see the development for a while. Titles like DBZ throw that theory out of the water though.

The romance is handled well for what it is. I’d say that it’s probably better than most main stream films in that regard. The characters don’t immediately get to the next level for no reason and it’s not like a CW show where you’re rebounding from one character to the next. Since Raku is unsure about what to do for most of the series, he makes sure not to actually get together with anybody. Of course, he has to pretend to be with Chitoge, but he keeps it in pretend mode.

Since a great deal of chapters are standalone, it also stands to reason that for all of the hits there are some misses as well. For example, pretty much any chapter where all of the heroines drink a love potion and decide to chase Raku are fairly weak. On the other side, pretty much any athletic competition…or simply any competition at all are typically a lot of fun. Since the series is so long, the cast gets to go on quite a lot of adventures so pretty much every kind of situation happens. We get haunted houses, School against School competitions, trips to other states, island survival tests, etc.

I read most of the series in batches of 2-4 volumes so I can also safely say that the series is a page turner. It never gets remotely boring and I think that can be accredited equally to the interesting cast and the exceptional art. Both really help to complement each other for any series really. If a series has bad art, then it’ll be hard to marathon no matter how engaging the plot is. It was just fortunate to have both factors in its favor.

I wasn’t a big fan of the ending, but what else is new? Manga rarely have satisfying endings for me and this one had a big time skip as per usual. My main issue with it was the heroine’s final decision after being selected by the main character. It’s a choice that seems to happen a little more often now and I still don’t really get the logic behind it. It dampens what is otherwise a happy ending. There are also a few random pairings that I’m pretty iffy at, but the ending certainly could have been a whole lot worse.

Overall, Nisekoi is a pretty fun series. If I were to rate the series based just on how enjoyable it is, it would easily get an 8. However, just being fun isn’t enough to get a high ranking since I still do have to count the negatives. It’s in the same boat as Medaka Box although less extreme in both the positives and negatives. The author definitely did a really good job of mixing up the various arcs by the end and giving each character time to shine. All of the main characters got a lot of development through the series. I can safely say that Nisekoi was a lot better than I had anticipated. At least now if anyone asks me to recommend a good romance series I can bring this one up. Tsubasa is probably still my go to example though since it was pretty much perfect, but this one can definitely be seen as more of a traditional romance. Now I can only hope that it really does get a battle spinoff manga someday.

Overall 6/10

Mobilize!! Pokemon Ranger Review

Posted on March 22, 2017 by dreager1

You may remember that I started this series about a month ago. I ended up finishing it about a day or two later, but I didn’t get a chance to put up the review til now. It’s only 12 chapters long so it makes for a very fast read. The chapters are also small so it’s considerably shorter than the average manga volume. It basically adapts the first game, but think of it as an abridged version.

A Pokemon Ranger wants to be the very best. He’s at a pretty low rank at the moment, but his heart’s in the right place. He completes several missions and then becomes aware of a new danger lurking over the horizon. They are essentially the anti Pokemon Rangers as they use their capture nodes to control Pokemon and bring them over to the dark side. Is there anything that our young hero can do to stop them? Luckily he is not alone as he has two main comrades who help him when they feel like it. They are far more experienced so typically they’re busy on other tasks.

Grabbing this series was pretty tough since Deviantart is really the only place that has it all. It’s so obscure that websites even say that it has 12 volumes as opposed to chapters. I suppose the chapters may have been called volumes or something, but I think that’s just because it was labeled that way on the site. I read it all in one batch and I’m glad that I did because finding it again would be a bit of a hassle. It’s mostly due to the fact that the site doesn’t load well and the same goes for the pages so it takes a while. That’s the main reason why I didn’t go back to grab the names. You don’t really need them here anyway since the personalities are what’s important.

The main hero isn’t bad. He’s a nice kid who is very determined. In effect, he’s a generic Shonen kind of character who doesn’t have a whole lot going for him. Luckily, he’s just got a lot of natural skills and Pokemon just want to work with him. He’s courageous and can definitely hold his own story. His more experienced partner is a good character as well. As I mentioned earlier, she doesn’t get a whole lot to do though. For the most part, she pitches in once in a while along with the boss, but it’s all up to the main character. Without him everyone would have been doomed anyway.

The art is a little basic, but it works just fine. It’s certainly clear at the very least so you always know what is happening. It’s nothing that’ll win awards, but it gets the job done. With each chapter being so short, I imagine that the artist had a lot of time to make sure that each page looked just right. As this story is essentially a one shot, you don’t really need to know anything about Pokemon to jump in and enjoy this one. The title gives you the basic premise and explains what is happening.

I played the first Pokemon Ranger game a while back. It’s been a while, but I’d say that the volume felt pretty faithful for what is adapted. Either that or the pre-arc and the main villain were just very similar. One thing that was a little sudden was how the main character jumped from around rank 1 all the way to the max in the final chapter. I guess he did save the world and all, but it seemed a little sudden and out of left field. Well, at least he can boldly proclaim how he got to his goal a lot faster than most other heroes. It didn’t take him almost 6 years to be the Hokage or 10+ years to finally unlock Super Saiyan 4.

Overall, This is a nice little title. It’s a bit of a fluff piece as you’ll read and enjoy it, but then never come back to the title. There isn’t really a need to ever re read this piece, but it’s still good. It didn’t really make any mistakes and it was just a pleasant little tale to read. There’s a lot you can do with the Pokemon universe and I’d like to see more manga titles like this. A longer one would be nice as well, but this is better than nothing. I’d recommend checking it out if you can find it. Maybe it’ll convince you to buy the game since that’s the whole point of this. I aim to buy the next few titles at some point, but it could be a while.

Overall 7/10

Puella Magi Madoka Magica Homura’s Revenge! Review

Posted on February 13, 2017 by dreager1

It’s time to check out another Madoka Magica manga title. I wasn’t crazy about the first two because the art wasn’t so good and the plot wasn’t the best. This one has a much better premise and the artwork has certainly improved, but it feels like the author is worried about doing anything too drastic. The series ends up feeling like a cop-out for several reasons and while the ending is mostly satisfying, there is one element that holds it back. That’s enough foreshadowing though, lets get into the review.

The series starts with Homura failing to save Madoka yet again. She’s been through this point in time on many occasions, but no matter what Homura does differently, it all ends up being futile. This time, she decides to take Madoka back in time with her. This way Madoka will remember everything that is going to happen as well as Homura so their chances to change the future should be drastically increased. Theoretically, this plan should be foolproof right? Unfortunately, Homura made the mistake of also bringing Kyubey into the past so he knows what is going to happen as well. It’ll be a battle of wits between them and being witty has always been one of Kyubey’s strengths.

Honestly I don’t think that Kyubey should have come along for the ride. This is where the cop-out part happens. The whole point of the series is that Homura and Madoka are going to try and change things so that they can save the future this time right? Well, they fail at every turn. Mami is still murdered by the demon, Sayaka is still turned to a witch, etc. They really didn’t change anything except for at the very end with Kyoko. They did beat the monster which at least made the future a bright one, but it wasn’t good enough for Homura or for myself. What’s the point of a what if story where only the ending is changed? I was expecting more drastic changes all around, but the heroes let Kyubey mess with them the whole time.

He was constantly messing with them and tricking all of the side characters. Everyone was unreasonable which ensured that nobody listened to Madoka or Homura. I also find it a little suspect how Mami was beaten twice. Surely she would have kept her guard up after almost being eaten the first time right? Mami is supposed to be super tough and all so she really shouldn’t have lost this battle. The manga even gave her some hype as usual by giving her the edge over Homura. I still say that Homura should be able to defeat her with time hax, but Mami’s abilities are certainly better when in close quarters combat.

The other iffy part was the ending. Homura explained that even though she saved the world and Madoka this time, she would go back in time because Madoka turned into a magical girl. That seems a little extreme since she actually managed to save the day after such a long period of trying. It seems to me like she would have been content to stay this time. Ah well, it was still a good ending though. For a while there is looked like the ending would have been another failed attempt and then Homura would have to head home by her lonesome.

As mentioned earlier, the art is definitely a lot sharper this time around. It feels more like how you’d expect the show to look in manga format. The fight scenes are a lot more engaging and it was fun to see some fights that never happened in the show like Kyoko and Sayaka vs Homura. Both of their battles were pretty fun and their plan actually wasn’t half bad. Overwhelming Homura with speed is the only way to really neutralize her time stop ability and preventing her from leaving is another good strategy. Of course, Homura could have stopped them easily if she was using fatal methods, but she couldn’t since she is technically a hero. The others never gave her much of a chance to explain herself though.

I have to say that Homura and Madoka’s plan wasn’t really well thought out. They should have approached Mami together as allies instead of allowing Mami to see Homura as an enemy. Their reasoning was that they should try to get everything to happen the same way so it’ll be easier to know when to diverge, but this reasoning didn’t make sense. It was an excuse for the author not to go down a very different path. The whole point of this manga is to try and go a different path so the series should have embraced this.

You can probably tell that I was less than pleased with how this was executed. Still, missed opportunities don’t make up the whole story in this adventure. It’s still a well written title on its own and the plot is engaging. It has some pretty good action scenes and the characters are likable enough. At the very least, I’d say that Homura and Kyoko are good. Mami comes across as a little arrogant and Sayaka is just gullible. Madoka isn’t all that helpful either the whole time and Kyubey makes for a good villain with how he pushes everyone around. At only 2 volumes long, the series goes by in a flash. The pacing is never a problem and the series gets from point to point with ease.

I also just enjoy the Madoka universe so seeing the characters was fun. The atmosphere was pretty tense and the characters were all pretty serious. I could definitely see this being turned into an anime or maybe some kind of OVA. I’d take it, even if just to see Homura wreck Kyoko and Sayaka. We really needed that fight in the anime, but there’s only so much you can do in 12 episodes.

After reading the manga, it’s safe to say that the power levels are: Madoka>Homura>Mami>Kyoko>Sayaka. Now, Homura and Mami are debatable I suppose since Mami does have a lot of experience and her abilities are a nice counter to Homura’s, but they only work if she is able to land a hit before time is stopped. I don’t see that happening. Meanwhile, Kyoko’s abilities are just a poor match up for Mami’s to start with and Sayaka is just the weakest by far. She doesn’t have a lot of experience and while her regeneration is great, it does consume energy so she can’t keep it up. Each member is pretty strong in her own way though which is what makes the team so formidable. What I really want is a series where we can see the whole group team up against an enemy. That’s what I need to see and that’s why we need a manga that introduces Dark Magical Girls. The other manga title came close, but didn’t go all the way. (I’m sensing a trend here eh?) Bringing that in could make for a definitive Madoka Magica series someday.

Overall, It’s a clear improvement over the last manga. There aren’t any new characters this time around, but the TV show was already interesting enough where a What If story is certainly welcome. There are many ways that the show could have gone after all even if this one didn’t actually step into any of those paths. I’d definitely recommend checking this out if you want to read a nice little action story. If you haven’t watched the TV show then you may not really get what is happening at some points, but you should be able to understand enough. If anything, the added mystery could help make the series more enticing to you. At this point, we just need a season 2 so there will be more material and these spinoffs can think up more adventures for the main cast. It’s been quite a while so there is no excuse not to have a second season by now.

Overall 7/10

Assassination Classroom Review

Posted on February 4, 2017 by dreager1

So, I started this manga around April back in 2013. It lasted for a decent amount of time I suppose and the concept was certainly original. That being said, the series gradually got worse as it went on. It started out okay and I had actually given it a 6 after the initial volume or so. Maybe it was the premise that got old or the author just was not prepared to keep the series going. Whatever the case, Classroom ends on a whimper and ends up losing another point for mainstream manga.

The series is about an alien who destroyed most of the Moon. He then decided that he wanted to teach a class. Koro chose Class E, a class that is shunned by the rest of the school and treated pretty poorly. The government agrees to this deal in exchange for being able to try and destroy Koro whenever they like. The students are also encouraged to try and destroy him and they could get rich doing so. As the series progresses, the kids grow attached to Koro and decide that he may not be all that bad. Should they still destroy him or have the kids finally learned that murder is wrong. Spoiler alert, they do not.

So, this series is really a comedy first and foremost. There are some action scenes during the series as this is technically still a Shonen, but the vast majority of it is pure slice of life. You could compare the series to Nisekoi except replace the occasional plot chapter with an action one. Unfortunately, this ends up hurting the series. Mainly that’s because the cast isn’t all that good. This ensures that you’re never too invested into the series. Furthermore, the author just isn’t very good at writing a comedy. It’s rarely all that funny or engaging. I was actually pretty bored for almost the entirety of the second half of the series. It felt like nothing was happening for a very long time and I was waiting for the plot to return.

The author also doesn’t even try after a certain point and just starts including fanservice for no real reason. The fanservice is really the only main problem in the series, but it is a significant one. Naturally, being a rather boring series in general is bad as well, but it’s not something that will take too many stars off. Coupling that with recurring fanservice is another issue entirely. It’s almost as if the author is admitting that the series can’t stand on its own and that it needs this element to keep people reading. I wouldn’t be too surprised since most of the comments on the online discussion boards would always focus on this and the Nagisa cross dressing subplot. I don’t think people ever really cared about the plot and most people like it for the comedy and the drama. So if the comedy style works for you, then you’ll like the series. Otherwise, it’s gonna be a long ride.

Surprisingly, the series never really deals with one of its main themes. These kids are being told to murder Koro throughout the series and they naturally accept since they’ll be making a lot of money. The students never really ask themselves if this is the right thing to do. They wonder if they shouldn’t at times since they grow to like the teacher, but never because the act of murdering someone is wrong in itself. It seems like they just don’t really care since Koro’s an alien anyway. It’s rather alarming that they’re all so quick to accept this deal. Having a few kids decide that this just isn’t right would have been a good way to advance the plot and maybe have some characters get kicked out of the class because they refuse to sacrifice their morals. That would have made for an engaging premise if you ask me.

Unfortunately, the series never went in that direction and just continues to do its best to justify why murder is necessary in this case. There will be spoilers coming up in this paragraph so skip it if you haven’t finished the series yet. I’m gonna keep all of the spoilers confined to this paragraph to make it easier to read the rest of the review. Are you out of this paragraph yet? You have been warned! From the start, the kids are told that murdering Koro will make the world a safer place and the money seals the deal. Capturing Koro would be difficult, but it is clearly achievable as several villains do it during the course of the series. Already murder is not completely necessary. Then the end of the series takes it a step further. There is a .001% chance that Koro will blow up and take the Earth with him. It’s simply a flaw in his DNA. Even so, the people decree that Koro must die and after an extended fight, Koro lies on the ground. He is unable to move and cannot do anything. So…the “heroes” wouldn’t destroy him after all that right. The kids have been through a lot with their teacher and they should be friends at this point….nah. Nagisa plunges his knife into Koro and ends him for good. Nothing personal of course, but Nagisa was goaded into doing it and everyone was practically egging him on with their moral support. It was a terrible ending and really brought about the wrong message in the series. It tried to say that destroying Koro was the right thing to do, but that could never be the case. It goes without saying that I lost all respect for the characters and I didn’t really have much to start with. I’d say that was the final nail in the coffin for this title.

All right, lets talk about the characters. Karasuma is the government contact who teaches the kids how to effectively destroy people. He has more of a heart than the rest of the government and is known as one of the best fighters on the planet. He does a good job of pulling his weight, but does tend to let red tape stand in his way. He’s not someone that I would count on in times of trouble, but he is one of the more likable characters in the series. At the very least, he isn’t all talk. Irina is another professional who joined the group, but unfortunately the series gives her absolutely no respect. She is only used for fanservice during about 99% of her screen time and another subplot that’s not even remotely humorous is that the kids always curse her out when she appears. It’s a very mean spirited nickname. She’s able to get past them since all of the kids fall for her feminine wiles, but all that does is degrade her character further while taking the kids with her.

Koro is the big alien in the series and one of the worst written leads that I’ve seen. He’s a very perverted character similar to someone like Master Roshi. This is bad since he appears so often, this personality gets to appear constantly. He is always being tricked through this weakness and uses his super human abilities to make it all the worse. There’s not a whole lot you can do when you’re up against an invincible alien so it’s not like anyone can stop these habits of him. Any time Koro is on screen is usually going to be a cringe worthy moment.

Karma is the big rival of the series and he’s the best character in the series. It may not be saying a whole lot, but at the very least he checks most of the boxes for qualities that a rival should have. He talks a good game even if he loses most of his fights. While Karma is surpassed by Nagisa rather easily, he tries to cover up his humiliation by dishing out a lot of burns. He has a lot of confidence and doesn’t put up with a lot of the stuff that Nagisa has to go through. It would have been nice if he could have gotten a power up or something, but the series was having none of that.

Nagisa is the kind of main character that I don’t like. He’s comic relief 90% of the time, but then he’ll suddenly get serious and unlikable. When he’s in assassin mode he turns into a try-hard rather than a hardcore character. He does manage to score a win against an actual villain, which is one more than just about anyone from the students so I’ll give him that. Still, the contrast between him as a pushover who lets people dress him as a girl and his assassin mode is way too drastic. The ending of the series doesn’t help his case at all either.

There are a lot of other students in the class, but only hardcore fans will bother to learn their names. Even the author probably came close to forgetting them because some don’t actually get introduced until you’re past volume 10. That’s a long time to wait to learn about someone who is in the background since day 1 right? Aside from Karma and Nagisa, some of them are important though. Ritsu is notable because she is actually a computer program who is just allowed to be in the class for kicks. She acts like a student at the very least and while she ultimately doesn’t help out much, she ensures that the group can always communicate with each other. Kayano is the main heroine I suppose. Her role is extremely small until the series gets close to the end, but that’s good enough. Even if she tends to jump the gun and come to hasty conclusions, she actually plans things out well. She’s definitely the best student behind Karma even if a lot of her potential was wasted by the end. Her plot could have been so much more epic if it wasn’t shut down as soon as it began.

Itona was one of the early villains, but he was quickly defeated and turned into a good guy. This is one of those characters who was completely ditched as soon as he turned good. Suddenly he became completely powerless and never did anything again. It was a shame because he could have brought something new to the table. Instead he just ended up as a personality-less student who had no real stake in the whole business. To think that he started out as a mysterious villain who was actually a threat.

Gakusho is the big rival of the series and especially likes to compete with Karma. He’s in class A so he always has a lot to prove. His father is the principal so he is always in a lot of pressure. He actually does a good job of living up to it and excelling though. He’s a little more fair than his father and will honor his agreements even if he doesn’t like them. He made for a fun antagonist and helped make some of the events more fun like the athletics competition and the test arcs. Gakuho was also a good villain. He looks a little like Aizen and is as exaggerated as a principal can get. He’s supposed to be purely human, but he can mind control people and even knocked out three really strong guys with no real effort. It was 3 against 1 and they were pros, but he downed them with ease. The author never gave him powers or added anything extra to it as expected, but he was still a great character. Honestly, he should have kept on appearing. Giving him powers or something would have been awesome.

The God of Death is one of the big villains in the series. He’s definitely the most likable villain even if he does come across as rather petty in his origin. He’s very good at what he does and his plan was basically fool proof. His design is really cool and while his abilities are a bit of a stretch, it showed that he wasn’t like your average human. You definitely don’t want to mess around with this guy. It’s a shame that he never got to appear much. I don’t even count his final appearance because he cracked by the end and was nothing like the character that I got to see the first time. Takaoka is a relatively minor villain who showed up from the government. He overworked everyone and was basically a bully who always got his way. The students had to take care of him since everyone else kept turning the other way. It was definitely one of those subplots that was annoying to watch since nobody would help at all. You’d think Koro would have been a little more vigilant right?

Finally, we have Shiro. He’s the main villain of the series and wears a cloak to hide his true form until the very end. The true form is a little underwhelming as is the character in general. He was portrayed as a very mysterious individual, but after getting thwarted several times in a row, it was hard to take him as seriously. You could go whole volumes without seeing this guy appear and I don’t get why he was waiting so long. His master plan just didn’t make a whole lot of sense and without his constant hostages, the guy wouldn’t even be all that tough. He could have been a cool villain, but squandered his opportunity.

Another problem with the series has to be the power levels. It’s always annoying to see the main characters because none of them can fight for beans. They’re all just kids so whenever an actual villain shows up, they just have to hide. They can’t hold their own because all of the big villains have super powers and could beat the kids in an instant. At first I was waiting for a time skip or some kind of power up, but gradually I realized that this wasn’t that kind of series. It actually tries to be very realistic for the most part which means that the kids just stay as kids the whole time. They never really get any development or improve at all in combat. Maybe you won’t mind that, but I found it extremely annoying by the end. I mean, what’s the point of having them around if they’re never gonna help? I haven’t seen a group of main characters as helpless as these guys.

As mentioned earlier, I think this series just lasted too long. I believe the author just couldn’t come up with enough ideas which is why some plots were stretched to oblivion and why the series had a noticeable dip in quality in the second half. Some characters were basically ditched and others never got a whole lot of development. The series was just all over the place and made sure to mess up its opportunities whenever possible. It’s a shame, but I guess they can’t all be winners in Shonen Jump.

Overall, There’s a reason why nobody really talks about Classroom anymore. It was a huge thing when the first anime was airing and everyone was talking about the manga. It still sells well, but people just don’t talk about it anymore. The series just went downhill and should have quite while it was ahead. As it is, the series was at a 4 for a very long time, but then the author just had to go through with the terrible ending and lower it even further. A bad ending can go a long way and this was one of the worst endings that I’ve seen in a manga. Another title that I’ll be reviewing soon also had a dicey ending, but at least he was so bad that it was played for laughs which worked to an extent. This one played it serious and seriously giving out bad morals is a good way for me to shave off some points. I’d recommend skipping this series. It simply doesn’t live up to the hype and you’re better off just reading DBZZZZzzzzz yet another time.

Overall 3/10

Deadman Wonderland Review

Posted on February 4, 2017 by dreager1

It’s time for a manga that’s so dark, it makes Black Butler look light at times. What makes this series even more extreme than Black Butler is that the dark plots never stop. There’s never a moment of happiness for any of the characters as they just move from tragedy to tragedy without a break. Plot twists continue to occur to make things even worse. You can’t trust anyone in the series and the only certainty is a world of pain for the characters. Lets get started.

The story starts with Ganta going to school as usual. Everything was nice until a man ran into the classroom and blew everyone up. He left Ganta alive on purpose to stick the crime on him and Ganta was sent to a max level prison where they store people with powers. Unfortunately, Ganta has no experience using his powers so he gets bullied all of the time. All powered individuals manipulate their blood in one way or another so they have to be careful not to let the fights drag on for too long or they’ll get dizzy. This prison is also run as an amusement park by night and they have prisoners fight each other to the death or just til limbs start flying. Ganta wants to get out of here, but it’ll be tough. The general public doesn’t even know that the prison exists and the cops have all been paid off. Everyone in this arena is evil for some reason or other so if Ganta wants to get out, he’ll have to get stronger.

One thing you’l notice about the series right away is that the deck is stacked against the main character. There is a plot twist by the end which explains this. The mastermind has a personal vendetta against Ganta so the kid is always placed in a rough spot. Usually you only have to survive seeing your friends get destroyed once right? it happens to Ganta twice and he still had to put up with a lot of trouble after that. His allies aren’t exactly the typical friends that you would expect. His team includes a liar, a delusional old man, a girl who likes inflicting pain, and a few other suspicious fellows. None of them are actually good guys and it just so happens that their goals coincide with Ganta’s at the moment. It’s not guaranteed that this status quo will stay either so Ganta has to always be careful.

Naturally, death isn’t the thing to fear in this series. The villains always opt for fates worse than death to make the whole thing even more dark than it already was. It’s just a very toxic atmosphere throughout the prison and while that may make some feel as if the series did a good job for making it so “realistic” it also means that the series is no fun to read through. It’s just incredibly violent and sinister all around with no light at the end of a tunnel. After a while, you can only read so many tragic backstories until you start wondering what’s for supper or when your next exercise coupon will come in the mail.

Ganta is the main character of this series. He starts out as an ordinary kid who is blown away by how crazy the world is. Gradually, Ganta “realizes” that he has to allow himself to be corrupted to an extent in order to survive. He becomes willing to murder and do what he has to in order to win. For the most part, he’s still considerably more heroic than the other characters though and at least tries to find a positive way out of the situation. He’s just placed into a lot of futile situations. You can’t help but feel bad for him most of the time because his adventures are extremely painful. He did somehow get a decently happy ending so that’s more than you can say for a good chunk of the cast. He’s still essentially broken by the end based on how many traumatizing events he went through though.

Shiro is the main heroine and she’s one of the most twisted characters in the series. The audience becomes aware of the twists right away even if Ganta doesn’t so I wouldn’t really consider this a spoiler. If you do, skip this paragraph as I am about to explain her true form. When Shiro was a kid, she hung out with Ganta a lot of the time. Unfortunately, she was then used for experiments and after a lot of gruesome operations, she developed a split personality and turned evil. She is now two people. One of them is still Ganta’s best friend and tries to protect him. The other one just wants to make his life as bad as possible. She destroys all of his friends twice and really makes the situation as bad as she possibly can. So, you have to decide whether she is truly evil or not. Shiro was clearly brought to this point by the scientists, but it doesn’t change the fact that she is now a person who hungers for violence. Shiro is completely insane by the end, but luckily we do have a big of friendship power left in the series. I know, it’s hard to imagine that in this title of all things, but it managed to survive.

Toto is the big boss of this series and his backstory is also very twisted. Needless to say, he enters into a twisted partnership with another villain. She’ll destroy him at some point so he can’t destroy her until she finished the job and he’ll destroy her some day. Needles to say, he gets the last laugh since he’s the main villain, but it was a very weird dynamic. It’s hard to call him the meanest villain in the series because after a while, they’re all so evil that it’s hard to say who is the worst. Regardless, he takes down as many characters as possible. He has quite a lot of abilities at his disposal so it’s very hard to defeat him. He’s memorable, but certainly not likable. I barely even need to add that last part though because none of the villains are likable since they’re so over the top insane. From all of the characters, the only one who is actually likable is Senji. Ganta’s on the brink of being likable I suppose. I just didn’t care much for him by the end. It didn’t help that in one of the twists, he knew what happened to Shiro and just blocked it out of his mind which caused him to forget. That’s convenient for Ganta since he can sleep well at night again, but it didn’t help Shiro get out of her jam.

Senji is the closest you’ll get to a main rival in this series. He starts out as a mini boss and after Ganta beats him, he decides to be more heroic. It’s not as if he ever became a hero, but he does like fighting and doesn’t care for the plans that the villains have. Unfortunately, this is all after he already lost an eye so he is a little weakened for the rest of the series. Nonetheless, he is crucial in taking down the villains and it’s safe to say that Ganta would have been completely doomed without his help. Senji is very experienced in fighting and his blood abilities are well suited for combat. His eager personality is also perfect for a rival character. He’s still a little more intense than other rivals, but that comes with the territory. At least he aimed his aggression at the villains.

Then you have the rest of the peanut gallery. These guys talked a good game and were good at beating up Ganta, but didn’t do much besides that. Minatsuki uses sharp blood abilities to stab at her opponents for a while before finishing them off. She’s not all that powerful next to some of the other foes, but she makes up for that by being the most sarcastic member of the whole group. She is always ready with the insults and keeps it going for as long as she can. Her brother started out as a pretty corrupt guy who eventually realized that he was no match for the Deadmen and pretended to become a good guy. Everyone bought into it so that worked out for him.

I got to give a shout out to the Deadman wiki for being so terrible. It does a good job of being accurate to the series because it’s hard to navigate it at all. Seriously, you’re just going to wonder what’s happening the more you browse. Either way, those were most of the main characters. You’ve also got the old man who has an identity crisis, but he never really does much. There was the leader of the resistance, but he certainly didn’t last long. Ganta’s only friend met the same fate as she simply wasn’t going to last long in such a mean spirited series. Aside from the main boss, there was also the director, but he spent too much time rolling heads across the bowling alley and not enough time preparing himself for the inevitable threats.

This series is also one of those titles that tries to convince you that humanity as a race is inherently evil. Just about everyone can be bribed or corrupted in this series. As mentioned, there are no heroes. You can’t really trust anyone and the fact that nobody knows what is happening in this prison is pretty sketchy. It’s all to further the narrative that this author is going for

There is quite a bit of fanservice in the series as well. (As if the title needed any more negatives right?) One character’s design was made only with that purpose in mind and in case you don’t figure it out, the author has everyone comment on it nonstop. Another one has a costume that is made to look as if it’s just skin and other characters comment on that as well. Some of the sob stories involve pretty iffy plots and just picture the darkest plots you can think of. Since every character has a dark origin, they really start to add up by the end and the series covers all of the bases. It just gets darker and darker as the series goes on. I can’t stress enough just how over the top violent and dark this series is. You just want to avoid it at all costs. I don’t even remember if there is any animal violence here although almost definitely. I think at least a bird probably dies. The series is already at a 0 so it’s not as if it hurts it any more, but at least it throws some insult to injury.

The art isn’t all that bad although it can be really cluttered when the fights start. A lot of stuff is always happening on screen and the author just isn’t able to fully capture it on screen most of the time. You can follow what’s happening well enough though especially considering that most of the fights in the series are one sided massacres or have a lot of splash pages for shock value.

Overall, This is pretty much the definition of a series that you want to avoid. Who wants to read a dark and dreary title like this when you can just pick up a volume of Dinosaur King or Prince of Tennis and be thrown into a world of excitement? It’s rare to have manga titles that are a 0, but it’s not completely unheard of. Black Bird certainly earned that rank and Skip Beat was the latest to achieve it after jumping the shark. Ideally Deadman will be the last series for a while to get a 0 because it is really hard to get that score. There was just nothing redeeming about this adventure though so it couldn’t go any higher. At least the volume covers and the title are pretty good giveaways that this title’s not going to be good though so I like to think that a lot of people never started in the first place. Avoid the series and you’re gonna be golden.

Overall 0/10

Sherlock Bones Review

Posted on January 28, 2017 by dreager1

I started this series back in 2014 so it’s cool to have finally taken it down for the count. It’s a pretty unique mystery series that did some things pretty well. That being said, it is held back quite a bit by the unnecessary fanservice that pops up throughout. Seriously, whyyyyyy? Fanservice is always a bad thing, but it’s even worse when it’s just thrown in for no reason like in Fairy Tail. Even the poor dead victims in this series are used for fanservice, which is pretty sad.

Takeru was just an ordinary kid when he ran into a magical dog. It turns out that Sherlock Holmes has been reincarnated as a dog for some reason. He doesn’t know exactly why this happened and the viewers won’t either since the series ended before we could have a resolution to that plot. Regardless, he tells Takeru that they should solve a bunch of crimes and this inspired Takeru to be a junior detective and then to eventually join the police force. He’ll have to catch a lot of criminals but with the help of the greatest detective in the world, it’ll be easy right?

One major switch that this series does instead of the conventional detective titles if you always know who the culprit is from the start. The chapters typically start off with us seeing the murder and then seeing the victim hide the evidence and create the alibi. It’s a rather interesting look at the crime because in other titles you only see these things through flashbacks or testimony like in Detective Conan. We then have to see how Takeru will put the pieces together and prove it. It’s a very unique method of showing a murder mystery and I thought that the series did a really good job of it.

Unfortunately, that couldn’t save the series from its biggest issue of all, fanservice. The series had a habit of throwing it in just about every volume. Victims would have their clothes tattered a little, Takeru would walk in on people still changing, and others would just strip because Sherlock couldn’t control himself. There is a plot twist at the end about how Sherlock actually could control himself though so that makes things even worse. Regardless, it was always added just for sales and more views I suppose, but it made the series a little more low-brow than it should have been. You never see Detective Conan using tricks like that now do you? It’s really just the author admitting that he/she needs fanservice in order for the volumes to sell and that’s sad.

Takeru is a pretty good main character. He gradually gets smarter as the series goes on and never loses his nerve. He does a good job of putting on the pressure and manages to solve quite a lot of cases. Sherlock does a lot of the work, but Takeru is still tasked with most of the hard jobs. That makes their partnership pretty equal. Takeru may not be Conan, but he’s still a fun lead to have around and the series would dip quite a bit without him. After all, Sherlock Holmes actually isn’t all that great as a main character. The running gag of him turning into a regular dog at times is really annoying and always leads to crude humor. As a dog, he talks a good game, but still manages to lose to his animal instincts after a while. He was needed as a character to get Takeru invested in the mysteries I suppose, but since his plot never actually went anywhere, it ultimately felt pointless. I’d have just preferred Takeru be a solo act by the end. Maybe Sherlock’s plot would have been cooler by the end if it had been resolved, but since it was not..the character wasn’t as impactful as you would have hoped.

Miki is Takeru’s friend and she shows up once in a while. As a reporter in training, she helps give Takeru an excuse to interrogate suspects at times and she loves being a part of the sleuthing process. She certainly came to Takeru’s aid quite a few times to save him from jams. Miki’s a nice enough character, but as she rarely got to appear, it is hard to say much else for her. That’s a nice start though. Airin is Takeru’s sister and she makes most of the actual arrests. After all, Takeru isn’t exactly authorized to do much once he finds the suspect so her police skills come in handy. She tends to underestimate him a lot though, but I suppose it’s warranted since he was never much of a detective before Sherlock came around.

Finally, we have Kento. He’s the hardcore rival from America and one of the more enjoyable characters. That being said, he is very extreme when he first shows up. He wants to spite Takeru so much that he actively tries to help criminals by giving them a good cover story and trying to poke holes in Takeru’s logic. Naturally, this doesn’t work since the truth can’t be covered up, but it does make him look bad. Still, Kento is supposed to be a genius in his own right and he does help solve some cases. By the end of the series, he does get along with Takeru and their partnership should be very effective in stopping crimes.

Sherlock Bones had good artwork. The characters are all very detailed and the art makes it easy to look at a page and see everything at once. It uses a lot of ink for dramatic moments and all of the villains have true faces which pop up. They end up looking pretty demonic and sinister which always adds a nice touch. The heroes are really the only characters who don’t suddenly turn crazy as everyone else goes bonkers once their plans are foiled.

Overall, Sherlock Bones didn’t last all that long. It had the makings of a good mystery series and without the fanservice, I’d probably have given it a 6. It was fun enough, but could have done more with the plot. Detective Conan can get away with having its plot move at a snail’s pace because the individual cases are always interesting and very well written. The cases here are also thought out fairly well, but they aren’t nearly as detailed and since you always know who did it, part of the mystery is solved for you. It’s a great change of pace and I wouldn’t mind Conan doing it sometimes, but I also want mysteries where you have to figure out who did it. Part of the fun in a case is figuring out who did it right? If you can get past the fanservice then this is a decent series to read, but at the same time you should probably just read a better detective series like Detective Conan or Zodiac P.I. Those have the mysteries without the dicey parts so that’s a plus.

Overall 4/10

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