This series had some mild promise, but quickly jumped the shark with excessive darkness and unlikable characters. I don’t see this series saving itself anytime soon. I will have a review for it when the series ends.
Overall 1/10
Well, it seems like this series ended a while ago with 8 chapters before the it kept going on as a Sonic and the Black Knight series. Unfortunately, only the first two chapters have been translated thus far. Someone else has uploaded the full raws so hopefully someday they will be translated. If they are, I’ll end up reviewing it. As it stands, it’s a decent comedy adventure. It’s not 4 Koma which is an instant positive and the art got good starting with the second chapter.
Overall 6/10
Well, The Tsubasa sequel has reached its conclusion. It ended with only 19 chapters so it was quite short, but since this was monthly, it actually lasted around 2 years and a half. Now that’s scary considering how little it accomplished. Unfortunately, I can’t say that it was a good series. It started with some minor promise, but ended up being quite boring, uneventful, and just plain bad. It really could have been decent, but I feel like Clamp never knew what they wanted to do with the series. It virtually didn’t even have a plot as Syaoran and friends were just fed tale after tale after tale. The series just ends and you’re left wondering what was accomplished here. Now, it’s not completely necessary that something is accomplished. Sometimes a sequel can just be for fun to see the characters again and watch their adventures. Just look at Dragon Ball Super or Boruto. That being said, both of those didn’t end in 19 chapters (I doubt they will anyway) and will probably get an actual serious plot at some point. That never happened in Tsubasa nor will it happen since World Chronicle is already over.
Syaoran and friends were enjoying their eternal banishment due to the events of the original Tsubasa series when they are approached by a mysterious lady who tells Syaoran that he is her world’s last hope. The world of the dead and the world of the living are both joined to an extent. The only hope for the dead is for Syaoran to go and revive them, but should he really bring these people back. Is it even possible and what does it mean for the world of the living? He’ll also have to destroy a friend to bring back the others which is…dicey to say the least.
There are a lot of problems with the series. One of the main ones is the fact that the team dynamic isn’t very good. Honestly, I feel like the team really needs Sakura back or a new member at this point. None of the main characters are particularly interesting since they are all watered down versions of themselves. Fai’s only role in the series is to constantly tease Kurogane, which gets old incredibly quick since it is the same old tired joke chapter after chapter. Not to mention that Fai isn’t really a fighter anymore. To think that he used to get a lot of hype and had a good amount of magical talent. He could be a decent character at times, but take that away and you have a very boring supporting role.
Meanwhile, Kurogane is supposed to be the tough guy of the group, but he simply can’t keep up with the new fighters. He talks a good game, but rarely fights anymore. He reminds me of Zoro, but a far weaker and less imposing version of the character. Yes, he’s basically New World Zoro. He’s not a bad character like Fai though, but he simply doesn’t add much to the series and definitely adds nothing to the banter. As for Syaoran, he’s your average heroic lead I suppose. He’s always thinking and tries to do the right thing. He’s a good kid, but also comes across as rather soulless. Not heartless, but he doesn’t have a great deal of personality. He just goes through the motions of being heroic, but that’s about it. Fighting his shadow self was also a little dicey, but he held back enough and stopped fighting so I’d say that he did a good job there.
There are many examples of good shows that didn’t have a good rapport among the characters. Naruto is a great series, but the characters definitely could not hold a slice of life series. Likewise with Bleach. Meanwhile, Yu Yu Hakusho, Hunter X Hunter, and DBZ could effortlessly lead a slice of life series where nothing happens for 50+ episodes. It just comes down to whether or not the characters are charismatic. I’m not saying that Naruto characters are bad, but they need fights. Tsubasa is like that. The main characters really look terrible because there is no action. If there was more of an actual plot, then I’m sure that the main cast would have been more likable like in the original series.
The art is fairly clear, but it can also get chaotic whenever any action is occurring. That’s really a Clamp tradition at this point though so it’s to be expected. The important thing is that it usually looks clear so I’ll give them a pass there. It could still use a decent upgrade though and hopefully they’ll be ready for the upcoming Cardcaptor Sakura sequel. If handled right, that one should be able to surpass this title with ease.
After all, this series spent a few chapters just fighting evil animals (Bad move Clamp!) and trying to survive amidst an evil forest. That’s not very exciting material. At least Clamp didn’t contradict their no cop-outs strategy from the other titles. The concept of the dead being able to come back to life would have definitely gone against the whole Clamp universe. xxxHolic’s a key example of how a whole series/plot is about one character’s death and how she can never return no matter how many fancy spells are used. In the Clamp universe, once a character is dead, they’re staying that way. Sure, the spirit can talk with wise words of advice, but coming back to the real world in a corporal body is out of the question. Syaoran realized that by the end so at least he didn’t begin to jeopardize the real world as well. Chase after too many things and you’ll wind up losing them all. Although in World Chronicle’s case, it didn’t chase after enough things.
The ending does state that the story will continue back in xxxholic Rei so hopefully that title can use its momentum to push things forward. It had been fairly interesting. Part of what helps it is that the cast is better and while it is also pretty aimless it is better suited for it. Rei is all about mysteries and spirits causing mischief after all and the locale is better. If any Clamp title can grab Tsubasa’s plot and improve on it, then xxxholic’s the way to go.
Overall, World Chronicle was definitely a let down. It was consistently fighting for last place every month for the last 3 years. There were no chapters that were particularly exciting and even Syaoran’s rematch against Dark Syaoran came out of nowhere and wasn’t that enjoyable. It was a decent fight, but there was no reason for it and the battle was basically filler so it was hard to care about what was happening on screen. That’s the problem with deciding that plot is expendable and then still trying to have a serious fantasy adventure. Remember Dimension W folks? Not from my blog as I haven’t reviewed it yet, but that’s probably the token example of why you should focus on your plot before attempting to go placed. World Chronicle is still a class act for the most part as it steers away from things like super violence or fanservice, but there isn’t much going for it either. The biggest crime that it commits is being very boring, but that’s a serious offense for any manga. If you want to read a calming title about a few people aimlessly wandering around then you may enjoy this title. If not, then you may not want to spoil your Tsubasa memories and you should just go re read the original series instead. You’ll certainly get a lot more out of it.
Overall 4/10
All right, I’ve finally started the super popular One Punch Man series. It’s definitely a lot better than the other insta hits like Sword Art Online and Attack on Titan. This series shows a lot of promise and could go down as one of the better titles if it can keep up the momentum. I’ll have a review for the series when it finishes.
Overall 7/10
Boruto is the sequel to the Naruto series so it will have a lot of pressure. It’s going to be very hard to live up to one of the most successful series of all time, but hopefully it can manage to be great. The series is off to a decent start. The art may need a bit of work and the upcoming plot seems to read like a generic fanfic, but as long as we get some good battle scenes then it should be fine. I doubt this will be ending for quite a few years, but when it does I’ll be sure to have a review up for it.
Overall 7/10
It’s hard to believe that I started this manga way back in January 2015. It’s been a long run, but now I have finally finished the series. It does a good job of following the Adam West esque format and most of these stories feel like they could have been from the comics. The volumes make for a fun read even if they never do anything to take the series to the next level. It’s a good story, but don’t look for anything beyond that.
There isn’t really an ongoing plot for the series as you may expect. Each story is roughly 3-5 parts though so the cases get a lot of screen time for the necessary plot. As such, there is never much of a need for an ongoing plot because weekly (If the series was in that format) it would have sort of had a plot. Of course, an ongoing plot could have certainly helped to have upped the stakes by the end of the series.
Batman is portrayed pretty accurately. Once in a while he’ll seem a little hurried or our of character with the occasional “Shut Up” comebacks to the villains though. It’s hard to picture Batman saying that. On the other hand, they do a good job of trying to make Batman extremely heroic to the point where he sometimes misses the obvious because of this. A good example occurs in the final volume. A mysterious shape shifter had already gotten the better of Batman and Robin twice. The next morning it is reported in the Newspaper that a new art piece has been added to the masters collection from a rather rich collector. She only allows world famous art to go in this collection typically so it this is odd right? Robin quickly points out that the timing of this is suspect, but Batman disagrees.
He says that anyone has the potential to be a masterpiece so this mysterious fellow must have just made a great piece. It couldn’t have anything to do with the shape shifter and there’s no way that this collector is being forced into letting the piece in. After all, Batman wants to prove that dedication can always win in the end. Robin urges Batman to check anyway though so they go and lo and behold, the art piece was actually the shape shifting villain. Batman’s always looking for a good moral to the point where it nearly cost the heroes dearly.
Batman also murders a guy by throwing a really heavy object at his head. It’s never really brought up and smoothed over rather quickly with Batman’s justification that he had to do this to save Robin. It was a tense situation and Robin was about to die so you have to decide whether this was the right move or not. Personally, I think there were a lot of other ways Batman could have stopped the villain so the scene was a little dicey. As for Robin, he’s in character the whole time. He’s always getting defeated in a fight and tends to be a liability. That being said, as in the example above, he does pick up on things quicker than Batman at times. If there is a moral to cloud Batman’s judgment, you can count on Robin to get the right answer first.
The series is 3 big volumes long so maybe that’d be closer to 5-6 if they were normal sized. Most of the villains are made up for the series so it’s hard to remember a lot of their names. Lord Death Man is certainly the fan favorite and he even made it into the Batman Brave and the Bold TV show. He is really good at escaping death even if he may have ultimately gone down one too many times by the end. There was a guy who believed that his cape made him invincible. By the end of his arc the twist was that it was all phony, but this explanation is a little dicey at best. Before that, we saw him survive some sure death scenarios. The characters say that he was lucky by the end, but that’s hard to buy. He fell a great distance into the rocks that led to the ocean. He could not have dodged from his angle so the cape had to have some super properties to it right? If it was total luck, then I think the writers probably did not think it through.
Another story arc parodied how dark the Batman comics have gotten in later years. At the time, it was probably more of a hypothetical though. In a TV show, Batman and Robin used intense methods to subdue the villains and the bad guys in the real world began to fear the Dynamic Duo. Batman wants to win his battles with one liners and friendship so he went to the station to shut down this program, but ended up getting kidnapped instead by the end. Still, the moral was that even villains always have a chance so scaring them right from the start is just not the right move this time.
We also had a nice robot arc which showed how important Batman and Robin are to the community. These robots can break and can’t think on their feet the way that the Dynamic Duo can. In the end, the police get rid of the robots because they’d rather have Batman save the day. The thing is, Batman and Robin can’t protect everyone forever and Batman acknowledges this, but says that it’s a problem for another day…maybe he’s right.
Another one was inspired by Star Trek or vice versa. Some super intelligent aliens decided to kidnap Batman and Robin so they could fight in space against a few other species. It was a 4 group free for all with Batman and Robin getting completely wrecked in each fight until they finally got the other aliens to team up with them and defeat the host. It goes to show that sometimes special powers can really come in handy.
There are a lot of other comic arcs to be found in the series, but those were just some examples. As the volumes are quite large, there’s enough time to get in quite a few adventures. I have only covered a fraction of the stories that are in the collection so if you want to see more of them, buy the volumes!
The art for the series is solid. All of the characters look fairly accurate to their traditional selves and we do get some fun fight scenes. The manga is very old which you can certainly tell as you read through the series, but it’s not dated in a bad way. It looks sharp and ultimately that’s really what matters in the end. Clear and sharp makes for a good combo when it comes to manga.
Overall, The Batman manga is a fun experience. It’s like reading through the lost season of the Adam West adventures. He fights against a large variety of villains and Bruce Wayne also gets to appear quite a bit so it’s not as if he’s Batman 24/7. Of course, this Bruce Wayne is typically pretty noble and similar to Batman, which makes for an interesting dynamic. I sort of wish Bruce was always like that in the current comics and movies as well. No reason why they can’t both be super heroic right?
Overall 7/10
Could this be the best Sword Art Online manga yet? It’s certainly off to a good start and I’ve been waiting to have action like this. I’ll have a review for the series up when it’s finished so hopefully it can stay strong!
Overall 7/10
I’m not typically a fan of these 4 Koma adventures and unfortunately this series doesn’t break the trend. It’s a lot better than the Chibi titles like Rock Lee or Sasuke’s series, but there’s not a whole lot that you can do with 4 Koma and the jokes are already starting to be reused. I haven’t even read chapter 2 yet so you can imagine the repetition once I’m past #50. I’ll have a review for the series up when it’s done though so maybe things will change.
Overall 4/10
A spinoff series for short stories eh? Should be intriguing and I like the concept. It would be great for most series, but I’m not sure if it’ll work for Sailor Moon since the characters were never its strong suit. I’ll have a review for it when I finish the series though and it’s not particularly long so prepare yourself! If you’re a big fan of the franchise, then you should have a blast with it.
Overall 5/10
Most manga and anime titles may start out a little nonsensical, but then everything clears up once the battles start. Every plot can be followed as long as you have flashy fights, but once in a while you end up meeting an exception. That would be 07 Ghost, a series that never bothered to clear itself up and instead it ends up just as convoluted as it originally started. I don’t mind complexity, but most of 07 Ghost was simply padding and distracted you from the plot and the art did not help with this either. A lot of the characters looked similar by the end and there were also many time jumps between the past and the present to keep you guessing. The only other series as confusing as this one would be Pandora Hearts and even that one started to make some sense towards the end once the climax of the series happened. 07 Ghost can’t really say the same nor was the character cast quite as good.
Well, there was once a slave who was forced to serve in gladiatorial fights, but he finally escaped one day. He was placed under the protection of a few shinigami who work under divine powers. They are very powerful and intend to protect him. To provide some more context thanks to Wikipedia, Teito had escaped along with his friend (Who died shortly afterwards) and then took sanctuary inside of the Church where the bishops protected him. In case you have not suspected yet, the bishops are the shinigamis and even the villains do not dare to attack the Church…yet. Teito is the chosen one and he has “The Eye” which means that there is another person living inside of him who aims to protect Teito at all costs. In order to fulfill this objective, he is given great levels of power. The enemy country wants this power so they can blow people up. The villains are already on the brink of taking over the world so obtaining the eye would mean Game Over for all.
The series could have been a lot better, but again, the plot makes no real sense at times. It’s like the author is just trying to stay afloat in the popularity rankings and adds as many interesting plot ideas as possible, but with no way to sew them all together. With series like Naruto and Bleach, the plot is so simple that you can read it while half asleep. With Ghost, you’ll want to re read and re read, but there is rarely time for that sort of thing. Instead, you just roll with whatever’s happening and just hope for the best. Perhaps you can still enjoy the fights if nothing else.
Also, being convoluted is not necessarily the same as being intricate. Death Note, Hunter X Hunter, One Piece, and Liar Game are intricate. Those series have been well thought out in advance and are able to add in dozens of characters or lines of logic without leaving the reader behind. It’s easy to see where the series are headed at all points. In particular, Liar Game was always able to think of incredibly complex games where many different plans would be implemented only to have someone else counter it. It was like a real life version of Chess although I’ll discuss it more in an upcoming review. In 07 Ghost, it’s more like the author had a vague idea of what he wanted to do and then filled the story with so many pointless details that you ended up losing perspective of the actual plot.
As already mentioned, the art is pretty iffy during the battles. Whenever an action scene occurs, you’ll have to strain yourself to keep up with what’s happening. It doesn’t help that the “magic” in this series is all water color based so everything’s dripping across the pages. It’s hard to even tell what kind of spell is being used as a result and it’s probably the worst depiction of magic that I’ve seen in quite a bit. Many of the characters look very similar so good luck keeping up with the names by the end of the series.
However, the art can be downright great when it comes to scenes without any movement. I actually had a decently tough time choosing the images for this review since there are so many good ones. The author knows how to draw a visual that you’ll find exciting to look at. It helps that the true Shinigami forms that most of the characters have can be quite good and a lot of the weapons are shadow based so those are epic as well.
Perhaps that’s the most frustrating thing about the series and why I cut it so much slack on the premise of possibly enjoying it more a second time around. If you can get through all of the fluff and the unnecessary side adventures and plots, you’ve got a real good story here. Seeing the death gods choose who goes where and Teito trying to escape from his past are two plots that can certainly work well. The main villain was pretty intense and there were many parts that showed some promise throughout the series. Give the title better artwork, erase a few characters and this could have easily been a great title. Of course, you could fill a book series with the amount of what ifs that you encounter in life.
Teito’s a decent main character, but he doesn’t have a lot going for him that other heroes don’t already possess. He’s a decently nice guy who wants to move past his shady past of being an assassin. Throughout the series he tries to find out more about those days and his plot is similar to Cammy’s from Street Fighter. When the third eye is activated, another being from inside of him takes control and he’s easily one of the best characters in the series. Probably second to Ayanami. He can fight and “Shadow Teito” never backs down from a fight. It’s a shame that he’s not immune to telepathy though as that trick seems to always work against him. There’s another angel being inside another kid who ends up fighting Teito at one point, but it’s a plot that never really went anywhere or it simply wasn’t as developed as it could have been.
Frau’s the main character of the bishops and is arguably the strongest one. He wants to help Teito on his quest and is typically proficient at just about any activity. He’d be a great character if not for the completely unnecessary trait of him being an immoral guy…even though he’s a Bishop. That doesn’t even get brought up all that often so there was really no point to including the trait. Still, it’s there and Frau quickly died as far as the character roster went. The other Bishops are around and they get to fight once and a while, but none of them ever got a big role. Still, there was a big twist involving the true mastermind behind the whole series that was fairly neat.
Ayanami is the main villain of the series and he’s easily the most interesting character. At times you do wonder why he’s doing what he’s doing, but then again, does a villain even need a reason sometimes? He has some faithful followers and it’s hinted that he wasn’t always such a bad guy. He has a lot of abilities and he’s one of the only characters who can hold his own against a Bishop without actually being one of them. He’s also fairly cunning and was able to trap Teito in a realistic dream which completely simulated the real world except for the fact that Teito was on the villain side this time.
The thing is, Ayanami’s a villain, but most of his underlings don’t even know it since they operate from a government base as well as the school next door. In fact, Teito becomes friends with quite a few of the characters there during that time until he realizes what has happened. Ayanami’s abilities are difficult to explain as you would expect from this series, but at the very least they all look pretty cool so that’s got to count for something right?
Most of the other characters are around, but they don’t have a lot of presence. Teito has a best friend, but he dies almost immediately in volume 1 and for the rest of the series we just have an animal who was named after him. It’s hinted several times that he could be the reincarnated form of the friend, but it could also just be Teito being desperate for a friend and just hoping that this is the case. That is also hinted at several points in the series. Other characters can be a little annoying like a little orphan that Teito took care of for a while. He certainly didn’t add anything to the series, which you could say about a lot of the characters.
The series was long, but you couldn’t really get invested into what was happening due to the lackluster characters and the artwork. Technically, a lot of the plot revolves around the fact that two countries were at war way back in the day and after one of them lost, the government took control and Ayanami is one of the corrupt heads who leads them. There’s no political intrigue to really speak of and that’s a shame since I always love to see politics in these kinds of things.
Not that most people really care about the power levels, but I wouldn’t say that the characters are all that strong in this series. Some of them have a decent amount of magical power at their disposal, but I wasn’t overly impressed with any of the speed feats that were shown. These guys may be around Kenshin level and slightly higher, but considering that they’re death gods, you’d expect them to be a little more impressive. One of the bishop’s had string abilities which were impressive. If only he was physically able to keep up with his opponents, he would be a very strong fighter. At the very least, the Bishops have a decent amount of immortality, but it’s not quite legitimate compared to most immortals.
It’s also worth noting that this series did a really good job of avoiding the fanservice trap. I can’t think of any scene that featured any. Granted, it’s been quite a while since I read the series (This review’s been on the backlog for a while) but if there was any, it was very slight. That’s another positive for the series and it’d be good if more titles could follow this one’s example.
Overall, I can’t say that I enjoyed 07 Ghost all that much. None of the characters were very inspiring and the whole series was very confusing. That being said, I’ll give it some props for still being fairly interesting and I do think that it would be considerably more entertaining with a re-read, but you would need to have all of the volumes in front of you so that you can marathon it. As far as I’m concerned, that’s really the only way to get the maximum amount of enjoyment from this. The only series that’s more confusing than this one is Pandora Hearts and I personally think that 07 Ghost is better, but it’ll be interesting to see if any other titles can surpass those 2 someday. If you want a very convoluted story, this one’s up your ally. Otherwise, I’d recommend going for an action that’s not as all over the place like Heroman!
Overall 6/10
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