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Aug 1, 2021
You don't hear this often, but just go watch the anime. The manga is a waste of time. Spoilers, by the way.
This manga suffers from a really bad case of "should have ended a long time ago". The first 20 to 40 chapters of this manga are really solid. Top tier shoujo romance, with good characters, interesting interactions, light and compelling story. That doesn't last long though, things get rough, and they get rough fast and they don't get better.
The first bit of the manga, about up to where the anime ends, is the only real enjoyable and worthwhile part of the series. The drama
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isn't too overblown, the characters are largely enjoyable and complement each other quite well, and the story doesn't have any real flaws. It was really quite good enough for me to consider it one of my "favourites" and a gold standard for shoujo romance. After that little honeymoon phase the story takes a repetitive turn wherein the characters continuously degrade and the general plot stagnates.
Chapters (roughly) 40-110 can be summarized in one phrase: "Your princess is in another castle". The plot from this point forwards is basically Nike gets kidnapped, gets a little Stockholm syndrome, NTR bait, Livius rescues her useless ass, and she defends the people who kidnapped her because "they had a good reason". The problem is over, and everyone lives happy every after*... until Nike gets kidnapped again. This same plotline happens literally three times, and is literally the same exact shit, with just a new skin / villain. This gets real old, real fast, and does little to develop the characters, or the plot (which comes in real hard, last minute, and not in a good way).
This hurts Nike as a character and the general story because we don't see her relationship with Livius develop (which is the literally supposed to be the focus of the series). Nike prior to Livius was carefree, naive but strongwilled, took her blows in stride and knew what she wanted. Afterwards, we begin to resent her as a character because she defends villains very clearly in the wrong and does so by directly opposing Livius who is in the right, both as a King and a husband, seeking retribution / punishment. We also see some half-assed NTR bait where the captors fall in love with her because she's so nice and she does little to rebuke it or even notice it, and when Nike and Livius do meet up after all this, they make each other worse people, and worse monarchs, either through their nonsense fights, or general character regression. Nike somehow continues to become more, and more naive as this repeated kidnap nonsense occurs, the direct opposite of what you would think should happen. She also ends up combative with only Livius too, almost as if he is the villain who kidnapped her or is in the wrong for wanting to retaliate, as a King should. At least if he wants to keep his head. Nike goes through no meaningful character development until the end of the manga, which has to asspull it.
Livius becomes an awful king and weak person. Livius prior to Nike was a cold, callous, and maybe even a cruel king, but an effective one, who largely improved the lives of his citizens, and the country, as well as the surrounding areas / countries. As a person, he was a checked out, distrustful, but moral, intelligent, and logical. After Nike, the prodigious king becomes an idiotic emotional child. He loses his conviction, his ability to rule, his logical nature, and becomes a weak, whipped, angry child who has nothing to offer as a spouse or as a king. He is worse off from having met Nike (until the end which obviously has to asspull progression), he trades his old personality flaws, which he managed to capitalize on, and trades them for new ones he cannot capitalize one that have essentially no merit, that never could have built the country he has.
The side characters, villains, and other characters honestly aren't worth mentioning, they're very one note, and none of them have any real serious development / regression, at least when compared to the two main characters. The villains are pretty pathetic, either in their justifications for whatever their plot relevant actions are, or general personalities which seem to revolve around Livius or Nike, or both of them, in some ridiculous manner. The side characters are really overshadowed by the leads which do not really allow them develop or take any meaningful spotlight. Some of them are pretty interesting / funny, others are generic and whatever. None of them can either save or ruin things however, as the latter has been thoroughly handled by Nike and Livius.
The story and the new villains / characters (for the duration of the kidnap nonsense), often appear and try to guilt Livius and paint him as an awful person for making mistakes, or awful (but justifiable or at least understandable) choices, as a ruler might have to. This often ends up, at least to me, feeling ridiculous, doubly so when we largely view the story through the lens of Livius, and we see the context surrounding these misdeeds, and we remember Livius was a literal child throughout the duration of these events. Sure their motivations are understandable, but even when looking at the story through their eyes, it's really hard to like or sympathize with them, at least from a logical point of view.
After making it through this nonsense we end up in quite possibly the worst boat a fantasy manga / story can end up in, and we ride it all the way until the end of the manga. We end up with a "future past" story-line wherein the setting of the manga actually ends up the results of a now dead hyper advanced civilization, a la Horizon Zero Dawn, except we get literally no indication of this, until it happens over 100 chapters in. This revelation is jarring, out of character (for the manga), and completely unnecessary. It adds little to the overall story, if anything it detracts, and is not even close to the best direction the manga could have gone. It's even more irritating when a "end of the world" sort of apocalypse conspiracy plot line joins in, which is even more jarring and even more out of no where. The only benefits of this is that the manga is ending and we get some half-assed character development. The story is at this point, for all intents and purposes, completely dead, a shell of it's former self, and has all but abandoned its previous romantic / adventure SoL focuses for which it gained a name from and which was the primary redeeming feature of the manga.
The manga ends off exactly how you might expect, with the power of friendship and love, and a little bit of self sacrifice saving the day, before all consequences and sacrifices are wiped away after a timeskip, where everything ends happily ever after. Except no one gives a damn at this point, no one cares about the characters, the story, the manga, at all, anymore. You just end up at an empty, disappointing ending, that honestly, you've probably checked out for the majority of, for a manga you no longer care about, wondering about how good the story could have been if it had gone down a different route.
Seriously, don't read the manga, 20 chapters of greatness is not worth 120 chapter of dreadfulness. Just watch the anime and use your imagination to create a story of where things could have gone, because I guarantee it will be better than what actually happened in the manga.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Mar 25, 2020
I never thought I'd ever say this. Go watch the live action movie, don't waste your time with the anime. Spoilers ahead.
I love anime set in the samurai era, unfortunately this one was a mess. I can't tell if it's because the source material is awful or the adaption was awful because the live action which was extremely trimmed down was pretty enjoyable, but the anime which had far more content (that was still rushed), was far less enjoyable, and frankly sucked. Here's why.
The fundamental story of BoTI is solid and very fitting. The arcs and the villains however are pathetically executed. First the arcs.
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BoTI tries to, and fails, hard, in imitating the iconic atmosphere Monogatari has for one very simple reason. The pacing is shit. BoTI rushes around, drags on, and gets lost each and every arc all simultaneously. It feels like you're watching a show that's being animated as you're watching it.
The show is also extremely gratuitous at times. It constantly has excessive cruelty / gore / rape to remind you it's mature and set in a dangerous world. Something completely unnecessary after a certain point. Constantly shoving that sort of thing in your face is a cheap sleight of hand used to avoid actually addressing mature topics in a mature manner. Having the same character get raped or rape when it adds nothing to the story or atmosphere is irritating and makes you think the author has a sick fetish or is relying on such cheap and easy to achieve emotional actions to distract from the failings of the series.
The story arcs themselves are often based or start with ridiculous nonstarters, and just drag on. In the beginning, like first 3 episodes, it was fine and you could clearly seen potential, but by the 6th, it was gone. The connection between each arc / episode seemed to be disappearing, and by the end, you felt like someone had dosed you with morphine while watching each episode, and struggle to remember what is happening and why. Simply put, what's bad is not particularly the story or the events themselves, but the way they are portrayed and connected to each other.
The characters however, and more particularly the villains are straight awful. Namely Shira, and Ren... (whatever his name was).
Shira was a cheap, boring and easy to write villain. One that got plot armored through half the series as well. I don't want to waste too much time on a rant, so to keep things short; his bone arm is impossible BS, even for an immortal (which he wasn't when he got it). He'd be constantly bleeding, infected and in immobilizing pain greater than you can imagine; any human, super, normal or otherwise, would be dead within a week flat with that thing. There was zero, literally zero, chance he survives in any realistic setting during the waterfall episode. He'd lost his hands, and likely had both vertebral arteries cut (as he'd been nearly cut in half at the both shoulders), and feel an excess of 30ft on (not in) water. He'd have died. As a character, he was boring and had no character traits beyond "I'm evil, let me tell you what evil things I'm doing so I can hurt you". He was entirely predictable and bland, he could be written by any person and slotted into any story. He's no different than SAO's Suguo. A lazy, unexceptional, gratuitous chaotic evil character.
Renzou was a boring child character, not unlike Gabi from SnK. There's nothing much to say about him that the analogy doesn't already convey. He's unnecessary, poorly done, obviously in the wrong and overall a waste of time and space. The other villains / supporting characters are also kind of just there. Kagehisa has a decent enough backstory and motivation, as does his cousin. Not much to write home about or complain about. Taito however was pretty interesting and well done, a very good conditional enemy / ally. Habaki and Co. is also another "whatever" villain. You just don't remember or care much about them.
Manji and Rin. I don't have much of an opinion of Manji, I don't really have any complaints or praises for him. He's just there as far as I'm concerned. Rin is pretty solid most of the time, going through decent enough character arcs, though I find her nativity and naive morality irritating considering that which she endures throughout and prior to the story. (Repeatedly trusting Shira, and the like). She consistently does stupid things which if any genuine character development had happened should have ironed out that issue and prevented those events, which really detracts from this series and her character. A lot of the conflicts involving her would not have happened had the story adequately addressed the development she should have gone through due the events she's endured.
I think the characters are poor because they suffer collectively from the absolutely abysmal story rather than being awful or uninteresting character on their own. At least they all have absolutely fantastic designs, though, the animation does them no justice.
The animation and art is a fucking mess. It goes from decent to shit and everywhere in between throughout the anime. A lot of the time it looks over-saturated and blurry, like someone left a damp film over saran wrap over the lens of the camera or like you're looking through slightly textured plastic. The characters themselves have solid designs, but the lazy animation and poorly done art ruin a lot of the charm they have when the animation is doing well.
The sound is whatever, the OP was unexceptional and something I skipped every time, the OSTs, voice acting, and sound effects were all extremely average and could not salvage this anime in any way.
The manga is seemingly highly regarded, but this anime makes me think the manga is probably shit, and not worth exploring or finding out if my assumption is correct or not. That is an astounding failure, I cannot emphasize how poor this anime was in any other words.
I again genuinely cannot believe that a live action is better than the anime. If you're considering watching this, go watch the LA first. If you dislike it, don't ever think about touching this anime. If you like it or are ambivalent to it, also don't ever touch this anime because it'll ruin any of your affection towards the series. At least, it did for me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Mar 25, 2020
If you think SAO is awful, mediocre or overrated, you should think the exact same about this, or else you might just be a hypocrite. This anime is SAO meets TNY meets Moe Trash, with even more insane plot armor / contrivances than SAO could ever hope to have. Also, spoilers.
Bofuri has absolutely nothing going for it beyond the ever present CGDCT, which wouldn't be a problem or worthy of such a negative rating if not for the game aspect which has lead to an insane amount of the aforementioned plot convenience, awful characters and a litany of other issues.
Bofuri's lack of a (complex) story
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is not too great an issue, what is however an issue is how every single challenge is raised and defeated in a single episode, in particularly contrived manners, usually bordering on, if not shooting straight past the Deus Ex Machina label. Every single challenge the protagonist(s) encounter is immediately resolved by some quirky (RE: Stupid / unreasonable) action from the protagonist. Actions that'd never work in any decently written series, let alone a real game, or are so convenient we'd call it a miracle.
For example, being unable to do damage to the monster due to low stats, so instead eating the monsters in a game, power of friendship, obtaining / using insanely broken skills that'd have been immediately patched out the ass, let alone ever reached deployment (Like a fucking Mecha and Kaijuu skill, on the same character, in a fantasy game? Really?), etc. As someone who's played games, and made them, one of the most irritating things to me is the game balance in this anime, rather, the complete lack of it. No such game would ever exist. Let alone a high profile VRMMO, with a collection of devs. The game this series is set in is just an absolute mess.
Honestly, I don't think explaining it could do justice, I'd just recommend watching each (or a given) episode, because this does happen literally every episode, with two core questions in mind. One, what is the challenge of this episode the characters will face? Two, how is it being resolved? From there you branch off and ask yourself other things such as "Is this resolution reasonable / realistic?", "Would this work in real life?", "Would this happen in real life?", "Do such challenges happen in other anime and how are they resolved?". The answer will be negative 100% of them time. Absolutely nothing in this anime earned, not the skills, not the victories, nothing. And while yes, that is sometimes the joke, there is a line and that joke cannot be used as an excuse for every single challenge that appears to be immediately dismissed and resolved, regardless of the magnitude of it. And since it is used as such, and never with an acceptable / believable justification, you know that the protagonists are never, ever going to lose a fight or encounter any genuine challenge. And that is a problem. Everything is handed to them.
The characters are paper thin, even for anime, even for CGDCT. Not a single person ever deviates beyond the rigid outline set for them, none of them do anything unique, there's no conflict, no surprises, no distinguishing features. They're just archetypes, not characters. Maple is the quirky cute Mary Sue protagonist who never runs into a problem that cannot be immediately Deus Ex Machina'd out of. Sally is cool, smart supportive best friend. Yui & Mai are extremely lazy carbon copy mirror images of each other that have effectively no character beyond "cute" and "strong" which is probably meant to be an interesting contrast / gap moe. Kuromu is the token male character protagonist who is a helpful manly big brother, but constantly kept at arms length to avoid angering certain fanbases. Kanade is a clever androgynous character who isn't very physical, that's it. Kasumi is the cool older sister type. And Iz is the helpful big sister. None of them have any depth beyond that, and I think those descriptions are enough to predict every action they take through-out the series. The characters are hollow archetypes with insanely predictable behaviours.
The voice acting and music are both very average, nothing worth complaining about or particularly praising. The only thing that I'd particularly note on is the sound effects when announcing a skill. Other than that, it was entirely forgettable, no high impact / memorable music, no exceptional voice acting, especially not from the main, main cast. The best VAs are probably Kuromu's VA and Mii's, both of whom have a backseat 95% of the story.
Art is another average not worth mentioning too much. It's very colorful which is nice, but has a somewhat boring and cliche style that you'll find in a dozen given anime each season. The character designs are a mixed bag. On many occasions they are insanely overdone, even for anime. On some occasions, they're pretty interesting. Yui and Mai are a fantastic example of lazy and overdone, especially once they get their armor. I don't even know where to begin with them, the obvious color dichtomy with the somewhat distasteful color streaks, the ridiculous armor design, the comically sized hammers. Mii, Iz, Kuromu (Original), on the otherhand are fairly good. Kuromu 2.0 however is justy plain edgy. As are the monster and mecha skills, which are insanely ridiculous and out of place.
Animation is something I never really talk about unless it's exception or exceptionally bad (looking at you 7 Deadly Sins), so I've essentially ignored here, since it's neither worth complaining about or praising.
I get that I'm criticizing the joke this show was going for, but it's because I don't think it did a very good job. If you want to or are capable of turning your brain off and watching something flashy, this is a good enough watch. If you pay any modicum of attention and take the show seriously however, the irritations will pile up real fast. Bofuri succeeds in appealing to a specific niche, but more broadly as an anime and as a story, it's pretty astounding failure.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Feb 19, 2019
This is what happens when teenage girls from tumblr meet r/im14andthisisdeep and feminism.
This is an incredibly self deprecating, and nonsensical scribble that reads like a manga fanfiction of 50 Shades of Grey. It's a poor imitation of the aesthetic that manga like Pun Pun or Sangatsu no Lion succeed in creating, but instead of focusing on depression like those manga, it focuses on perceived women's rights issues. This manga attempts to convey a message through what some call "melancholy bait", the general atmosphere a manga has when it tries to appeal to a mature audience and convey a message on a complicated or taboo
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topic by means of explicit realism and representation of the negative events that accompany those topics. Simply put, the manga tries to appear mature and convey some grand message of a prevalent issue in society or with humans in general, an attempt (key word being attempt) which would be admirable if it didn't demonize men and victimize women.
The actions of the characters in this manga are unnatural, no two ways about it, and serve to paint a narrative of the author's ideology. The women are children, they have no capacity for common sense, independence or emotional maturity. The manga tries to paint women as powerless victims of men and that they have absolutely no avenues to defend themselves or seek support from. The men are all villains or villains in the making; men are either a rapist, a misogynist, a womanizer, or a fool. The men are also emotionally and intellectually immature and fit all the stereotypes misandrists dream of. Regardless of gender, the characters do not behave like humans, they don't seem to think about what to do in any given case and instead act entirely on the impulse of "what would make the best story", actions that result in over-dramatic and implausible events that are overturned or contradicted shortly after.
The actions of the characters and the situations that arise in general within the manga are extremely contrived and only seem to exist to offer an avenue to convey that ideology & message, both of which are conveyed quite poorly as the author seems to have an extremely poor understanding of them, an issue which is further compounded by her poor creative writing skills and poor understanding and unrealistic depiction of basic human psychology and behavior. The story and characters constantly bend and twist to unnaturally fit the protagonist, whether that be to accommodate completely nonsensical actions, morally or psychologically justify her absurdities, or her generic platitudes & speeches instead of taking the time and putting in the effort to convey it naturally. Frankly, the entirety of the story of this manga is best described as ideological propaganda, conversion material, or a self-insert, virtue signalling, narcissistic, ideological ego stroke.
Lastly, the manga puts in no effort, it takes the most predictable roads and platitudes to justify or explain the behavior of the characters in this manga. It doesn't take the time, or put in the effort to be unique or well done. It just slaps in a couple of pages or maybe a chapter or two as an explanation for whatever soapbox the characters happen to be on at the time. It's almost masochistic and certainly narcissistic. I feel it could be described as someone trying to make a grand comment on sexism in society and biology, someone who doesn't know what either of those words mean or any of the arguments against her position.
It'd be incredibly difficult to aptly describe the ridiculousness of the story and characters of this manga further than that. I hope that's enough to scare away anyone as stupid as me, anyone who would decide to read this because of the pretty cover art. Don't be fooled like me.
Edit: According to a June 2022 interview, the author (Who married and divorced the author of PunPun) has acknowledged that she is a feminist, who was trying to convey her feminist ideas in her manga, so it seems I was quite correct about her being an ideologically driven activist with an incredibly low resolution understanding of the ideas she was trying to convey in her (not-so) borderline man-hating misandrist propaganda manga. Not a surprising revelation.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Sep 22, 2018
My mother always said if you don't anything nice to say about someone, don't say anything at all. Thankfully, this nightmare (and not the scarey kind, ironically) isn't a person.
The summary is a cookie cutout of a typical mystery archetype / story setting. The amnesiac in a strange place. Then there's the weird anime twists with a murder with a scythe who laughs like a popcorn machine with a fork in it. Anyways, nothing overtly special or any red flags in the summary. Except for maybe that stupid little bit about fate. Doubt fate locked you in a building. Moving on. Why it's bad.
The mystery
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as shown in the summary / template isn't anything inherently special. The story writer, the original author or whoever had most input in the anime clearly didn't do anything to improve on that lack of specialty. Nothing interesting or unpredictable happened. In fact it's was the exact opposite. Entirely predictable and boring. Something that kinda shouldn't happen in a mystery horror. The dialogue, events and motivations of characters are tragic. And not in the Romeo and Juliet sense. Mystery isn't an excuse for poor character building, and lack of background knowledge. The procedural, unchanging a repetitive events that last 2 - 4 episodes which only difference from the last arc is a new murderer on a new floor. The shoe horned, poorly thought out religious malformed mutations that embodies every stereotypical and unconvincing religious standpoint or assertion didn't help improve the series either. Lastly, the unsurprising, unoriginal and boring ending didn't improve upon any of the incredibly low bows this series set.
Each floor's murder was uninteresting to say the least. Not ideal for a psychopathic killer in a building of psychopathic murderers. The only difference in their quality or interest to the main characters is due to their lack of presence in the overall story. Which ironically is a good thing. They were already glaringly hypocritical, illogical and or inconsistent. The lack of empathy, fear or genuine interest they inspired would only be compounded by a continued presence. If you switched the names, orders, faces, stories or anything you really want about them, it'd have essentially zero significant impact on the story. The only truly impactful side character is the priest, and his impact is just as rooted in illogical fallacy as are the actions and beliefs of Rachel, the moving doll who's only redeeming feature is she doesn't talk or make as much noise as Zack. The more I see of the dynamic duo of dipshits known as our main characters the more problems I have. Completely uninteresting, unoriginal, unchanging cookie cutter archetype side characters are better than completely uninteresting, unchanging, illogical and irritating main characters. Zack is irritating to say the least. He's exactly what'd you expect a teenager would imagine a teenage murderer to be. He, like all of the characters, is uninteresting and has little originality. Aside from his backstory, which is neither good nor exceptionally bad, he lacks depth and personality or change. It's like someone took Jason and animified him. Rachel on the other hand has literally had no personality. There was nothing interesting about her, her backstory or her actions. She's inconsistent and illogical. Wants to die, but suicide is wrong. Killing people? Eh whatever. Oh this psychopathic murderer will kill me if I help him? Perfect. No problems. This other psychopathic murderer will kill me? Nope. No good, the first one already promised god. Her fundamental perception and practice of religion is insulting even to me as a non believer, I can only imagine how irritating it'd be an actual respectable theologian, not that bad stereotype of a Messiah complex evil priest.
I don't even need to say anything about the voice acting. Zack's voice and laughing makes me want to gouge out my ears with a pair of chopsticks. It's not intimidating or scary. If I heard that in the dark I wouldn't run for the hills. I'd tell the fucker to shut up and cut out his vocal cords if he tried to kill me with his gardening tools. Not exactly what a murderer's 'evil laugh' should inspire. Rachel's entire personality was nothing. Flat, emotionless and unchanging. Guess having no standards is one way to avoid criticism.
I've seriously seen characters who don't talk AT ALL that have better voice acting than Rachel. High Score Girl's Oono is a perfect example. More emotion is conveyed in essentially coughs, grunts and literally no words than any and every word Rachel uttered. As for music. Everyone knows music is a key part of horror and suspense. Doesn't hurt mystery either. This anime lacked any suspense and the lack of good music certainly contributed to that lack of suspense. A pathetic and easy to avoid failure on this anime's part that would have greatly contributed to the overall story.
It was entirely too hard for me to find any enjoyment in a story devoid of consistency or logic but with plenty of plot armor. Blood loss apparently doesn't exist in this world.
The repetitive story, background and general events, lack of atmosphere and good music, and pathetic characters and character past & building. Then religion, an incredibly difficult topic to discuss seriously, being portrayed in such a laughable and contemptible manner compounded the irritating nature of the series and just stacked up on top of the other glaring issues of the series.
This show is a fools idea of good mystery and a child's idea of a good horror anime. It's basically what you'd get if you asked for a fanfiction of Beauty and the Beast from a weaboo. There's not much to say. It's bad. I could go on and on, put in more effort, but this show is just so comically and unapologetically bad, I don't feel it deserves anymore effort. Unless you like everything from ebola to retardation in physical form, such as the Paul brothers, don't watch this. It's not worth the time, energy or brain cells. It's the worst show to air this season. Maybe even this year. The only happiness I got from this series is when I found out it was 12 episodes instead of 16.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Jul 8, 2018
This is among the most contrived and barren waste of spaces I've ever read. In retrospect, it was entirely obvious how this was going to end out when I started reading this, but oh well.
It can hardly be called Comedy or Romance. Adult or mature sure, but not comedy and certainly not romance. It's among the crudest most fan service based manga catering to the lowest common denominator in the manga community. A barely present story with little substance or originality. An extremely rushed (certainly axed) ending. A pathetic, unemotional and implausible romance. And finally an excess of pointless and clumsy events and characters to
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contrive a typical ending which is mostly comprised of events that change the manga little to not at all.
Actually decent art. Thankfully the poor bastard who drew this didn't write it. Though every scene he unfortunately drew was hard to appreciate, considering the majority of them were filled with extraordinarily stupid rhetoric or generic "dramatic" scenes, which is quite the euphemism.
It's hard to enjoy a half cocked NTR story, which are *almost* inherently awful genre coupled with a pathetic attempt at blending romance with the generally repulsive idol practices in Japan.
My guess is this manga is the product of the author's fantasy to be the man screwing his favorite idol but would also send death threats or cry and lose his job / will to live if he found out she was dating someone. In other words, another cog in the problem that screws over countless young girls and not only does he not keep it to himself and his meager social media following, but publicizes it with the support of some idiotic publishing company which seems only capable of putting out generic almost hentai trash.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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May 13, 2018
One of the most generic, wish fulfilling and self inserting designed manga I've read. It follows mountains of cliches that are laughable when unironically used. Things such as some how glasses turns a super hot guy into an incredibly mediocre looking guy. MC being a secret OP monster who is somehow skilled in every art / sport possible. Completely unbeatable in all forms of competition, always has the moral high ground and is loved by all women. Is somehow mysterious and unknown and is pretty much omnipotent as well as omniscient.
If the summary wasn't enough of a redflag, hopefully this review will be. This manga
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can't pick a genre, setting or story. The summary for the manga only really lasts a chapter, then on occasion he tries to get his literal superhuman acts to quietly disappear. One chapter it may feel like being some vomit inducing poorly formulated love comedy. Next it tries to be some superhuman battle shounen every other chapter having the MC fight 10 guys or destroying steel doors while doing backflips on a unicycle while filing his taxes and solving the 7 wonders of the world. Then perhaps a drama mystery in which a secret hero saved a woman years ago (wonder who the fuck that was eh?) but now dark tidings are happens and the villain is poor school girl with tragic past that the author doesn't wanna spell out for fear of getting age gated and thus dances around the topic like a drunk chimp with no feet.
Basically, the genres that this series picks for each chapter is kinda like playing Russian Roulette where each genre is a different bullet, FMJ, Hollow Point, Armor Piercing, and no bullet for a good chapter that fits in with what the series originally set out to be, except you're playing with glock.
He somehow starts surrounded with a harem and with the 'Madonna' as his girlfriend with very little explanation. He conveniently is somehow related to every minor or major character / event present in the story. Usually to the effect of being the savior / superior type of thing. If you wanna know how any event in the story is going to turn out, just think of the most generic and cliche manga occurrences possible, and you'll hit the nail on the head. He is always on the moral high ground, is never wrong, never loses, is always ready for any development and probably knows the cure to cancer but doesn't have enough time to write it down between beating up delinquents and saving princesses.
If you want a TL;DR just imagine what a superficial nerd in highschool world fantasize about being, and you'll probably end up with something like this manga.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Feb 19, 2018
This manga is super average, and I don't mean that in a bad way. To avoid spoilers since this is such a short series I don't think this will be an all too long review.
Densetsu No Yuusha No Konatsu is basically a series of oneshots of dates between the Main Character, and various women. Despite that, it's not some trashy harem that over saturates the Anime/Manga industry. It's fairly innocent and aside from one or two pairings nothing really sticks out or evokes much emotion. That said, I'm a rather cold person most of the time. To most readers I think they'll find this more
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than satisfactory.
The characters are pretty flat for the most of the series. The Main Character goes through little to no development due to the series being so short, and isn't particularly deep or interesting. He is not unlike a child raised in lab with no social interactions. Two of the women he meets however go through great changes in their time and are in my opinion much better for it, and much more interesting characters than the protagonist.
The ending is rushed, and the manga was clearly axed, and honestly I'm not surprised. This series didn't do much to keep itself afloat. I will say though, compared to some manga out there, it is far more deserving of continuation. If you were to ask me if I wanted 200 chapters of Nisekoi or Sousei No Omnyouji or this, I'd pick this every time. As at least this protagonist while generic and somewhat idiotic is much more well done than the protagonists of the series I randomly picked. Also the women he meets often end up better for it, as they often begin somewhat bitchy, which is nice.
All in all, besides my personal gripe which I'll leave after the review I can't say this was anything special, and before some dimwit gets mad at me for rating this series a 5, I go by MAL's ratings and a 5 is equated to average. Since some people need this spelled out even further. Average means something is common in a set of data. Or this manga is similar to most manga of it's genre. No that does not mean I hate it. No that does not mean it's bad, it's just not special or particularly standout like some.
SPOILER - Personal Gripe
As for my personal gripe, I'm just pissed off the best girl which actually treated him well got fucked and married off to some off screen character because plot. I highly doubt anyone would have a problem with the guy who saved the world marrying a princess with whom he has a mutual attraction. And even if they did. Who the hell would stop them. Also, I'd argue she's the best match for him and would help him grow most as a person.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jan 30, 2018
Spoilers.
I enjoyed the concept and the first 30-50 or so chapters, however it quickly got repetitive and ultimately ended quite poorly. I also think this manga is miscategorized. It is not a Seinen, it's a Shounen with blood and a mild acknowledgement of basic realities. The main character has a childish 'no killing' rule, as if he is a blind Batman with the morality of a 5 year old and no logical justification for his philosophy. The manga does end up having very minor character death in the end but it's hardly relevant after 170 chapters of 'You can't kill bad guys because killing is
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wrong'.
Anyways, the concept of the manga isn't bad. Precog loli because hey, everyone loves a blonde loli, and it'd kinda be weird if it was a shota. The abilities and technology are often poorly explained. Like how can he see shit with those glasses when he's blind. The echolocation creating an image is somewhat believable, but those glasses creating an image a blindman can see is pushing it. There is no way those glasses push an image he can perceive through his eyes. It'd have to be directly transmitted to his brain, something which a pair of glasses can do seems highly unlikely especially when poorly, if it all, explained.
Putting aside that gripe and ignoring all the other ones, because we'd be here all damn day if I didn't, the story frequently pushes that typical shounen attitude of *The MC is super strong*, *Badass x3 Stronger than Protagonist Appears*, *MC gets his ass handed to him*, *Momentary power up, beats the bad guy*, *Return to status quo*, etc etc.
Many characters appear, disappear and reappear haphazardly and have little value. The finale though 'happy' was pathetic as leaving alive this, by human standards, literal superman is completely illogical and more 'no killing' bullshit that tries to impart some idiotic moral lesson that anyone with half a brain would immediately discard.
I think through the entirety of the story ZERO major characters died, and one named side character died. Though this could be incorrect as it's off of memory. Then Mamoru at the end of the story when the main villain is defeated, leaves the FMC alone for 7 years where she lives unhindered, which is complete bullshit for a laundry list of reasons. She is an extremely valuable asset, and has engaged in multiple high profile incidents which would made clear to any intelligence agency or country worth their salt to her value. This was just a poor excuse to push in a timeskip.
Anyways, to summarize the story. Nice concept, poor execution, poor explanation to technology and abilities, myriads of plot convenience, childish attitude and constant shounen cliches.
The art starts off not to good, but gets better as it ages, but otherwise isn't of much note. Art is scarcely perfect and this one is no exception and has plenty of "what the fuck is that shit" moments, but is otherwise passable.
The characters are piss poor. Precog loli is exactly what you'd expect of a child. Childish and fucked up due the effects of her ability on her life. Other than that, she doesn't change to any significant degree through the length of the series, the same of which goes for Mamoru. He experiences little change, and while he is interesting in the dedication to his art, he is otherwise completely boring and quite often contradictory a character. Whether that be in regards to his past, his present attitude or whatever else is situational. The author also frequently tries way to hard to pass him off as a badass, especially when in each new arc he often gets beaten to hell by some new big bad, and consistently fails. Igawa goes through zero change, and is pretty boring, the only character in him is the contrast between his abilities and appearance. Side characters are extremely boring, and, as previously mentioned, appear, disappear and reappear at random. The majority of them leave little impact on the story as a whole as well.
I could not enjoy the entirety of this series, it just started where it started and slowly got worse over time and not once did it regain any footing it lost. Most of the time I was just facepalming at how this is labeled a seinen, when it screams shounen. Or wondering how the fuck either this technology works or how we get these random ability contradictions.
Overall this series was pretty fucking bad. It could be stomachable for a child, or for someone with the morality of a child. It was pretty much blind batman protects a loli for the entirety of the series.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Dec 30, 2017
Normally I wait until a series is over to review it, as I believe a series can to some degree be saved or ruined by it's ending. This manga however, like a shack built on sand or in a swamp is built with a flawed foundation. Spoilers.
The first few chapters of this series seemed rather interesting and promising. As proper, well done Josei is some of the best romance manga out there. I, like a specific comment I read on a chapter of this manga, expected to see the difficulties of being disabled, how to handle them, and how to provide support to such a
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significant other. Not this shit, where instead of focusing on those aspects, the manga uses them as a cheap weapon for characters opposed to the relationship to force cheap superfluous and frankly contrived melodrama. Something that certainly isn't SoL, and in my opinion, ends up creating a bad manga.
The characters of this manga seem irredeemable. Kawana is the most typical Shoujo protagonist I have ever seen, and hoped never to see in this supposed Josei and in any manga in general. She's weak, unable to function or think on her own, and frequently breaks down. Nothing is 'evil' or 'wrong' with these qualities individually, however compiled together it creates a frankly annoying character who has basically become concurrent with the Shoujo genre. Ayukawa is a bit more sympathetic a character and is generally of greater quality. He's paralyzed from the waist down, understandably tormented by it, and trying to deal with it. The ways his disability affected the main pair's relationship was interesting until the side characters started using it as a weapon to force drama and try and split them up. While this isn't impossible or even unlikely, it's overdone and out of place considering the genres. Kawana's parents use emotional blackmail stating her father is going to die soon and don't want their daughter tied to a cripple because 'he won't be able to provide or protect her'. Neither Kawana nor Ayukawa refute this or defend themselves. While they thankfully do not concede, they do simply accept this grotesque and invasive bullshit without response. It is not enjoyable or reasonable and does not make for a good slice of life, what this manga claims to be. The other cunt who weaponized Ayukawa's disability is his freshly divorced nurse who uses it to poke and prod Kawana and Ayukawa into breaking up be she thinks she a superior partner. An arrogant, god complexed and narcissistic cunt if I've ever seen one.
All in all, this manga instead of focusing on what it should and what by genre it purports to be, the reality of being in a relationship with someone who is paralyzed, it decides to focus on emotional blackmail, and the torment of two vulnerable characters. The only character I had the slightest respect for was Koreeda, however he ends up pursuing a relationship with Kawana after her emotional break down and nasty break up. Which is one of two things, a display of unparalleled idiocy and selfishness, or like the cunt nurse, an abuse of position and emotions.
In summary, the manga magnificently failed to focus on and write about what it should as a Josei and more specifically a Slice of Life. Instead it took a typical Shoujo approach to romance and further desecrated itself by using a character's disability as a weapon to push cheap drama. I believe such a manga had the potential for at least a "7 / 10". The reason however I am writing this review prior to it's completion is because I believe it has lost all possible hope of redemption. Regardless, I'll likely update the review upon completion of the series. While I'm almost certain that completion will resolve with the revival of the main relationship, I'm unconfident but suspect the road to such will be a typical and generic soul search, unhappiness in a new and unhealthy relationship followed by the ever unoriginal realization of who their true love is followed by reconciliation and a sad but inevitable acceptance by all previous cunts who opposed the relationship.
Considering such, I deem this manga an astounding 1 / 10. This manga merely uses disability as a cheap weapon instead of a main theme of the story. Follows typical Shoujo character design and plot formula, and aside from the aforementioned disability is of no originality of notice.
Update: I was right. Disappointing all around.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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