Nov 10, 2017
Seikon no Qwaser is my favorite manga series. In my opinion it is one of the best battle shounen series there is (other battle shounen do execute things as well as Seikon no Qwaser, maybe even slightly better, but SnQ is still the one who speaks to me the most).
Thought I should start with the art since I don’t have much to say about it besides the fact that seeing it evolve over the run of the manga is very interesting and later on the high contrast art, where a lot of things are either completely black or white without much grey, looks very appealing.
Moving
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on to the fights, a crucial aspect of a battle shounen, the most important thing about them are the qwaser powers, which allow their users to control one specific element of the periodic table and are fueled by soma, a substance that is not technically breastmilk (at least in the manga) but serves as a stand in for it in terms of fanservice scenes involving it.
The information above regarding qwaser powers is what you can find everywhere, what you won’t find anywhere, unless you read the manga, is how well developed the concept of these powers is without ever needing to give us an exposition dump. We learn the details of how these powers work, such as the 5 levels of control over it and their wave like behavior, slowly as we go through the story.
The best thing about qwaser powers is how almost all qwaser have around the same “power level”, with the only ones who seem stronger or weaker than the rest being mentioned as such. Due to having to manipulate chemical elements fights come down to how much of that element can be found in the surrounding area, whether or not the fighters know each other’s elements and fighting styles and how does each qwaser make use of their element instead of coming down to who has the higgest “power level”.
As I mentioned previously, in SnQ we receive information regarding qwaser powers slowly rather than in a big exposition scene, this is something that doesn’t just apply to said powers, we rarely ever get big exposition scenes in the series that aren’t relating to real world events since those are the only ones that are harder to integrate organically into the story. One of the strengths of this series is how we receive new information naturally as it progresses and how well set up and foreshadowed things are.
The characters are also interesting and the main cast gets a lot of development and growth over the course of the series, which is easy to notice due to the way that certain scenes parallel each other in this manga, letting us see how the character has changed by responding differently to two similar situations.
Finally, it should be mentioned that SnQ brings up some philosophical themes, mostly regarding utilitarianism, deontology, free will and determinism as the story goes on but explaining those would require spoilers so all I can do is mention them in hopes that it will peak your curiosity.
For a more in-depth analysis of the series (containing spoilers) check my blog on MAL.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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