Ayanashi

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Ayanashi is a manga that takes place in a world where mindless monsters known as Ogre’s have driven humanity into living underground in what are known as Grottos. An organization of people known as Ayanashi is dedicated to protecting these Grotto from the Ogre’s as well as protecting those travelling the roads between Grottos. This manga primarily follows the story of an Ayanashi named Holo who’s searching for the man that killed his younger brother, Rico. Holo is incredibly strong when it comes to fighting Ogre’s, but he hates socializing and reacts violently whenever someone touches him so he’s not good at dealing with other ... people. The manga follows Holo and eventually his companions as they go from Grotto to Grotto, dealing with whatever Ogre problem their facing, while also keeping on the trail of Rico’s killer.

The world building in the manga seems pretty generic at first, but there’s some pretty interesting stuff once it starts getting into the details. There are some pretty intriguing aspects to how both Ogre’s and Ayanashi work that results in some pretty good action. The way things are revealed slowly and steadily while leaving a lot mysterious also works pretty well for most of the manga. Alongside this, Holo also makes slow and steady progress growing as a person. His character arc is pretty basic in that he’s basically overcoming his trauma and coming to trust people again, but for the most part it’s handled pretty well. A number of side characters also slowly get fleshed out with some pretty basic but still solid enough character arcs. There’s also a very light amount of romance, and by light, I mean so light it barely registers and is basically just hints setting things up for later.

Unfortunately, the manga seems to have gotten axed and thus it has to rush the ending. The ending basically involves the cast just happening to run into some high-ranking antagonists and the antagonists just outright explaining the answers to a lot of the mysteries that had been built up over the course of the manga. Though even then, a lot is still left unexplained. The finale also pushes the plot forward considerably and though it doesn’t resolve everything, it essentially tells the reader what needs to happen for everything to be resolved with the expectation that Holo and company will do so after the end of the manga. There’s actually a lot of really good stuff in there and if this manga was twice as long and actually managed to do all this properly it would probably be great. But alas, that’s not the manga that exists in this timeline, and the ending that does exist is incredibly slapdash and unsatisfying.

The art style was pretty rough but worked really well with the story being told. The action especially came through really well. I felt the character designs and monster were pretty weak though.

tl;dr: A manga that slowly but steadily seems to be telling a great story but ends prematurely with a lackluster ending.