Bozebeats

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Here's my take after reading the first chapter of the demon purging technology that is Bozebeats by Ryouji Hirano.

The premise of the story is that Religious Monks adopted modern technology in the field of science and weaponry to combat the threat of demons. Ryudaiji a Monk was on this journey to locate and purge a demon spirit that is terrorizing one forest which was notorious to be a place where people commit suicide. On his way, he met with a wolf boy Tamaki Madoka and his wolf companion. Things start to develop between the two after the encounter with Tree Demon Spirit as Tamaki decides ... to go to the outside world to learn more about his past.

At first glance, it was unappealing to me since I was thinking it was about sci-fi/mecha. This is due to the fact that I have read the one-shot Boze (Published in March 2016) first before Bozebeats so I felt lukewarm and uninterested so I dropped it.

However, things went differently after reading Bozebeats as it was a great read and the characters well thought out, leaning more to the character of Tamaki Madoka instead of the protagonist of Boze Ryudaiji.

This was the best decision Hirano-san could take after revising his one shot. I went back to read the entirety of his one shot and it was full of cliche and recycled tropes that popular manga used. Moreover, instead of redoing the whole story and concept, he opted to progress the story via time skip to where Bozebeats was set up and improved on that which was brilliant and it paid off.

The art was definitely improved and the flow of the story was solid. I am looking forward to how this manga develops in the future.

With that said, I would give Bozebeats 8 enchanted beads out of 10

( review to be update in chapter 8 )
Bozebeats, Here is the Quick review: take Mowgli from jungle book and add some machine gun holding monks that wipe out demons. Pretty metal premise and witch I'm totally in but their are things that take me out of it. MC is kinda weak, overall it doesn't feel new, art work is great, the monk guy from CH1 is cool, the action is "ok" creative.

(6)Story: Like i said, Mowgli from jungle book ( yeah that what ill call the main character atm, his name is Tamaki actually, cool name in my opinion ) raised by wolfs ... , was found by a demon slaying monk, told his name, found a demon, demon kills mama wolf ( spoilers but then again its the first chapter) monk kills demon, Mowgli has some unknown power, monk casts a spell, mowgli becomes a monk. Its fine story but structure its little week. For example, in the panel where the mama wolf dies its not clearly and when i went to the next page im like "oh? she dead? kk" and thats where the stories falls. The panel work of this manga doesn't compliment the story at all, when the mama wolf dies it should be a big moment but it doesn't feel like it. When we first see the protagonist his in the water remembering a random girl and fade out and the we cut to the mama wow take him as his child. That could been removed and be replaced, oh i don't know, a whole page with the mama wolf dead. Shock the reader a little, you have a great art work man, you can do it.

(9)Art: This may be one the main factors of the existence of the series "kid draws great you are in!" and indeed his drawing a really good, especially the colouring, its in a pro level and its really promising. For example the monster design if you break it down it nothing special but the artwork compliments it a lot and suddenly looks great. The action is also getting better and more creative, for example there is a fight on a plane which is pretty rare in a manga. But as i said in the story part, there are some odd panel choices. It may be neap-peaking but still great art work.

(6)Characters: The MC has a mysterious past and he knows nothing and thats pretty much it. As the story goes he wants to be a member of those monks (BOZE) to take revenge i guess but there is no more layer to it atm . As i said before his more like a Mowgli character and that okay, not the first time there is a spin in well know characters. I really liked the fact that he couldn't read and he always had his name tag and the the monk tell him his name, great idea. No more build up for now and reader are not that petitioned. The monk form the fist chapter is actually more interesting. He may be the very first vegetarian male character in a shounen manga ever. Thats unique, im in to it. Then you have the main character sempai who has a GANTZ like weapon and thats the only characteristic i can point out, But in the end there is nothing that really got me connect or really interested in it.

Did I enjoyed it? well it is pretty to look, the action is kinda fun, but over all it doesn't feel new or something that jump reader will get in to. For a rookie its good start but i feel like it could be better. We will see how its goes but for know it feels like its going to have only 3 volumes.

This sure is one of the manga of all time. One what? Yeah, just one of them. It does nothing remarkable.

The strongest point of the manga is definitely its main character, which probably isn't great because he's pretty lacking. I was also disappointed that he started off with striking long hair and then almost immediately cut it for the typical "life changing in a different direction" moment. He looked more unique with the long hair.

The art oscillates between looking quite nice and being abysmal. I honestly greatly enjoy how the artist does faces a lot of the time, but they also frequently go wildly off-model, ... and their anatomy is all over the place. It's also extremely hard to follow the fight scenes, especially when the protagonist is using extending beads as his weapon that can make it even harder to see what's going on. It feels messy and I often felt confused about how we had gotten to the end result of a fight. It also felt like crucial panels were skipped sometimes. Character design also varies a great deal and none of them really feel like they belong in the same series.

Plot isn't anything special. I feel like there was good potential, but as early as the fourth chapter it becomes readily apparent that the creator isn't sure where to go with the series and is just kind of yanking it around all over the place. Characters just kind of exist. It weirdly feels like there's too few and too many at the same time, which I think is in part because once one is introduced, they just quickly shuffle on to the next one. The characters feel more like a checklist being ticked off of common shounen allies than they do like actual characters, with little reason to like or dislike them.

Obviously the series is vastly sped up due to getting axed, but we can still get an idea of what the story beats would've been like due to it rapidly closing up as many plot points as it could, and unfortunately it's just really, really generic and obvious. Generic honestly isn't a bad thing, but coupled with boring characters, random quality in art, and just not being all that exciting, it's not hard to see why it got axed so rapidly. Would not recommend, there's just nothing to see here that isn't done much better in other series.