Noah's Notes

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Noah's notes is another axed Shonen Jump series, and like many of them due to it not being fully translated I cannot comment on the story as a whole. With that out of the way let's begin my review on Noah's Notes! -SPOILERS AT THE VERY END-

Story: 7/10
Whilst fairly simple at first the plot of Noah's Notes follows Mirai a gyaru highschooler who is taken by professor Noah an archaeologist due to her finding a a relic from the past. The plot quickly reveals that humanity has existed in it's current state before and at some point 4 years in the future it will end ... unless our protagonists can find a way to stop it. The mystery is handled really well and coupled with the subject of history especially the way in which Noah sometimes defines how important history is it can be very enjoyable and thought provoking to read. The set up for the looping of humanity is really interesting and differentiates itself from other shounen battle manga, there are still some standard shounen cliche's like a big evil group of shadowy figure's but this time from the get-go they are very interesting tapping into an ideology I've rarely seen in stories that being religion. Overall there's a grand sense of exploration and discovery as a mystery is uncovered but in a more shounen type of way.

Art: 8/10
I love the character designs in the manga from what I've seen, Noah and Mirai as main characters compliment each other very well and look iconic and reflective of their personalities, couldn't ask for much more. The villain character looked very cool, his uniform as well of his eyes reminded me of Gintama characters for some reason which is a good thing. Facial expressions are very varied and unique especially Mirai which leads to some good visual comedy. In general the art is very clean with there being a lot of dark panels and thick lines which really helps it distinguish itself. Action scenes are conveyed well as are the various more echii scenes, nothing looks out of place and it's easy and fun to read with it having fairly standard panel layout, the only gripe here is that the panels where fairly standard and safe nothing crazy was going on, but that's not inherently a bad thing.

Character: 7/10
Mirai is very likable and acts as the more normal character which readers can sympathies with as she witnesses all the crazy events around her. Her original dismissal of history as a subject only to see it's importance once Noah comes into the picture is done really well too as it let's the readers think a bit about the importance of history and let's us understand the changes in Mirai's character. Noah himself is also interesting, being obsessed with history but also heroic in his own way like most shounen heroes, all in all characters are really good and I think that's due to the amount of time they get to develop as there are only about 3 major characters in the first 7 chapters.

Conclusion:
I'm really sad that Noah's Notes got axed it showed real promise, the likable characters, engaging mystery and the message of the importance of history made it very enjoyable for me to read.

Spolers Ahead:

Fortunately I can say that the end of Noah's notes despite it's limited run is such an amazing end for this story. I cannot read Japanese but the general gist of it is that the heroes fail their goal with Mirai writing in a journal for her future cycles self, only for her next iteration to find it ending the chapter with her hugging Noah, it's very bittersweet, extremely clever and the end works so well. I'm saddened to here that this is the authors third failed attempt for a serial in WSJ as this means he likely will not get another proper chance, even though I see this as a great manga that could have been so much more, i'm still very happy with what we got and it's ending.

Why it Failed:
My interpretations on why it didn't succeed in jump would be probably be it's subject matter, from what I've seen most Jump manga usually are heavily battle oriented, either in more fantastical terms like One Piece, sports like Haikyuu!! or something more unorthodox like Bakuman. (There are obvious exceptions). The whole archaeology and history themes probably wouldn't be appealing to everyone especially younger children, and due to it being more niche than other things in Jump it would likely get less votes leading to It's cancellation.

FINAL SCORE: 8/10 - Very Good

This is one of those manga where you go "wow, this is a super creative idea" when you start to read it, because it is!

Unfortunately, it's also one of those manga where its super creative idea wasn't enough to keep it alive, and it ended up axed very early on.

Let's start with the good: The characters are, overall, very fun, have great designs, and have separate personalities that keep them distinct from each other in a way that still makes them mesh well together. The art is very nice and expressive (especially the characters themselves) and the backgrounds can get really impressive to ... look at. You can tell there's a lot put into the art and the male lead's design in particular. That might be my slight bias in sharp-toothed men speaking though! The story's main concept is also incredibly interesting, but that's also part of what I think was its downfall.

See, this is a story about both the past, and the future, among several theories about how timeflow works. It's hard and extensive to explain in text, which is a bit of a problem for a visual/text-based form of media, because it means that they have to overload speech bubbles with tons of dialogue and information to the point where sometimes it feels like the characters are just regurgitating information from Wikipedia pages. There are huge amounts of dialogue on almost every page, and it does sometimes feel overwhelming! Because of this, I kind of feel like the series may have done better as a novel rather than a manga. While I do think the art is visually very good and I really enjoy the character designs as well, I don't think the format of visual/text was used to its advantage fully, leaning too much on shoving a lot of words onto each page. Besides manga, I read a lot of books, but this just felt like a lot, as at some point it started to get frustrating to go to the next page and see another super long set of bubbles you have to go through...and then it's the same thing again for the next page. It breaks the immersion a bit and it's why I think this would've done better in a purely text-based format accompanied by the occasional piece of artwork instead, so it would feel less disjointed and flow more. There are also many, many terms used in this manga for the various items and abilities they're using that kind of mush up together a bit mentally and I think it would've flowed better to not introduce them all at once.

I also feel as though the female lead, Mirai, starts to get forgotten about for a while around halfway through the story, because for the start she's used primarily as an excuse for the male lead to exposit information towards her because she's (1) stupid (2) has no idea about most of the things going on. This leads to her early on feeling like mostly a vehicle to push the story forwards, and later on just existing. It felt like a bit of a waste of her character.

Since this manga got axed, it also starts rushing things towards the end, but it does manage to make...most of it...feel natural? And it's a shame to see all the honestly really good character designs with seemingly interesting personalities that ended up having to be pitched to the wayside because of the axe, not to mention several plot points just having to be dropped.

Still, I think this is an interesting manga overall, and the conclusion manages to still be satisfying if not a bit confusing. I'd say if you're down for something that's got a unique idea and you can handle a lot of text with a LOT of random terminology being thrown at you, it's worth a try. I'd say otherwise you're more likely to get frustrated by it overloading you with information.

Unfortunately this series has been cancelled as of a week ago, and it's only translated up to chapter 7. This review still reflects my thoughts on the series up to that point, but obviously can't include up to its final chapter.

I've just read the translation for chapter 5 of this series and thought I'd give my take on it so far. Scores will generally be low because this is a preliminary review.


Story: 6/10

The story so far is pretty straightforward, the protagonists are trying to save the world from destruction. There is a twist though: they know the world will be destroyed in a few years, ... but not how. They need to figure out how society was originally destroyed by finding clues left by the previous "loop" of people. To make a comparison to a similar manga, Dr. Stone, it's as though the protagonists know that everybody will be turned to stone in a few years, and are trying to figure out how to stop it.

It's all introduced quite fast in chapter 1 and the pace has been kept relatively high for the 5 chapters I've read. So far I've found the premise to be a bit absurd but certainly a change of pace from the typical Jump manga.


Art: 6/10

The art has been decent, but not fantastic so far. If the quality of the art stays the same for the next few chapters I'd bump it up to a 7, since there are a few panels that look quite nice.


Characters: 5/10

At this point in the story there aren't many characters introduced, it's really just Noah and Mirai (the two main characters) that have been followed. I think Noah's character has been done pretty well, and he reminds me of Senkuu from Dr. Stone - Noah is basically Senkuu but interested in history/archaeology instead of science.

Mirai isn't as interesting of a character, at this point her personality is essentially just "airhead who follows Noah" and she's fulfilling the gyaru archetype to a T. I expect this to change somewhat in the coming chapters, but right now she's not a very interesting character.


Enjoyment: 6/10

Though the story requires heavy suspension of disbelief, it is entertaining once you get past its more ridiculous aspects. I find the "edutainment" style of series (like Dr. Stone) to be very enjoyable, and since Noah's Notes seems to be taking a similar approach with history that has made things entertaining.


Overall: 5.75/10

So far the series is okay. Not fantastic by any means, but not bad either. Aside from the characters, the series is above average but certainly not at the level of the latest hits in Jump (ie Dr. Stone, Promised Neverland). It'll be much easier to give an accurate review of the series once about 2 volumes (~15 chapter) are translated, and I'll update my review then if the series survives