Bone Collection

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Today I'm breaking my review hiatus to talk about a series no one gives a shit about: Boner Collection. One of the only readable series running in the dying Shonen Jump magazine, it was the rare exorcist manga that had any merit at all. Sadly, it's canceled and dead now, and let these words be its epitaph.

Boner Collection is about some dingus who meets the best and most attractive girl in the universe, Paira. He's an exorcist, she's a demon. It's Romeo & Juliet. He gets powers from pulling weapons out of her bones, like swords, sniper rifles and Nintendo consoles. Once he pulls out ... all 200+ of her bones, she gets to become human, presumably because Earth has more Chads to ride. It's a fun story in the usually cancerous romcom genre.

Did I mention that Paira is best girl? I usually don't say that shit but damn she is the greatest. People rip on her for being a mutation of some character named Lum from some series no one cares about in 2020, but oddly enough those same people have no issue with nearly every other SJ girl being a hapless idiot and every male being a copypasted archetype from Dragonball or Naruto.

People also tear into the art. They're wrong, of course. How do I know this? Because I am the most discerning person on the planet when it comes to comic art and I quite liked the visuals here. When people rip on the art, you can write off their opinions forever. They just wanted the series to look more generic, and if some YouTuber told them to like this series, they wouldn't have anything to say about it.

Even though the series is only 15 chapters long and was rushed into an ending, it felt oddly on-brand since the whole thing was kind of a jokey shitpost to begin with. I enjoyed the ending and the series even had a full epilogue with resolutions for every character. It didn't get enough time in the middle there to really explore the themes of prejudice between demons and humans, but that's all boring and predictable content anyway.

So yeah, the series is funny, the characters entertaining, and it had some good ideas. It's a shame about the name.

Take the hour out of your day to read Boner Collection and grieve with me.

Because there will never be Paira doujins.

I started this series because I figured it would be interesting to read a manga from start to finish as it was published. From first impressions, it seemed pretty eh, but I was willing to forgive it. Many series I like (KNY and BNHA) had starts that I wasn't really into. I figured it would be the same with this series, plus, there were some interesting developments or funny gags in a chapter or two, so it had the potential to keep me hooked.

Fast forward a few weeks. I dropped it. The series just wasn't for me. The art-style seemed too cutesy and slightly sloppy ... for me, but more importantly, the story and characters weren't doing anything too well. I had gotten past the drunk demon arc, and it sort of had potential in the beginning. With the Four Exorcist Kings being introduced as scopes to a bigger world, I thought that the plot would really start now. The first king ended up being nothing more than a one-trick-pony gag, and the arc following their introduction (drunk demon) ended up being simultaneously rushed, yet felt slow. Then there was a filler chapter right after.

Today, my friend who'd been keeping up with the series, told me it was finished. I thought it was odd considering it was only 15 chapters, but it got axed it seemed. I just finished reading, and what I'd say sucks most, was the wasted potential of it all. There were many spirits and exorcist characters we never met, and some gags that were still decent. If the pacing and characters were fleshed out, this series might still be running right now. I won't comment much on the final arc of the series, cause it was rushed due to cancellation, so I won't pin any of that on the author.

All in all, if you want to give yourself a quick read, then this might satisfy you for an two hours or so, but there's better you could be reading in the meantime imo. I feel bad for the mangaka, but here's hoping that they come back with a better start and series in the future.

Bone Collection's negative reception and ultra-short run in WSJ only made me want to try it more. I liked its promotional artwork and synopsis well enough. Could it really suck enough to get axed in 4 months?

Short answer: yes. It's not the worst manga I've attempted to read, but it's disappointing. Any interesting dynamic we'd get between its central boy/girl duo is squashed due to their entire fighting style being both an asspull and an excuse to turn Bone Collection into an ecchi-lite production. When the humor and action are both uninspired, it fails doubly.

Unfortunately, the plot makes things even more confusing. There's no ... clear motivation for any of the characters, and the series seems to change on a conceptual level each chapter. Arcs bleed into arcs, entire structures of exorcist society and introduced and scrapped, and the entire thing ends in a massive timeskip. And that's all in 2 volumes! Some of the character designs are cute, but that doesn't save this joint. The currently-running Witch Watch, however, borrows a similar dynamic between protagonists and makes it work much better as a comedy/SoL production. Perhaps Bone Collection could've leaned into the laughs a little more.

I struggle to find much I enjoyed from this series. Some okay action sequences aren't enough to make up for the many flaws Bone Collection faced. You follow Kazami, a yokai exorcist who is seen as a letdown by his famous family but has a powerful technique forbidden to use. In a jam, he breaks the rules to use his powers to gain control of the yokai Paira, letting him use her bones as weapons. None of the characters are interesting, you have a cliched protagonist who doesn’t have many points of interests to stand out.
All other characters fit this mold or are not really ... fleshed out themselves. The story also contains ecchi elements that add nothing to either the story or enjoyment of the reader. The plotline of being tied to a powerful demonic character has been done before more effectively in other manga series, and the romance that develops from it is also uninteresting. While the idea of retrieving bones for weapons can be interesting, the idea is not well fleshed out and whatever bone is pulled doesn’t have much effect on what the weapon will be. Combined with forced drama at points and weak comedy there’s nothing it executes well. Although the occasional strong visuals, the art throughout is not distinct and generally forgettable. Overall, Bone Collection has nothing to offer to stand out from other series in terms of story, characters or art to make it worthy of checking out.

tl;dr: A manga that’s awful in most regards but hilariously nonsensical in being so and thus worth the short amount of time it’d take to read.

Bone Collection is rated really low, and while I certainly wouldn’t call the manga great, especially as it clearly got axed and rushed into a forced ending, I had fun with it. The central premise of the manga is the protagonist, Kazami, using what’s known as the Youkai spell to channel the powers of the super high class youkai Paira, in order to fight other youkai. There’s also some romance between Kazami and Paira and some general themes about coexistence ... and getting along. None of that is really all that good however.

Paira is a Gashadokuro type youkai, a skeleton type youkai, though she takes the form of just a regular human. Her goal is to make this form her true form and just become a regular human, but in order for her to become human, she needs to lose the power in each one of her bones. Kazami uses the power of a specific bone of hers every time he uses the Youkai Spell and afterwards the bone loses power. Furthermore, each bone manifests as a different weapon or ability. I think the issues here are obvious. The protagonist has a wide variety of abilities, but can only use each ability once. As such there can be no depth to the combat because every fight will be full of things suddenly brought out that have never been seen before and will never be seen again. I think this would have worked a lot better if the manga didn’t focus on combat but instead using the abilities to deal with other issues. However, this clearly is a manga that was trying to turn into the standard shounen battle manga and thus as it continues to develop in that direction it gets weaker and weaker.

The romance is pretty weak too. Paira falls in love with Kazami immediately basically due to him not treating youkai any different from humans and professes that love very strongly. Kazami just brushes her off though for pretty much the entire manga, and that just makes him look really lame. I think the plan was that it was going to tie their relationship development to how powerful their abilities are, but the manga ends before it gets much chance to do so. But even then, even if the mangaka was determined to keep the relationship stagnate until plot events progressed it, it could have been written much better. The themes about coexistence between human youkai also fall kind of flat because it doesn’t do proper world building regarding the state of youkai in the world and their relationships with humans, and thus any changes in that regard don’t really land.

Why then did I enjoy the manga? Because it’s hilarious in the most unexpected of ways. I’ve read a lot of manga and tend to find most pretty predictable to a degree, not just in terms of the plot but also what kind of jokes they’ll try to make and such. However, this manga had things that were totally out there happening constantly. It has a very unique sense of humor that I haven’t seen in other manga. The jokes and twists are all utterly stupid, but they had me genuinely laughing at how bizarre they were. If the manga went on longer I have a feeling that the novelty of this absurdity would run out and it would cease to enjoyable whatsoever. However, the manga only went on two volumes and ended before this happened, and thus I felt those two volumes were worth reading.

I do wish the art was better though. The art in general is really amateurish in terms of quality and style. Designs of both humans and youkai are pretty weak too. The manga is listed as ecchi and it does decent at that when it tries, but it’s so rare that it isn’t really a boon to the manga at all.

SO Bone Collection, Honestly the types of tropes in here make it pretty bland to say the least I mean I feel this could of been better improved upon with a better editor, the art itself is considered average but there is some charm to it, but it suffered a lot of inconsistencies in anatomy which sucks.

I don't blame the author as much because Shonen Jump Stories get cancelled if it's not popular quick, which sucks because I do think if this story didn't feel as rushed at first or at least did some polishing with enough time could of improved although that's just me.

THE ... ENDING IS SO RUSHED THAT IT MAKES ABOSULETY NO SENSE IF YOU WANT TO SEE WHAT I MEAN READ IT AND CHECK OUT.

I would love to see the author create something else pretty soon though I await it!
In the end I somewhat like the story but it's gag and rushed story ruins it a bit.