Ayakashi Triangle

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THIS IS A SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

Kentarou Yabuki is one of the most renowned Shounen authors of all time at this point. His first manga was a traditional battle-shounen, “Black Cat”, his second one was an ecchi, sci-fi comedy, “To-LOVE-ru”. His newest manga, that I have followed every week since 2021, combines the two most prevalent genres of his old works with a classic setting. And like always, there are a lot of crazy concepts being explored here.

Story – 7/10

The first few chapters do a great job at setting up the main concept of the show. After that, this manga continues very episodically, with each mini-arc spanning ... 1-4 chapters each. This really has the same vibe as a Saturday morning TV-show.
The main goal of the characters (Turning Matsuri back into a boy) gets put on the back-burner for most of the show. Instead, the series keeps a very fast pace with it´s side content. Every little mini-arc contains a different little magical concept that is being explored. From teleportation, invisibility, magical gadgets and even little time-travel stories, this manga stays fresh and new every chapter. But where this series deviates from a classical ecchi manga is the fights. This manga has full-on, “Naruto”-esque fight sequences which provide some nice little variety in the story. The pacing is very fast, this definitely feels like a modern manga.
On an emotional aspect, this manga is also interesting: If the person you like suddenly changes his gender, could you still love him the same way? And does love really transcend gender-norms all the time? This amount of LGBT content is really rare to find in Japanese media, especially the shounen-genre. This could be a sign of japan opening up to these kinds of topics, which is great, because there are a lot of highly interesting themes to be explored here.
The biggest aspect of this manga is of course the ecchi content, and I have to say, it delivers. This is some of the most unhinged stuff I have ever seen in a Shounen Jump manga. It never feels dull or undeserved, and is mostly combined with extremely funny scenarios.
However, I think the main story does not have enough meat on it for the manga to go on for so long. It mainly serves as a way for the author to play around with ridiculous magical scenarios. I think 100 chapters would have been the perfect length. After a while, the manga starts to lose itself in the side-stories a little bit to much.

Art – 9/10

I mean, there is a reason why Kentarou Yabuki is called the king of ecchi. He has been the most prominent author of the genre for almost 20 years now. To-LOVE-ru already showed his capability to craft immaculate ecchi-scenes but I honestly think that he has improved his game A LOT, which is especially visible in the chapter introductions. Every character is distinct and consistent, the clothing and different outfits perfectly fit the setting and the chapters fly by in a breeze because of his simple but effective paneling. This is one of the manga that would really improve with a coloured version, because I think Yabuki Kentarou is one of the best when it comes to coloured manga panels. This has to be one of the cleanest looking ecchi-works that I have ever read.

Characters – 9/10

I think this category is always highly influenced by the way the respective manga is being read. If you just breeze by it in a few days, the characters might not have a huge impact on you, but if you only read one chapter every week for almost two years, you will have a completely different view.
There is a certain set of characters that gets introduced very early on. Every one has at least 3 little arcs to himself, giving everyone little bits of development sprinkled throughout the manga. The main thing here is of course the relationship of Matsuri and Suzu, and I think this is the mangas biggest strenght. They explore some really interesting topics here that I have never seen in any other type of manga. This is truly a one-of-a-kind love story! I honestly think that after the fantastic ending, Suzu Kanade is one of the best female characters ever in the ecchi genre.
The side characters were also fantastic, with the edgy, but dense Ninokuru being my favorite.
The only downside here is that there were a few weird decisions made by Yabuki here. Why does the female lead, Suzu, have so many different personalities and forms at the end? There exist an adult version, a cat-girl version, a loli version and more(!). These could all be different characters.

Enjoyment – 8/10

I wish this manga was shorter, but although there was some meandering in the middle it was never outright bad and the good aspects outshine the bad ones. This is a highly creative and inventive entry in the ecchi genre and i am eager to see what Yabuki Kentarou is cooking up next!

- Marco_Yooo

FINAL SCORE - 8/10

Hello there . I won't bother you with a huge of text so I will be as fast as possible . The review will be split into two small parts :

First part (it is for people who haven't read this author's previous works and are just interested in reading an fan service/ecchi manga):
Yabuki Kentarou's strong points were never :the ability to write well constructed stories , well developed characters but in Ayakashi Triangle they were unexpectedly below average . I personally felt more connected with the side characters rather than the Matsuri who was completely uninteresting and existed as a ... horny material for the other main character called Suzu . In conclusion if you only want to look at some very interesting spicy art without having the need to read a good story , read this manga (buy and read the uncensored version of course) . But if you want a good balance between art quality and story , avoid it and don't waste your time.

Second part (is for the people who are familiar with this author and are very sure if they really want to invest their time and money for this manga):
As a huge a fan of this manga with high but realistic expectations I would say no , DON'T fall into the same trap as I did . I personally read it with the same mindset and expectations I had from his previous works and I can't hide fact this manga felt more like cash grab . This is no ranting /hating but I feel as a costumer who bought all the volumes , sad to report that I firmly believe that only the art quality will satisfy you by the time you finish the manga . This is one of the rare cases I haven't personally experienced before and I feel Yabuki used his fame , name and of course only the ability to draw some good erotic material (talking only about art , not the story) to earn cash and of course Shueisha gained from this too.

I would have given it a 5 or even lower if I didn't enjoy the art so much. Hope you have a wonderful day!

Despite what others might tell you, the characters are not interesting nor likeable. The story is dumb. The genderbending yuri bait is lackluster. Most of the girls are unsexy and worst of all is the romance. Why is the romance the worst? Because the couple we are supposed to root for suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.

Suzu is so boring. She starts off as alright, kinda bland, but eventually she just becomes so unlikeable due to everyone in the story loving her for literally no reason. Legitimately she has very little personality traits that stand out in any way and out of all the girls introduced she has the ... most forgettable design. Her boobs and ass are average and she's consistently such a bore.

Matsuri is no better. While he's not quite as boring as Suzu, he has the same problem as her of having very little to invest in. He has a bit of a goofy side to contrast with his attitude in battle, but beyond that he's just...meh. Whenever he turned back into a boy he had absoluetly zero main character energy, the one thing I somewhat enjoy about him is his female counterpart design.

The other characters are no better, hell the one character I did like (Ninokuru) quickly sours as they repeat the same joke over and over and over and fucking over with him.

This is gonna be a bit controversial (maybe?) but I dislike Yabuki Kentarou's character design. I have not read the To Love-Ru manga in full but I have read certain scenes on certain websites, and I just plain do not enjoy the way he draws faces or bodies. Like his style is not bad, it's just that I have seen sexier and cuter girls in other manga that aren't even within the ecchi spectrum.

The lewd scenarios aren't really anything special either. Oh wow a guy falls into a girl's vagina/cleavage, gee never seen that before. I wish there was more erotic emphasis on the ayakashi and the ninja theme, like how come there's so little bondage? There should be more bondage if ninjas are involved!!!