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Red Hood
The Hunters Guild: Red Hood
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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Yadokari no Kuni, The Land of Hermit Crabs, Myakunashi, No Hope, No Pulse

Japanese: レッドフード

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 3

Chapters: 23

Status: Finished

Published: Jun 28, 2021 to Nov 8, 2021

Genres: Action, Adventure, Fantasy

Demographic: Shounen

Serialization: Shounen Jump (Weekly)

Authors: Kawaguchi, Yuuki (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 6.39¹ (scored by 9,481 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #17600²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #990

Members: 19,898

Favorites: 118

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Reviews

Filtered Results: 19 / 22

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Nov 7, 2021

SonTOSHI

Mixed Feelings

You're capping if you're saying it's anywhere near 7.
It was not bad, but not good either. Fight scenes were beyond my understanding. They were just pieces of abstract art. Many times the art looked wonky. And overall, the ending left a sour taste in my mouth. Only redeeming quality this manga had was Grimm and her EXTRA THICC thighs. Nothing else. Not even the muscle hothead girl was good enough for me. I don't have anything else to say. It was just boring for me to read through week to week.

Well, at least it was better than Phantom Seer.

Nov 7, 2021

Sheev-san

Not Recommended

This series having "potential" is already a meme, but it really is the truth, it had potential, it is really hard to screw up a tale as old as time as the tale of The red Riding Hood, but the author somehow did it.

Retellings of classics isn't something new, it is usually done either by people who are new into storytelling or people who are so used to it they want to retell a story they loved for a long time, Kawaguchi seems like a mix of both while his love for the grimm fairy tales is obvious, so are his rookie mistakes, the ...

Jun 27, 2021

hype_manga

Recommended

Preliminary (1/23 chp)

I see a lot of potential with this one...

First off, apparently, the author worked as an assistant for Kohei Horikoshi's My hero academia and we can tell. Its art is expressive and gorgeous. The first chapter has similar plot points from My hero academia, but that's a given, because a lot of stories have the same plot, so it's not ripping it off. What I like from first glance is its setting, a twisted take on the classic tale of " The little red riding hood" where not only werewolves exist, but witches, vampires, dragons and other monsters also exist in this world. Speaking of, ...

Nov 10, 2021

jahver

Not Recommended

The Hunters Guild: Red Hood is a haphazardly written, agonizing lesson in why people shouldn’t call a manga “the next Demon Slayer” a week after it begins serialization. I understand fans were getting tired of waiting for another massive franchise to get invested in, but the public consensus was made too quickly and far too many people set themselves up for disappointment. The week-by-week read became agonizing within three chapters and it became apparent that former My Hero Academia assistant Yuuki Kawaguchi cannot structure a story or write compelling characters to save his life. You’d think it would be impossible to fuck up such a ... simple concept that badly, but time and time again Red Hood managed to blow my expectations out of the water by being even more of a boring, fruitless experience with each successive chapter.

Red Hood’s most glaring flaw becomes immediately apparent within the introductory arc. Characters dump paragraphs of exposition in some of the most shameless and unsubtle ways possible. There’s manga where the slightest bit of exposition would drastically improve the story, and then there’s manga like Red Hood, which make the average HxH chapter look like a picture book. The amount of times the dialogue takes up around two thirds of the page is astounding. Even in the first chapter there’s at least eight to ten speech bubbles on most pages, I’m not fucking kidding. All of this text just accentuates how cluttered and disorganized the art is. You’d think Kawaguchi was trying to rush through all the necessary lore at the start so he could get into the action, but no: all eighteen fucking chapters are like this to some degree. There’s nothing to even guide the viewer’s eyes across the pages, it’s completely counter-intuitive and amorphous. I put together a small compilation to show you how bad it looks: (https://imgur.com/gallery/CF60TgJ)

There’s too much going on in any single page, none of the characters feel like they’re in focus unless the perspective is a close-up of their faces. The art itself isn’t bad, but when Kawaguchi is this bad at setting up the pages he has hardly any chances to really show it off. The pacing of the story as well as the paneling and art drastically suffer when a character has to sit down and explain the entire setting as well as the major factions, characters, and what hackneyed shit like “wolfonium” does. I seriously can’t get over wolfonium, it’s too goddamn stupid even for a series like this.

The MC is the least interesting part of his own story. There’s not much of note about Velou/Vero since he’s just another Deku, Tanjiro or Asta clone. I can appreciate how grounded and quick-witted he is at least, but he’s nothing groundbreaking. Velou gets overshadowed by his huge-tits female mentor, the one who got all the fanart and probably the only reason a lot of people wanted this series to succeed. The villains somehow have more personality than the two leads, the werewolves aren’t mindless monsters either which is pretty refreshing, plus they’re amazingly grotesque and inhuman in design while still retaining the fairy-tale aesthetic which makes them a delight to look at. Red Hood’s designs are probably the best part of the manga. There’s so many inventive aspects to the world that tragically get glossed over in the endless spew of text and dull action sequences.

This interesting fantasy world full of werewolves and other fairy tale monsters, the main reason most fans got invested in the story, hardly gets explored at all; the first five chapters are spent meandering through some town explaining rather than exploring. Everything has to be conveyed through dialogue rather than simply shown to the reader. Every potentially cool moment is ruined by there being ten or more speech bubbles inserted over everything in case you didn’t what incredibly obvious things are occurring. Characters spout their entire motivations for three pages on some occasions and even then they feel hollow and unrelatable.

The series showed some promise when the premise shifted to actually travelling to the Hunter’s Guild, but right after we were stuck with a training arc which shifted into a generic exams arc that turned into a game of cops and robbers with no tension or stakes. Around this time it was confirmed the manga was going to be canceled, so Kawaguchi quickly turned the story into a metanarrative about how destroying stories means destroying a universe to spite WSJ; while I can appreciate the motivation behind this plot development, it comes completely out of left field and makes for an unsatisfying open ending to an already fragmentary manga.

If Red Hood was in the hands of a more competent writer and artist it could’ve had the potential to be a groundbreaking series, but for a manga based around fictional tales it was frustratingly unimaginative. Regardless, I look forward to Kawaguchi’s next work, and I hope he’s managed to better hone his skills to avoid making a mistake of this level when the time comes again. If he can make it into Shonen Jump once, he might be able to manage it a second time.

Jul 2, 2021

Sebreme

Recommended

Preliminary (10/23 chp)

"Listen bro, there is this "Little Red Riding Hood" looking manga where the protagonist is not a crybaby, but independent and mature ass protagonist that wants to become a monster hunter."

If what you just read wasn't enough to convince you then I'm not done.

Story: 8

By the first chapter the MC is looking pretty good as character design and "development" so far. He starts like shaky ass dude 'til he becomes freaking Billy the kid with his gun and Kratos with his AXE! (maybe I overexaggerated a bit). Anyway, the story is looking surprisingly interesting and if it keeps getting the same treatment like this ...

Nov 14, 2021

LiterallyDas

Recommended

This is a very simple review. First ever too. I don't do this often or enough.

This is just a thank you to the author for his work. He strived for a lot and his art showed how much he wanted this to work out.
The story could've been better and so could the characters. But oh well. With the time i had with it and it's cast of HIGHLY MUSCULAR FEMALES 😩 ;; i enjoyed my time.

So goodbye Sensei. Till your next work. I shall be waiting patiently to see you achieve greatness.

And general reasons to read this manga for the short ...

Jun 27, 2021

ASeaWeeb

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (1/23 chp)

As of the first chapter, it's nothing outstanding. Fairly generic plot with some good art thrown in. Wouldn't be too surprised if the series falls a bit flat and gets cut short, but it has room to grow and I'm curious to see where the author takes the series.

First things first the art is really good. While I can't say for certain how this author will handle fights going forward in terms of them being readable, what we have was really nice to look at and relatively easy to follow. The setting has this kind of victorian-esque influence with the biggest comparison obviously being ...

Aug 23, 2021

ZephyrK_

Recommended

Preliminary (7/23 chp)

The Hunters Guild: Red Hood by Yuki Kawaguchi serialised in Weekly Shonen Jump is a story brimming with potential as it tackles and excellently incorporates various folk lore in a beautiful Shonen fashion.

Right now the pacing of the manga is perfect, characters are being introduced and developed at a steady and enjoyable rate as well as each chapter being packed with lore and world building. Each chapter your left immersed in the beauty of the world created by Kawaguchi brought to life by his distinct yet familiar art style from his days as an assistant to Kohei Hirokoshi for My Hero Academia.

I've been reading since ...

Sep 24, 2021

xPerSeNN

Recommended

Preliminary (11/23 chp)

First off, I will start with tl;dr

This review is based on first eleven chapters, but i can tell that this manga has great potential. Why? Art is very good, as well as depicted world. Characters aren't bland, but I think author won't leave them as they are now. Y'know, the whole character development shit. Even if this was short ride for now, I really enjoyed it. Looking forward to new chapters every week.

Now, for the ones who like to read.

Starting with the story,
As for now it's very ordinary, but enjoyable. Worldbuilding in this manga can be great in the future, because author has created ...

Jan 17, 2022

Another_Badger

Not Recommended

“Werewolves are the same as humans. They must eat, or they will starve and die. There’s nothing “good” or “evil” about it.”

- Grimm, Chapter 1

Red Hood is an interesting case of a manga that had a strong core idea but quickly lost sight of what it was trying to say. This led to an unfocused and chaotic series that ended up privileging style over story and suffering for it. If it had a more developed concept then it could have gone far but, unfortunately, it fell at the first hurdle.

The plot of Red Hood is easily its weakest and its most under-utilised element. Its ... initial premise of a young boy training to be a hunter is very reminiscent of other Shōnen titles and so it can feel like a very over-used plot starter and struggles to make Red Hood stand out amongst other publishing titles. It would have been more successful if it included a clearer focus point for the readers to work towards. For example, the Mayor could have been utilised more in the first chapter; creating a mystery that the reader could latch onto and try to uncover as the narrative progressed. Instead, there is a large enough break between his appearances that it makes his reappearance feel more like an attempt to drive up readership. This lack of clarity also leads to Red Hood quickly becoming riddled with contradictions. No moment is more obvious than in Grimm’s early speech about werewolves being neither good nor bad, instead simply fighting to survive. By creating the implication that werewolves aren’t evil, Red Hood could have explored this aspect more; presenting the werewolves as morally ambiguous or verging on sympathetic characters. Instead, this statement is immediately contradicted as the only werewolves we see are portrayed as being stereotypically evil. This inability to commit to ideas is repeated throughout Red Hood and the contradictions only become more apparent.

Perhaps Red Hood needed a stronger editorial presence to help guide it down a more certain path as it could have covered some really interesting ground. Even within the short length, we see a dense plot that has a lot happening in it. Obviously, due to the series being cancelled, the main plot points are condensed and are very fast-paced as Kawaguchi attempted to demonstrate his vision all at once. I think that, if the series had been longer, this could have developed a very interesting tale to see unfold; especially if the character development was slower and given the time to grow naturally. This would have been bolstered by how well Red Hood plays into its fairytale setting. It strikes up a rather interesting relationship with pre-existing fables which could have been explored more. Unfortunately, these moments become buried under the sheer volume of different ideas that are being pushed onto the reader; noticeable in the rather abrupt narrative changes which take place.

It is the characters who suffer most from the inconsistent tone and pacing. The two main characters are almost polar opposites of each other in terms of how they are presented but they both suffer from serious problems. Grimm, the experienced hunter, has a hex placed on her so she can only access her true strength for a couple of hours at a time. Velou is a young boy who wants to become a hunter and goes through an exam to become one, he also suddenly develops an incredible power. This is very similar to the early plot of My Hero Academia, which Kawaguchi worked on as an assistant. While it isn’t rare for previous work to influence newer stories, it can often feel like Red Hood lacks its own distinct voice. Only during the final few chapters do we see these two develop in a way that could have been really interesting. Unfortunately, it was all crammed into the final few chapters, making any character development feel like a personality transplant.

The rest of the cast is also awkwardly handled, with most of them being introduced at the same time. This makes it difficult to remember who each character is and what their skills and abilities are. There is also a reliance on backstories to build certain characters in the latter half of the manga which means readers aren’t given time to form their own opinions before being told whether we should feel sorry for a character or not. Characters who aren’t given any semblance of a backstory tend to be quite forgettable.

The art style, while reminiscent again of My Hero Academia, is striking and perfectly fits the rustic fairytale setting of Red Hood. This is especially true for the settings and character designs; in particular, the werewolves are both grotesque and interesting, offering a unique interpretation of the creatures. The other non-human designs also reflect a strong aesthetic vision that struggles to balance out the noticeable problems with Red Hood’s plot. The fights are fairly engaging and easy to read although there is little experimentation with panelling; especially when recalling previous scenes where a whole page is copied into the background with the text removed. This makes it difficult to pick out any moments of significance and comes across as a little bit lazy. There is also a reliance on the art to carry the exposition-heavy moments; usually leaning into a more comedic approach. It often creates a jarring tone that could have been handled better by committing to the more serious nature of Red Hood’s story. Much like the rest of this manga, it boils down to style over function and that can quickly alienate the reader.

Overall, Red Hood is a series that suffers from a lack of consistency and no clear direction beyond a very overused plot structure. During its later chapters, it tried to make a statement about storytelling but ended up falling into too many pitfalls itself. I wish Kawaguchi all the best for the future as he has a really interesting artistic vision, all that’s needed is a plot that can match it.

Dec 5, 2021

Raiden316

Recommended

SPOILERS BELOW:

Man, what the fuck did I just read. This was all over the place in terms of quality.

Lets start with the art: the first chapter looked great. I loved the design of the werewolves and of course was a fan of thick ass Grimm. And then the next chapter happened. Holy hell, the author could NOT handle the rigor of a weekly chapter schedule. I mean, I can't blame them, I don't know how any WSJ mangaka does it, but the immediate drop in art quality was the most noticeable I've ever seen. The final few chapters had almost no backgrounds, like they just ...

Aug 29, 2021

HanKrum

Recommended

Preliminary (7/23 chp)

This manga World/Background's art is similar to One Piece's and think maybe the creator have idea that every segment and what is on the paper is not random like is in One Piece.

The Manga have the ,,MHA'' faces construction maybe because the author work as assistant for Kohei Horikoshi's ,,My hero academia's" creator

Its definitely interesting and fun. I think the best about that manga are the main characters, because it get quite interesting whit them.

If the quality of the art get better , manga will climb in the ranking.

It get some ,,Hunter x Hunter'' vibe from ,,7 chapter'' but ...

Nov 4, 2021

Giblow_20

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (18/23 chp)

Hunter's Guild: Red Hood was a serialization by Yuki Kawaguchi, a former assistant of Horikoshi. You can see this from the character's faces and bombastic action panels imo. RH is about MC Velou and thicc muscle lady Grimm going around and killing monsters (with the first arc focusing on Werewolves).

RH failed to establish the 3 G's of Jump early enough

G - uy: Who is our MC, what's their backstory, what's their personality like, can the audience root for/attach themselves to the mc

G - oal: What's the point of the story? What actually drives our MC and does it have potential to keep the story ... going?

G - immick: Luffy is rubber, Naruto has the demon fox and Ichigo has a big sword etc etc. You want to introduce what the MC's weapon or power is and maybe even how other characters will fight. Especially important for shonen battle manga.

Red Hood achieved one of these well, and it took 5 whole chapters to do so, while the previously mentioned series got it done in the 1st chapter. So of course that lowered its initial reception in Japan. Velou is a pretty bland character, who's motivations seem all over the place at first, going back and forth between protecting the village or going off to kill monsters. This ties into the Goal, which was to defend the village by killing monsters that aren't even near the village. Maybe Velou should have just been the overly empathetic type who wanted to defend villages like his own. Lastly, the Gimmick, Grimm's assortment of fairy tale and literature themed weapons, was pretty good. You could easily see Velou being trained over time to master all these different and interesting weapons by going up against a variety of monsters.

By the time the author began the exam arc, the manga had lost all good will. The story instantly moves away from the potential of its worldbuilding and instead locks us into weeks and weeks of one of the most poorly timed exam arcs in manga history. It's like if Hxh had Gon sail away from home and instantly be put into the Running portion of the Hunter exam, which then goes on for 10 chapters. The strength of the series was its monster designs and use of Fairy Tale lore (which Japanese audiences would be less knowledgeable about) and it wastes that in less than 10 chapters.

At this point the axe is clearly visible, especially because the series had been at the bottom of the TOC since chapter 7 or so. Obviously Kawaguchi was given notice of the axe, because at the end of exam he decided to dump all the late game twists the story would have led to. Velou is a puppet, made by the Mayor (Gepettou) to destroy the book that writes the fate of the world. The author excuses Velou's poor characterisation, Grimm's wasted potential, the unneeded focus on side characters and the odd twists in the story with a meta narrative analogy about publishing a manga. It feels incredibly whiney to read, and if it is intended to critique the industry, it feels quite pathetic coming from a first time author who couldn't last 19 chapters. I would like to hope Kawaguchi is just trying to express his frustrations about trying to please the audience and failing rather than lashing out at them, but meta narrative's always end up confusing to interpret when you don't know the author well.

Overall, the one-shot was nice, but the manga failed to sort itself out fast enough to gain an audience, and lost the remaining audience by rejecting its initial premise for a meta one.

Edit: I know this review is really harsh, but I was fairly excited after reading the oneshot. This plus the constant Phantom Seer level copium and whining from readers soured my opinion of Red Hood quire a bit

Sep 6, 2021

dankchungus

Not Recommended

Preliminary (7/23 chp)

I don't normally write reviews this early, but seeing so many positive comments about this series makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. This series (so far) is not good, and many of the things people are saying in these reviews are objectively wrong, so while this already sounds like a condescending review written out by a angry loser (which is an accurate assessment of myself), I feel like I have to make this, because the other commenters aren't being truthful.

TLDR: This series feels like something you've read before, but with worse art (characters not even being proportioned properly throughout a chapter), a ... worse story (boy goes to do thing because people die and he has no friends because the author flew through an entire arc in just 5 chapters), and worse dialogue (it's jammed like wano country one piece, except the text boxes are in all of the wrong spots, and the story is a flare and no substances because the most unique thing about the story is the big tiddies on major side characters).

Story:

I think there are two major draws to this series: the characters and the story. The premise, which feels loosely based off of little red riding hood, is something that attracts many fans (especially western) because they grew up reading about little red riding hood as a kid. So, with such deeply tied sentiments, a manga that includes relatable monsters, as well as imagery that feels somewhat homely feels like a must try for many people.

But, despite what seems like a good idea (a hunter association of riding hoods that fights evil werewolves and witched), the author was able to make the concept tedious and almost plagiaristic in just seven chapters (which is an impressively bad feat). For such a great concept, red hood already feels like an over the top, outwardly ambitious (meaning it projects itself to be genre bending, but ends up being as run of the mill as you can get) hunter hunter clone but with a couple of wacky additions onto the main premise so that the reader feels like they're getting something new, but they aren't (again, outwardly ambitious).

Characters:

The characters are the second major reason why people review this new series so highly, but in general it's for bad reasons rather than good (that probably doesn't make sense but keep reading - I promise that I 'm onto something). To be fair, I'll first include the two good characters that are offered: the mc, and an old dude that's a fatherly figure to the mc. The relationship between these two, and the potential lore that is hinted as the old man is further extrapolated on, is an actually pleasant addition to this series; one that isn't otherworldly in it's ability to capture you, but it is enough to pull you.

But, the next two characters I'm going to discuss are the main reason why I think this series is popular (and why I strongly dislike this series so far): they're two chicks that feel like they're seven feet tall, and they have monster sized assets (boobs and ass). I have a theory that people enjoy these characters and overlook the negatives of the series because of horniness, and I think it's true because the internet threads revolving around red hood for this almost exclusively talk about the two of them (instead of the actual story). But, even though it sounds like I'm someone who hates overly sexualized characters - I'm not. If the character is well written and their image fits their purpose for the story, that's fine with me - I'll like them because they're a good fit to the story. But, the image of these two (big hulking babes) feels like a strange attempt at uniqueness rather than a good faith effort to implement good design into the story. They're overly sexualized for the sole purpose of capturing the horny youth, and one of the reasons for me thinking that is this: one them is the most poorly designed character I've ever seen in any manga (and I've read One's version of one punch man).

The female in question has the body of Arnold Schwarzenegger but with grotesquely defined muscles that straddle the line of being considered orc like. She has the boobs of a mother who feeds 10 children a day, and then has the face of a anime school girl that struggles with bulimia (the face is slender and very petite and not rough and chiseled like her body). So, combining all of those elements feels like the accident that made the powerpuff girls, yet this character doesn't feel like a true success like the PP girls (maybe not the best acronym). This character feels like an utter ass pull to be original, but she looks abysmal. And, on top of this, the author fails to get her proportions correct whenever she's shown, so it feels like she's constantly different sizes while reading, which is utterly unacceptable.

So far, her popularity seems to have spawned from images of her popping up on forums, and then people saying: "who is this? I need to go read that series ASAP." But, if people are going to get horny over creatures that should be in Ripley's believe it or not, I'm a bit scared for the future of manga (if this becomes a successful series on the world's biggest manga platform), because it could open a floodgate of characters styled after rule34 content into the mainstream. This isn't inherently bad, but seeing as this story is abysmal at the moment and it's still popular, people are overlooking it's failures because of horniness, and that's scary to me.

Art and Pacing:

I'm running out of room so I'm going to combine these two elements. The artwork itself is good, and the author has a clear talent for drawing, but the pacing is utterly awful, so the dialogue gets squished, and then the art doesn't feel good on your eyes despite it being decently drawn (except for that one lady who's proportions keep getting changed - that's just bad artwork). Sometimes, in order to change the pace and have more intimate conversations, the art quality becomes lowered (as almost every other series does), but for some reason, the way these types of panels are presented in this series makes it feel like a work by a novice high schooler that shouldn't have ever been printed.

Also, the pacing combined with shoddy story telling make for a depressing combination: some good designs, coupled with decent ideas, provide the spark that all new series need to people gripped. But, in this manga, those things are shown, and then eviscerated by an overly generic plot, a lack of context despite the bombardment of dialogue, and then the speed which makes parts of the story that should have appeared 20-30 chapters in be shown by chapter 6.

May 5, 2022

DakimakuraThor

Mixed Feelings

Character design A1. The mangaka definitely has a thing for strong, thicc women. Can't complain. Some of the monster designs are unique, have a real old-timey eldritch horror vibe.

Story was promising at first, but felt like it lost it's direction and went really off-kilter by the end. I suppose that is par for the course for a to-be-axed manga. Just a shame to get our feet wet and then have your excitement cut short.

Would love to see this author take a crack at another series, perhaps after some serious pre-planning, world-building, and structured story pacing.

Overall, if you want to enjoy some art and feel a ...

Jun 5, 2024

BorritoYuzumaki

Recommended

Hunter's Guild: Red Hood is inspired fairy tales, but takes them in a far darker and gruesome direction from the very first chapter. The problem with Red Hood from there isn't that it was boring or bad, it's got more to do with the meat it left on the bone. This manga is dripping with unrealized potential, sporting a familiar art style that felt both fantastical and horrific. It doesn't wow with any storytelling, and that's probably where most of its problems lie.

The good is that, again, the art style is great, and often bordering on amazing. The world is rich in detail, and makes ...

Jan 25, 2025

Final_Verdict

Mixed Feelings

Potential. A very loaded word, if you think about it. Who determines what does and doesn’t have the -potential- to be something great? While few things achieve everything they set out to, I don’t think it’s an unfair perspective to say that the seed of greatness can be found within most pieces of art. Whether it’s a beautiful, life-changing painting, the Great American Novel™, a corporate-garbage TV program, or pulp comics printed in newspaper-quality magazines. Everything has the potential to be something to someone, right?

It SHOULD be this way, but life is not always so fair. So what about when that potential is cut ... short? When the people in charge of a story’s publication pull the plug prematurely, and say, “No. It never had a chance.” Such a thing leaves behind a miasma, a sort of scent of regret that seeps up toward the reader from the author’s very words. The Hunters Guild: Red Hood, is a good example of this.

Made up of a scant three volumes, The Hunters Guild: Red Hood ends up having three very clear phases to its story. The first stage, here, is setup: as to be expected. Red Riding Hood, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, dark, dark woods, werewolves, witches, giants, dragons, and the Van Helsing-esque organization that hunts them: that is what this manga’s world is made of. Though seeing western fantasy in manga is nothing new, I did find it a bit of a breath of fresh air in a magazine that is positively (and expectedly) full of Japanese-ness. Katana swordfighting, Shinto demons, martial arts, and all accompanying Asian mythos—it seems there’s no end to it in Shonen Jump. But of course, it’s a Japanese magazine, so it’s gonna be there, you know? So having a Grimm’s Fairy Tales/Little Red Riding Hood manga should be a standout in this roster, a reprieve of sorts… in theory.

And for what it’s worth, that first volume is indeed good setup. The art is deeply reminiscent of a one Kohei Horikoshi’s of My Hero Academia fame (which is fitting, considering that the creator of this manga, Yuuki Kawaguchi, was his assistant) and leaves a bit to be desired, but it’s by no means bad. You have a basic conflict, interesting monsters, and a generic protagonist, but stirred together they amount to that one promising word: potential.

Sadly, the entire second volume is terribly boring, flaunting one of the most by the numbers, cookie-cutter attempts at a training arc I’ve ever read. As I trudged through the chapters I couldn’t help but think, “yeesh, no wonder this got canned.” It takes place in an uninteresting area with uninteresting characters, bereft of the off-color fairytale qualities the first volume had in spades. It overall was not a good place to take the story hot off the heels of fun action scenes between freaky-looking werewolves and the hunters that kill them.

But then in the third volume, things get weird. The manga seemingly had been taking its time to set up the world. It had even introduced three named antagonists. But then it makes such a wild headspin turn into metatextuality that I can literally feel Kawaguchi’s desperation and regret leaking out onto the pages, bleeding into the fabric of the story. Anyone with an interest in this title has more than likely heard about the meta nature of the ending, but I wasn’t prepared for how much pity it would arouse from me. And if you somehow didn’t know, the reason this manga is so short is because Shonen Jump, the publisher, axed it not long after it was greenlit. So the entire climax of the story is a desperate scramble to wrap up loose ends in the most unique way possible. The work culture of the manga industry is brutal indeed, and all I was thinking as I finished reading this title was that the author is but one of many victims of a very competitive industry.

I do think there was value in this story, certainly, and if you generally like shonen manga or western fairy tales, then it’s worth the read. I think the ending saves it from mediocrity, but instead makes it somewhat bizarre. The one emotion I’m left with, however, is sadness for the mangaka at his inability to draw a long, fun story he could fully flesh out. Sadness that his bosses said “no.” Not everything can be as long as One Piece, I get it, but I keep going back to that one word—potential—and wondering just what this little story could’ve been, if given more time.

Sep 24, 2021

yona2005

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (10/23 chp)

It can happen sometimes that a one gets way excited while reading a certain story to the point where the action of not noticing a lot of the flaws within the story occurs unknowingly, yet all it takes is some minutes to calm down and analyze what they've been reading.

Red Hood is a manga that caught my attention solely for it's using of an old tale as it's name which according to my experience may indicate that the story itself have some of these fantastical elements that do not exist in other stories, and sure it does.

For this review we are going to split things ...

Dec 31, 2021

ScalchopWarrior

Recommended

Little Red Riding Hood, a fairy tale as old as time, one that every kid knows in and out. And that’s just one of many stories within the ever famous Grimms’ Fairy Tales, also containing famous narratives like Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and Cinderella among many others. Remixing these tales into a new kind of story is certainly not a brand new idea; movies like Disney’s famous adaptations of some tales or Hoodwinked certainly show that. However, these adaptations are most often just that; adapting the source material in often more child friendly or optimistic ways, or else using them as parody for another kind ... of story entirely. Red Hood does something else entirely, which we see as we delve in this strange, twisted world of fairy tales.

Perhaps fitting a story based on classic tales, the story of Red Hood is one of its stronger points. Without explicit spoilers, it takes what would otherwise be a dull and repetitive shounen manga story and twists it, much like it does to the stories of its origin. By the end, the story isn’t at all like what one would have believed it to be like at the start, and it gets there by means of a gripping, interesting, if sometimes cliche, narrative that keeps you invested.

By far one of Red Hood’s greatest strengths though, is its world. Pulling from the Grimm tales, the world is all at once familiar and completely new, taking these familiar tales of old and putting them through a new take that drastically changes how we view them. Stories like Cinderella and Red Riding Hood are seemingly warped and changed, forming a world of fairy tales unlike I’ve seen before. It’s truly remarkable, and something I wish could have been explored more than it was.

That lack of exploration is regretfully one of Red Hood’s primary flaws, and it really rears its head regarding the characters. While most are fine and a few even interesting, the little we got of them was simply not sufficient to make most fully fleshed characters in their own right, feel like little more than caricatures in a fairy tale novel. The beginnings of something were evident, and many have compelling character with which showed easy promise to grow, but the time was simply not given, leaving the cast feeling rather paper thin.

Lack of time leads to another of Red Hood’s issues, being its pacing. While the story runs itself fairly regularly at a decent pace at the start, the further we go into the manga’s run, the quicker and less reasonable its pacing becomes, up until the end begins to move at an absolutely breakneck speed that the limited setup it has simply cannot support. It’s an understandable issue for some unfortunate real life complications, yet one of the most notable to exist.

Red Hood’s themes are by far its most interesting aspect of the manga, mostly in how they seem to evolve in response to real life occurrences. The Shonen Jump ax is an all-too familiar fact of manga nowadays, where any series can and will be cut off at the whim of Jump, forced to rush an ending in a few chapters. For most series this is rather indicative in the reading, mostly in a sudden rushed pacing and raised stakes that clearly heads straight for the story’s endgame. And, while Red Hood is similar in that manner, there is also something else of note, that being how its themes changed to handle this sudden shift.

To say the themes completely changed wouldn’t be completely accurate; the makings of the story’s final message were certainly always present even if not always emphasized. But what I find truly remarkable is how Red Hood used its real life impending cancellation to better push its own theme, the rushed pacing and sudden conclusion almost add to the impact its message creates. It’s not something I want to spoil, as the manga is short enough to be a quick read for one to experience it themselves, but it managed to stick with me in a way no other canceled manga did.

In conclusion, Red Hood is a prime example of the unfortunate circumstances behind Shonen Jump’s trigger happy axing of manga. The series had a strong narrative and world with slightly lacking character and pacing that nevertheless had much promise, along with its interesting themes, but was cut short and thus never achieved the heights it displayed the capability to achieve.

Grade - B-