Jun 29, 2024
You know there's this feeling when you're a kid, and you're waiting in, for example, a hospital or waiting for a scheduled appointment, as kids, that bored the fuck out of our souls... So what did we do to try to make that time more engaging or at least more entertaining? Think about some awesome stories, I at least did that. Great characters and great fights! You know? When we let our livid and vast imagination go wild to think about those amusing thinking... But that is what that was, just a brief moment of you with yourself, making use of our little world inside
...
a little kid's insight, Right? But after we go back home we realize there's no point in bringing that back, it was just sporadic, there's no way someone would even try to make a story just to justify those epic moments we thought without making a cohesive work... Right? Well, that's what I first think when reading Wakui's new work "Negai no Astro". This is just a poor and boring pretext to bring those sporadic, ephemeral and nonsensical stories and loose "epic" moments trying to make any sense in the big picture.
So lets start with what this manga bring to us: Yotsurugi Hibaru is our protagonist and the biological son of the head of Yotsurugi clan, accompanied by Terasu (one of the few adoptive childrens in the family) one day meteors fall on the Earth and just everyone has powers. That's all. From that point onwards, everything in society falls apart as people abuse of their powers. Let's see, the first problem I had while reading the first chapters is just how ambiguous and convenient for the characters the power system is, there's not really neither a straight nor deep reason as why some people have astros and others not, they just bring up that they "wished for something", that usually brings me with the problem that the world in this series is convenient for the protagonist and wraps around what they need instead of making a harmony between them. It can sound as something really rushed as this has 11 chapters as for right now, but that doesn't excuse the lack of immersion and atmosphere around the first chapters and the situation in our protagonist lives. Protagonist fall unconscious and then 2 weeks has passed, so everything is okay? Well, we didn't actually see anything from our eyes.
So when you make a shonen you need to think in how to make your power system forehand to not make it sound convenient or inconsistent as to not break precisely your atmosphere and world: Nen, Innocence, Ki, etc. This is one of the things I didn't like at the start, how the power system is an excuse to poorly tell the story of characters. I don't like when a character does something and then he immediately goes like "Is because I wished for..." and then just explain to you a very ambiguous wish and how that works as a power, people can like it and I can see that, but I couldn't stop feeling like the dialogue never really followed the exposition neither the world, it just feels like what I stated earlier, like a poor pretext to just fight. We want to fight, so let's fight, that's it. The world around us, how the power works is just irrelevant and can be as flexible as I can when I need it and just let it be.
I also think there's a misconception in Wakui's mind now that I see Hibaru. Wakui in Tokyo Revengers had a strange fascination making shine "justice" and the good as the simplest things ever. Oh, so the gang is maintaining food for themselves? Let just defeat them and give food to everyone! But what will we do now that the city has fallen and almost everything is destroyed? How are we gonna make or have more supplies? Ahh... Well... Yep, that's exactly what I mean, the world is fitting conveniently under our protagonist will, we don't get a glimpse of how things are going, but we need to do the right at all cost, right? I wouldn't mind it, but my problem comes when is a cartoonish almost as if a parody. Are we supposed to feel admiration when after our protagonist defeat the enemies who were not giving supplies to the people, all he asks is just a candy? That's what I meant when I say it's almost a parody. That's awful, goddamn awful as a way to characterize our main protagonist. People usually have some problems when protagonist in shonen are just a goody two shoes (Midoriya, Tsuna, etc) but I always think there is not a really big problem in that as long as you know how to handle your protagonist mindset, problems and decisions. The problem is when you portrait it like in Ken Wakui's work, does he think justice and doing the good is just showing us how the main cast defeat bad guys expecting to gain nothing and with just a straight unnatural dialogue. It doesn't work as a device to characterize your character as justice or good persons, it just makes them feel like devices doing something conveniently fitting for them because it is easy, just like it was easy doing it in Tokyo Revengers its even easier in here.
While reading it I also thought that there were some moments that happened too early in the story. I don't know what was the first fight between our main cast supposed to be. Hibaru fight with Terasu because suddenly they just had a childish discussion in their mindset and approach respect to what to do with the other adoptive children of the deceased head of the yakuza, why childish when it was about live or death? Because for the spectator it can't feel like just two people whining and whining without even understanding commons sense or the other, but that happen when you argue with random people, right? Well... They were almost brothers and best friends… Yeah, not good. This happens so early in the story, with little no not introspection in our characters that we just don't really care either way. Some may say that it was needed in this point as to propose the main conflict between our cast and the situation around them, to which I would agree, but that falls apart when you see how this conflict works as part of our protagonist characterization and relationship with others, as an approach of those themes this sucks to be early, because we as lectors don't have absolutely nothing to where to stand for ourselves, we don't really care about the showing of emotion between them because is just useless information to the lector who doesn't really care if the enemy needs to be alive or dead. Also, there is the fact that fight in this manga suck. You punched me? Sorry, I can punch you harder! (automatically wins) Seriously, who think it would be engaging and interesting to have our protagonist ability to just go and punch harder without even a technique or nothing interesting nor visually pleasing? I don't understand how can this progress forward. That again is just how I think the mayor problem in this manga shows up, is just so little thought out, almost like if this is estimated to last less than 50 chapters even. This duality between how everything feel so little and so uninteresting goes even crazy when you see just how little fights can make you up for the excitement they may bring. The conflict isn't even interesting, and I don't even know what I'm supposed to feel respect our characters. Kuran's story was so rushed and put so early on the series it didn't even let a scar neither a theme around the series, it was just to hope to not make it so lineal with little to not real result.
"Am I kinda an ashole and a piece of shit here?" I'm just shitting and shitting on a new shonen manga trying to make it big (At least I think is trying?) in a medium where that can be really hard. This is like beating the shit out of your little cousin because he tried to wipe his shit for his own or the first time, and he let the toilet stink with his shit as he tries something for the first time in this shitty world so now he needs a beating, okay, too much shit in a paragraph, but let that be a metaphor about how shitty this manga is. Seriously I feel kinda weird making and maybe writing more than what I should when this has just 11 chapters. But I just can't help it, I'll admit it right here and now. I hate Tokyo Revengers, but that's not a reason to not give Wakui a second chance, Urasawa didn't start making interesting works in his first try and Araki had plenty of tries and errors before going into Jojo, so why not extend my hand again to Wakui's works? Wrong, next time I'll chop my arm off, that would be better than to experience this mediocre writing again. Wakui just doesn't seem to understand just how lineal his dialogue and portrait of justice is in this medium, making you feel like you're an idiot trying to understand the values in people and how always doing the good is what we must strive. Thanks, I'll continue being a good person, not for this godawful shitty manga tho, not even due to your previous work in Tokyo Revengers. Do you understand then why I made my way to write this review? Is because I feel like Wakui didn't learn anything, not little neither a few in between. Nothing. Zero. Non-existing. I'm not even disappointed, it just feels weird that he can get worse and worse progressively, is he challenging his lectors and the medium? It seems so, because the lack of purpose in this work makes it from something that have never touched pen. Yes, exactly. Never let him take the pen again, because his works are almost denigrating for his lectors. Don't ever let the man grab the pen again
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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