Arachnid

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There are manga's out there that are enjoyable while at the same time being very lackluster storywise and characterwise: such is the case of Arachnid. Although it was a somewhat enjoyable read, its premise was dull and generic, the characters suffering from the very same issue. It must be said that the action presented is entertaining, as well as the abilities of the characters. Arachnid is mainly an action shōnen, yet it has some dramatic elements as well.

~Story~

The setting of the story is generic, the highschool girl Alice being tormented by her uncle everyday, until one day she encounters him murdered by an assassin called ... "Kumo". After falling unconscious, she wakes up in the very house of the assassin which she will be raised by. While this may seem somewhat interesting setting and character-wise, it doesn't expand on that, rather it just focuses mainly in the action scenes. There is also smut and sex scenes present, which had no purpose in the manga at all, being fan service its goal, which was quite a drawback.

The main problem with the manga is its story and goal: readers are abruptly presented with the assassin and for no apparent reason he decides to train Alice as one. Furthermore, it seems that the protagonist must be killed for a very lackluster reason by a mysterious organization. While story progresses, there is no real goal presented to the reader, rather mainly focusing on the afore-mentioned action scenes as well as the introduction of quite a cast of characters. From the several plot twists that happen throughout the story, most are not hinted at in any way, while at the same time being generic. There are significant issues with the characters as well, but to this I will come back later.

The redeeming aspect of the manga are the battle scenes are interesting to see and how these develop; however, it is soon apparent that these fights can be rather tensionless, as the story is mainly a survival game being Alice its focus, and thus naturally there will be no danger for this character. The fact that sudden power ups were on the order of the day didn't really help it either. There is also the fact of the different abilities of the characters: these have their foundation in the different insects that roam this world, such as spiders, cockroaches, beetles, you name it.

It is certainly interesting to learn all the different abilities of these insects, yet its implementation on the characters are rather unbelievable. Ranging from having glandular secretion of fluids all around the body, or having organs protected by iron plates are such examples. Although amusing, it breaks a bit with the immersion of the story. Nevertheless, it can make fights unpredictable in some cases, particularly when affecting the secondary characters.

~Characters~

The cast of characters in Arachnid is big, especially considering the amount of episodes released: some are interesting, yet the vast majority are archetypes, being demented ones the biggest portion. There is also another problem linked to this: all the different characters are introduced in a very short period to maintain the manga interesting. This has as consequence that these are severely underdeveloped, in addition to reader not having enough time to care at all for the characters. The fact that these had infinite amount of toughness didn't enhance those either. The various motives of these are very lackluster as well, which is a negative aspect.

The protagonist herself is quite the stereotype, being a typical lead who is caring, kind and just. In addition she is quite the overpowered character as well, possessing a natural ability to concentrate immensely, enabling her to learn at an unbelievable speed. The supporting characters and its interactions with these are dull and unrealistic, charters behaviour changing when the plot demanded it.

~Art~

The art of Arachnid was well done, having a consistent background which was detailed enough: good shading techniques, albeit not outstanding. The panel placements were overall done well, giving the reader a sense of continuity to the narrative. The character's design was varied, yet every femalemale character had similar body builds, being adolescent and huge bodies the respective characteristics. Battle scenes are well drawn, yet never really stood out.

~Enjoyment~

Arachnid was a somewhat enjoyable read, yet it failed miserably in the story and character department, being a goal-less story and generic characters the main culprits. The action scenes, in particular the character's abilities related to insects was its redeeming feature, as it was quite informative, albeit exaggerated in some cases. The fights on its own were fun to see, yet it will become soon apparent that these are tensionless. So do I recommend this manga? Not really, unless you can ignore the lackluster story and characters, or are interested to see the comparisons with insects; otherwise I would stay away from it.

Thank you for reading.

This manga is so freaken amazing. To tell you the truth this was the first manga have every read with no romance. I just wanna say that if you haven't read this you should you will not be disappointed by the manga the only bad thing is that it update once a month. This story is about a girl who fights to keep her name and to keep on living she must kill.

Story : 8 pionts because it's not common plot like those dinosaurs coming after people.

Art: 8 points. I like that details and how they drew the bugs and people.

Character: 8 ... points. I like how the main character grew smarter and stronger to help protect herself and people.

Enjoyment: 9 points. Like i said you will not be disapointed.I always wonder how sh will deal with theeole coming after her and how she can save herself.

Overall: 9 points. I just want to say..... stop reading this already and start reading Arachnid gosh you missing out a manga that you will not be mad about but the update.

Let me start by saying that I really did try to enjoy this manga. Let me follow that statement up by saying that after reading up to the 5th volume that I can't put up with this manga anymore.

Art:
Probably one of the few things that kept me reading the manga, it may not be that groundbreaking but it's really well done. Clean edges, nice proportions (a little bit of fan service too) and frankly pretty interesting character design gave this piece a really good look to it. I suppose then that it's a shame that the plot, characters and everything else about this manga ... is a poorly written and executed bundle of cliches.


Characters:
Other than the visual design of the characters, which once again aren't actually groundbreaking in any fashion, they're actually pretty terrible. Many characters in the manga appear in a purely antagonistic fashion and never truly get any sense, reasoning or motive as why they are actually doing the things they are other than the very blank reasoning of "I am with the organization" which got old after the first 4 people turned up and did it. The protag in this case isn't terrible and her reasoning while being extremely flawed and frankly stupid, is at least grounded in an exaggerated reality.


Plot:
Literally, this is actually most of the reason that I've given the manga such a low score. Poor writing and planning on how to introduce, characterize and flesh-out the more interesting people in the manga lead this to feel like nothing but a mish-mash of interesting plot-hooks and terrible cliches. Reasoning in this world is non-exsistant as many people just straight up do not seem to have any reason to do anything in this world and only seem to be there to push this manga "forward" (where ever that is because in 5 volumes I still don't know what it wants)


Overall:
Great character design, an interesting premise and strong artistic skills makes me sad that this manga is (in my own opinion, at least) pretty bad.

Overall it was a great manga and sadly we won't be able to read about the whole story, rest in piece author-san.
I recommend reading the Spin-Off "Caterpillar" first.

Story - Quite an interesting plot, the whole story was based off of people or these assassins, incorporating these insects as a pillar for their distinctive way of killing. One thing I do have to complain about is the lack of the background story being built in the initial stages of the story, though i do understand that, that was for the best in the later stages. going along with that, i was confused at certain parts ... since i wasnt able to grasp the, why, they were doing what they were doing. In general, some parts could've been more detailed, but eh it was still good. I do hve to say that i really did love the mix of Slice-of-life, horror, josei.


Art - For the most part the art was very well done. I do have to say that the individual characters indeed need a distinctive feature incorporated, since differentiating between them all was sort of difficult.

Characters - The characters though i do like them, especially the main protagonist, they were in a way generic in some aspects of them all. And though i said that they were sort of generic, somehow the author brought forth a personality, a individuality to them even with the genericness

Enjoyment - I loved reading it and I wanna read more of it in the future but sadly most likely not going to happen considering the author Murata Shinya died.

I liked the manga and I'm going to keep it in my favorites, as well as giving it an overall rating of 10. Hope you decide to check it out and that you end up enjoying it.

To be frankly, if I would go way more in depth on the rating, I would probably go for a 6, but I have my reason. and I will compare this manga with the author's other work Killing Bites. My anime list is raising to almost 300 but I still am not good at judging what a good or bad anime/manga is, but I think I will become better when writing more in depth reviews (reason: I like Fairy Tail, while a lot hate it, because it was my first encounter towards anime).

Story: 5
Has a crappy story if you look at it normally, but this ... is just a manga about insects. The reason it is crappy is because, there is no point in the story. We follow or heroin who is put in a battle royal, because yea assassins probably don't have anything else to do. If it was not for the variety of insects and the variety of spiders. this would not have worked. This makes the story a bit better. Because of all those different kind of spiders, we learn and see some decent battles where the heroin can adapt to it. This is just the point of the story. What would happen if all the kind of insects in the world were put in battle royal although it doesn't make sense that the heroin has the ability of more than one spider. Overal the story for the battles are just like Killing Bite the thing that shines in this crappy story. It is well though and doesn't give us the usually sword, fists, magic or EXPLOSION!!! where everything has to go as planned and where the main character is supper strong but has to be beaten a few times before he/she can pull it of somehow barely. while this story has the favor on or heroin, I didn't really had that feeling when reading this. I knew she would survive, but it gives a reason why she will be able to survive. and makes the battles more ballanced.

art: 10
The thing most people will say when reading this manga. while the story failes the art shines and pulls you further in the crappy story. maybe Killing bites would look better with this artist.

character: 7
We know little about all the characters and the protagonist has a brief history, but how the characters are presented makes it good. Not like Killing bites, these characters use tools that make this story more realistic than Killing bites and almost every character has this little story that links there behaviour with that of there insect.


result:
Although the story is crappy, it is one of the more enjoyable manga I ever read. The different insects make the story, not the plot.

So Arachnid, a action, horror, dark story about our main protagonist Alice Fuji, a high school student which gets bullied at school and suffers from her uncles abuse at home all changes in a blink of a moment. A professional assassin, which was to kill her uncle takes her with him and teaches her the ways and methods of becoming an assassin herself. The entire manga has a quite darker and tense feeling with it. At first when I started reading it I just read about 10 chapters and left it on hold but after getting back and reading the entire set in a couple ... sessions I would like to give my opinion on this manga. The main and also best executed part of this manga lays in the great artwork. Not only are the characters in each panel well drawn and designed, but also the background and all the shadows are artistically great. The main character has also good character development from starting of by being the weak, shy, bullied innocent girl becoming a strong person capable of making changes. Additionally there's a lot of great action scenes. While reading the story the reader is left in suspense. Moreover there are often unexpected scenes and actions I myself did not expect. What I really found fascinating in Arachnid was the entire power system, with all the different insects and there strengths, which is a really cool idea. While reading I learned quite a bit about different insect and bug species I previously have not known about. Each character in the story represents a different insect species which makes fighting scenes, as well as combat the more better. The only things I did not really like about this manga were the fact that every single character lacks in background information or generally in meaning. It would have been better to add more information, then the reader could understand the different characters better and maybe even identify himself/herself with them. And if there was any background info, it was quite fast paced and not well explained. Sometimes I could not really understand the entire situation. Another fact I didn't like that much, was that the story was short, but also many side characters are not important for the story in fact the story almost only revolves around our main character. But there were also rather slow and considerably boring parts, as well as not fully explained in the manga. Overall I quite enjoyed reading this manga and has a really cool and unique idea, with really clean artwork, but really lacks in story and characters.

I love this manga, it's is definitly one of my favoite mangas but it is definitly not the best.

This manga has some really great moments and pretty good characters.
There is alot of characters so there are many good ones but alot of bad ones but i do think that the good ones outway the bad ones.
The absolute best parts of this series is of course the fights, they look really good and they often cought me off guard.

The plot is pobably the weakest in this series, its pretty bland and unoriginal, but it does still make you want to know whats gonna happen.

I would recommend ... this manga to you if you dont care about the story that much and just want to see some cool characters fight bad guys.