Knight's & Magic

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Overall rating: 7/10

This manga really has me conflicted. On the one hand, it does an excellent job building dramatic tension and stakes, while fleshing out a world where magic and robots coexist. So far so good. But the pacing of this manga, and the quality of its characters leaves a lot to be desired. I genuinely feel that this could have been great as a 2 volume novel. But as a manga that is published weekly? It falls a bit flat since the long wait for the plot to inch along to a resolution is enough to have people drop the series, even if they ... are genuinely invested in the story. Some series like One Piece or Naruto can pull this off, but you have to really care about the main characters and the world they live in. And this manga did not take the effort to build up that relationship with the readers.

Lets start with Eru, the MC. His backstory as a programmer on Earth with an intense hobby of assembling robots is nice. It helps us understand his motivation to some extent. But we as readers need to see maturity, growth or some kind of change inspired by the plot in the MC. This MC seems very oddly fixed. In fact, to me he felt like he was at a distance from everyone else, like he alone was playing a video game while the rest were leading their lives seriously. This is why I sad a novel might have been preferable. We need a windows into his mind because the manga fails to provide one. The other characters are kind of bland or cliche. Nobody really seems to matter much emotionally, except Di. The MCs closest friends are nice, but we never really get to see their insights into the MC or why they support him so avidly. Some lazy attempt was made to show them coming from troubled noble homes as illegitimate children. But it was never explained.

Part of the problem with the pacing is that so much time is relegated to explain the technology. This would be a great idea, were it not for the fact that we have no reason to be invested in this. New tech seems to exist right around the corner and the MCs invaluable contribution to the engineering in this world appears to be the introduction of coaxial cables and biomimetics. It's honestly hardly to fathom that the engineers of this world could not come to a similar idea over a millennia of robotics. They even have demon beasts to emulate for sheer strength. Any other technological leap is just alien to us readers, and they might as well have just saved the time. The 'training arc' where the students build a new robot was also sort of pointless. I mean I understand that it was momentous in the case of this world, but time skips exist for a reason. It all seems rather pointless anyway because the MC builds himself a cheat suit that seems to escape all the rules the manga took so many pains to build and establishes him as the OP person in this world. Why bother explaining limits to only exceed them so easily?

Then there's the fact that the manga pivots -- with barely any warning -- to a near 60 chapter arc of endless war. Considering I did read through this all the way, you can be sure the events were thrilling. At some points, I was deeply invested in the arc. But it is still way too long. So many chapters in, we still have no explanation for why this war happened, save for something that sounds a lot like an isekai 'lebensraum.' And even so, they need to explain some of that history to us readers first! I won't just accept and build up some history of my own to justify the enemy's aggression.

This is the good and bad thing about the manga. It checks some of the boxes to appeal to people, but fails to build on it to satisfy them. It's an isekai with a world that feels shallow. It's a mecha series where the MCs lack a powerful nemesis that push them to their limits. It's a shounen manga without a tournament arc. I can't say this manga was bad. Honestly I might even come back to continue reading it once more chapters are released. But I also can't say it is great as it is. I hope the next arc deals with something different and introduces us to a race or enemy that can force the MC to embrace his world and life in a more genuine manner. Because until he does so, not all the flashy bombs and lights of the fights can make us readers care about his story like it is our own.