Shin Megami Tensei IV: Prayers

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soooooooo, someone made a manga about jonathan and another about walter from smt 4, but in an alternative universe were (i'm guessing...) law ending has alredy happened.

I usually work out the review a little more but this is 16 chapters long and somehow has very little actual content in it. The game is really heavy in its core and its an experience of its own, this however is just the dankest shit i have ever read in my life.

So the story follows Jonathan and his friends (including Navarre) from smt 4 plus one extra character that in all intends and purposes could be ... Walter, this new character was kinda hollow specially since Walter is A CHARACTER IN THE MANGA and it feels so unnecesary to have em both in an story. This random character made the experience kinda meh, because the man is so boring i get it, is a spin off or something and they wanted to do something different but jesus this guy just feels like a generic edgelord. And the antagonist is a mixture of Jonthan and Walter that did not need to be created, again if they wanted to make a extra story or something to Jonthan why not use Walter? i just don't get it.

Aside from the characters the story is fine, just fine. It was very random, and very dank. Jonathan was TOTALLY OUT OF CHARACTER, the ending was dank, flynn mistical bullshit was totally out of whack, and this is Jonathan side story so you know BY THE POWER OF JESUS CHRIST and friendship. My favorite piece of dialogue is when Walter says something about how terrible the genocide is going to be, and yeah Jonathan is the one who stops said genocide *chef kiss*

Should you read this? Probably not. Was it fun? Maybe, sometimes, smol Jonathan was really cute tho, big jonathan was equally as cute.

I read (and reviewed!) Demonic Gene first, so I'll be using that as a baseline for this review.

If you're a Jonathan Connoisseur, you are most definitely in the right place. In the same way that Demonic Gene felt quintessentially Walter, with its dark and gritty art style and troubled but understanding depiction of Funny Agi Man, Prayers is very quintessentially Jonathan. The art style is notably softer and lighter, making use of minimal shading, maximal contrast, and heavy use of white highlights instead of black shading. It's less detailed than Demonic Gene (and lacks the gore factor, even when things get bloody later on), but ... it definitely fits the tone. This is Jonathan's story, and it captures his dignity and idealism while still making him work to see those ideals through.

If there's criticism to be made of Prayers, it's probably that the ending is *too* idealistic. Not that happy endings can't exist, but that Walter's increase in power went hand in hand with increased desperation, horrific mutation, and alienation from others. Here, Jonathan basically becomes a shonen protagonist. And while Flynn's presence in Demonic Gene was a bit unclear, the opposite is the case here, to the point where he goes beyond spirit mentor. I wouldn't say they harm the story too much, and they do tie into Jonathan coming to grips with his flaws, but be advised. Further to the story's credit, the new character taking Flynn's place, Asuma, is handled very well. He's a Chaos-aligned foil, and much like Gina, while he initially seems redundant since Walter is already here, he is different enough, and more directly parallels Jonathan, that he earns his place. It helps that the other Samurai have more of a presence in the story than they did in Demonic Gene. Walter, Isabeau, and the other guy aren't *major* characters per se, but they do more here than they did there.