Reincarnation no Kaben
Petals of Reincarnation

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Take a bunch of random people from history and make it a battle manga. Basically famous people from history are coming back and fighting each other for reasons. Nothing really matters except they now have super powers based on their most famous achievements.

What's even better is that everyone isn't just some japanese hero you've never heard of. In lieu of twenty different Nobunagas and we get real history figures like Lee Harvey Oswald, Charles Darwin, Bobby Fischer, Julius Caesar and everyone in between with pretty awesome anime powers pitted against each other.

The main protagonist is kind of a drag, but plenty of time is ... spent without him and gives plenty of times to people who matter, like Isaac Newton, Einstein, and loli Hitler.

As a history buff and a fan of battle manga it pumps me up with every reveal. Definitely a fun ride for me.

Well first of all to me it seems like the kind of story you instinctively get attracted to and like or skip to look for something more off your own tastes. It targets a rather specific public. But certainly try and read a few chaps, you never know what new horizons you find and enjoy. This could be a potential one.

Story (10):
The groundwork for this series, the grand idea, is rather simple. Characters in modern society, no less misfits of society, being able to reach some sort of recognition or fullfillement through reincarnating into important, groundbreaking or frightening historic people. The later stages which contain ... the MC's mentality and overall emotional/mental insight & interaction between characters, is what really gets me in the reading zone for this series. Now add to that some mix of dark & cheerful humor to latch the transitions together and not flipping one page after another becomes rather difficult (that goes for both ways, it's definitily a series you tend to look back sometimes to take the whole vibe in)

The few drawbacks I could imagine happening (but there isn't yet enough substance to safely say this), is that it might be too smallscaled without unexpected influences from outside. What I mean with that is that the story will most likely not involve modern day society and keep it purely between 'The Returners', which could make things repetitive or predictable after awhile. Besides that this manga uncharacteristically relies heavily on it's MC's positioning in this universe, where does he stand in all this, who will he follow, what is his goal and how will he reach this. Bold choices & the Anti-Hero MC gimmick is what really make some scens shine. But as much as something shines brightly now, such things can reverse in the blink of an eye (literally in this case). But consider this jumping the gun for now.

Art (8):
Typical Konishi Mikihisa style. It has some interesting character designs & clear dynamic, not too much inconsisten wishwash where you can't make out what is what in each panel.

Contrasting this is the lack of backgrounddetail or detailed surroundings, but that's a minor issue. Characters are the main focus of the series after all.

Character (9):
A way to concisely explain the characters. Imagine your standard get-together off the different over-used charactertypes. What differentiates them from your average clichés is that they are all adults or at least were. And more then that misfits of society, which adds a certain quirk here and a tad of cynism there, making the bunch come over as that little bit more down to earth, unlike the many anime-characters floating on their pink cloud in their own little universe. What we would call a cliché characterresponse in most series is in this manga still considered amusing, while it is easily considered annoying or repetitive in others.

Besides tiny panel-nitpicking characterissues, there actually isn't anything specific or something to make a common issue from.

Enjoyment (10):
Is there still something I want to add, that isn't already mentioned above... I guess for me a big factor is my curiosity and interest in the MC, with his seemingly grand, yet so plain goal/desire. It kinda settles the whole story on a more relatable lvl for the reader. And just the overall enjoyment of how this writer views certain historic people, which attitude, behaviourpattersn & mentality he gives them (even though part is the mentality is influenced by who the person was in his insignificant life, it still makes you wonder if that's how they could've really been, aside from the ridiculing of each historic person in some way).

Well this is the point where I leave you to your own wits and let you decide on wether you'll read it or not...

It was my pleasure and hope it gets a few stoic souls, myself included, some pleasure as well from what this series has to offer.

I cannot help but read and re-read this manga. It's the third time I read and drop it, thinking that hopefully it's going to get good...

( SPOILERS AHEAD. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK )


Story: 7

You see, the concept is really interesting! Absolutely normal and meaningless people are now able to get 'talents' from their past lives and use/improve it as they wish in the current incarnation. The main character, Touya, wants to be talented by any means and ends up getting a talent kind of overpowered ( or just misused in my opinion ) where he can steal things, but also other talents. The MC ... is kind of......uninteresting. I doubt he's anyone's favorite character in this work, and it gets really hard to read, since he's the focus ( being the MC and all of that ).

Talking about focus, it's something this story just can't comprehend. The universe established here is so so so so messy. At the start, Touya and Haito are partners hunting the evil returners, then out of nowhere there's an army of sinners, then you're telling me that the forest of the greats are trying to kill humanity??? Can we breathe for a second, please? There's just no time for us to get attached to the places, characters and SPECIALLY the antagonists, it can be seen in the Nightingale reveal ( oh look let's put the side character no one cares and rarely had screentime about as a twist villain!! ), it's not surprising, it's just boring.

Also, this is one of that mangas where the author tries soooo hard to make you laugh, throwing dozens of little jokes and characters acting silly so they can look sympathetic ( i guess ), and the problem is: TIMING. I hated it because most of the times they tried to show a really meaningful, dramatic scene, and at the middle of it there was a joke that just breaks the feeling of the entire scene. It's a shame, really.

The first part is actually interesting, but they don't seem to evolve the concept very well, when it gets to chapters 30-50 is so funny, because they don't know what to do with the plot, honestly...so let's spend 5 chapters fighting half naked Haito, huh? Or maybe create new antagonists that are just as uninteresting as the main character! Cool. There are also A TON of offscreen moments, as if when there's no viable alternative for the characters, they magically throw an offscreen moment to progress the plot. It happens a lot after chapter 40.

Annnd...I hate how they force the relationship between Haito and Touya! My opinion. They talk and then spend w h o l e c h a p t e r s without even saying Hi to each other and then 'boom', she can't live without him or whatever. Haito is just too friendly to anyone and Touya just has no personality.



Characters: 8

The designs are alright. As a character designer I appreciate some of the artistic choices and creativity, AND the well developed research of them. There's an amazing range of characters, not just popular story figures and that really adds to the story. The main issue is that most of them ( besides Einstein, Kouu, and Neumann ) have no development AT ALL. Their not characters, just plot devices. They're used, killed and that's it ( like Funasaka, Jubei and others that had no purpose other than 'exist' in a specific scene and then be killed off ). You can barely feel anything about the death of any of this characters.



Art: 8

It's cool, definitely not perfect , but cool. You can see tons of anatomy errors, panels where the proportions constantly change and amateur background work. But as a mangaka, I recognize that it's a sad profession, you have horrendous deadlines and most of the time you're underpaid ( even if you're working in huge successful projects ). I enjoyed seeing the designs working, fighting and chibi versions of the characters


++++++++++++++

CONCLUSION:


It's not bad , definitely not. I enjoyed reading it. But I also enjoyed making fun of it with the weird design choices, the plot that went nowhere after a certain chapter, weird dialogue and poor pacing decisions. If you're unbothered by an awful main character ( yeah he's painfully bad ) and the stuff I mentioned, just go and read it. As I said before it's a nice concept with a nice range of characters, you can learn a lot from it! But if you were expecting more of a well written story with deep and well developed characters, I suggest you pick another manga. This review was made solely with my own notion of entertainment, it may not be the same as yours. Peace!