Yakushoku Distopiary
Gesellschaft Blume

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- This is a Dystopia manga, hell, it's in the name. So the question is how well they execute it? Long story short, it's amazing and as the same time disappointing due to the shitty industry that force mangaka to kill their own work.

- The setting appear to be generic, but actually bizarre and intriguing. We all know the over saturated of RPG like fantasy worlds, but more often than not, the author just gloss over the world building and we're expected to Know the inner working of the world. Yakushoku Distopiary (YD from now) is one of the few which actually showcase the ... difference aspects of the setting. How it work, who's involve, and of course, how f*ck up it is.

- There won't be any spoiler here so feel free to proceed, though it will be kinda hard to talk about it, so bear with me

- YD used the setting, the RPG like world where there're Heroes aka subjugators to defeat the Demon Lords (with an s), and flip it on its head to create a dystopian world. Just from the description, you would expect the heroes to be justice and the Demon Lords to be the bad guys, and that's exactly what won't happen here, this is a dystopia after all. Instead, we're given the humanize and the villain sides of both the Demon Lords, and the Subjugators. In fact, the Demon Lords themselves are more sympathizable compare to some of the Subjugators. They're just doing their assigned job. Did I say that the jobs system was used briliantly.

- Everyone was given a job title the moment they born into the world, just one job, you can't change it, and have to do it. Some people were given power beyond imagine, time mage for example, while others are garbage cleaner, and the likes. And then there's the Subjugators job and the Demon Lord job. And that's the whole point, they're just doing their jobs, be it killing people mercilessly or clean the window. We sympathy with them because they has human emotions, despite their horrible actions, forced on them simply because the job title.

- And this lead me to the simple principle of how to create a good dystopia, or story in general.
"It's not the vilains or the heroes fault, it's the system."
This is the same principle that Madoka Magica, Bokurano, Shinsekai Yori, Made in abyss, or any good Dystopians used, and YD follow this it to a tea.

- THIS COULD BE ONE OF THE BIG NAMES, WHY JAPAN, WHYYYYYYYY?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- the series was going strong for the first 4 volumes, then on the 5th volume, we're introduce to a whole new character arc and end on a rush ending. Needless to say, it got axe. The author were probably given red flag as the end of volume 4, that he only have 1 volume to finish the story. Realize he can't finish it, he shift to a difference character arc entirely, in hope that it will be popular enough to continue the story and also avoid a rush ending, some how.

- And even with what little he had to work with, the author did amazingly well. That out-of-nowhere character arc is another amazing portrait of this dystopia world. However, the last chapter is still rush ending to our main story. Can't really blame the author. that ending is probably what he had in mind for the real ending. The worst part is, I can see what direction he's going for, the potential that this seri has, if only he has more to work with.

- I can't really discuss much of the story without delve into spoiler teritory, my credibility isn't that high, but if you get something out of this review, just go read it. Despite a rush ending, the sheer potential and the great executions that this manga portraited is worth the read. My 9 rating on this seri is indeed bias, but this could seriously be a 10, if only the industry wasn't so shitty

Edit: I found it! The author didn't give up, he still upload the manga through webcomic. Best part is, the supossedly "last chapter" isn't even there, just a prove of how bullsh*t that chapter is. Now i can keep reading this amazing story. The update is a bit slow tho, but it's still better than nothing.
for anyone who want it: http://endelta.jp/gesellschaft/

Yakushoku Distopiary is... interesting to say the least. It presents a fantasy "video game" world where every person is assigned a class. Anywhere from being a "gunner" to a "cook" to a "puppet master," and how everyone living in the world must contribute to keep this world going. Like any fantasy game world demon lords are brought in to the world and heroes must be created in order to stop them. The dream of a lot of of fantasy game lovers had in some point. Except that the in this world it presents a much more dark and grittier presentation of how such a systematic ... world would be and how such a world would become oppressive to people who are not the "heroes." People are manipulated and the heroes of the story are willing to toy with their allies to achieve victory.

Distiopiary subverts the typical video game hero and for the first few chapters it becomes a huge hook driving you to read further. But as the gritty gore, dark comedy, and continual death of characters goes on it quickly turns tedious. At some point it just becomes edgy for the sake of being edgy where chapters are dedicated to seeing random NPCs slaughtered.

Perhaps that's what the author of the manga intended. That as you start to grow more desensitized to all the violence and gore, you become like the "heroes" or "watchers" in this manga. Whichever the case the manga ends abruptly and it's pretty clear the author was running out of idea to continue the series on. At the very least the abrupt ending is done better than most other series and keeps the central theme of the manga intact.

But by the end of the manga you can't help but feel that there just could have been more to this series. It feels unsatisfying and incomplete.

I think the author should have leaned more into the absurdity of the world. Over the top, edgy, whimsical, and fantastical. If it was ever serialized again, the best advice I could give the mangaka is to be more self-aware when writing and embrace the absurdity of such a setting. Sometimes I thought the edge was tongue in cheek and it did seem self-aware of what it was at times, but too little too late. There were some little bits here and there that did make it entertaining, but overall the seriousness of which it took itself made it a slog to get through at ... the time. It could have the same themes and setting, but with a bit more dark humor. Say the demon lord just wrecked a town, but decided to stop at the next to get something to eat. A Subjugator who kills rando's for their levels instead. Show how this flawed system that's been put in place is crumbling away since the nature of evil in this world is very fluid.