Kenja no Mago

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

Kenja No Mago is for two types of people. Rabid fans of the isekai genre, or people who haven't been introduced to the isekai genre. Why? Because Kenja No Mago is the definition of mediocre. It's both what isekai fans want, and what new readers to isekai should, on average, expect.

The story is utterly average. Self insert protagonist is reborn into another world and ridiculously overpowered. Which isn't a bad thing, it's just unoriginal. The protagonist is liked by everyone and talented since birth, has a lovely love interest, good friends, and evil enemy. There is literally not one ounce of originality in the ... story. The typical fantasy world, with it's typical magic, and typical evil demons are utterly devoid uniqueness.

The characters are carbon copy cutouts of archetypes of the major character types you'll find in any manga, let alone isekai manga. Again, not a single ounce of originality. The self insert, OP, kind, boring Protagonist. The Powerful, royal best friend. The deredere, cute love interest, who is oh so shy. The evil demon lord archenemy with the tragic past (which is laughable in how poorly written it is). And then the mob characters, who are forgettable at best.

Art is pretty average as well, nothing to write home about or particularly critique. That said, being average in something like entertainment, isn't a good thing.

Enjoyment is subjective, I personally don't have any attachment to isekai or particularly like insert protagonists, so I'll leave this one up to the reader.

Overall, Kenja No Mago is a master of cliche, king of average, and lord of unoriginal. Filled with an OP mc, undetailed world, forgettable characters, and a complete lack of originality. If this is your first time reading isekai, this would be a fine read, and maybe a 7, and if you're a rabid isekai fan, I'm this, like every other isekai is a 9 or 10. But to anyone else, this is utterly mediocre.

Kenja no Mago? I thought it was really interesting at first, reading the synopsis, unfortunately nothing "new" or original, nonetheless enjoyable.
Let's jump straight into the review and find out why.

Story (6)
As the synopsis say: Shin our main protagonist had a boring life, that's until an accident happened and he died. Reborn in an alterative universe, as a child he was casually saved from a hero. That hero will teach him magic and his other friends will teach him the art of the sword, meanwhile he has the knowledge of his past life and has an incredible magic power. You guessed right, he's OP af.
He was ... raised in the jungle so he doesnt know nothing about this world, thats why thanks to the help of the king himself he joined an accademy to make friends and learn about this world (medieval).

Art (8.5)
The manga overall is well done, nice and dynamic art, when needed very detailed, the background most of the times are also well done, so the art is one the best thing of this manga.

Character (6.5)
I could use just one word to describe them: cliché.

Enjoyment (8.25)
It really feels like an other: School, harem, fantasy, magic manga/anime, If you notice I didnt put comedy, that is because there's nothing really funny about this manga.
Dont get me wrong I really enjoyed reading it, but the comedic aspect really lacks in my opinion. There are also hint of romance and a bit of action, the pacing is allright, it doesnt make feel the manga boring, but than again this is just the beginning so I could not say for sure that the pacing will be always good as it is now.

Overall (8)
If you are looking for a strong male protagonist, a bit of romance and action, surely later there's gonna be a lot more of action, this manga might work for you.

Have fun!

Welcome to the second decade of 21st century where every other series somehow has an MC who gets teleported to another world where is he/she is either reborn or swap bodies. The land where he/she is now is full of magic. There is mana, there are elves, dwarves, shamans, lizardmen, goblins, spirits, faeries, insert-any-Tolkein-fiction-character or trope etc. Our MC somehow retains memories of his/her past life but doesn't really cares because he/she was either a loser/hikikomori or a wage slave and is now really excited with the prospect to explore this brave new world. He/she is open to challenges that this new world awaits but ... there is one catch- our MC is very powerful and by powerful, I mean his power level far exceeds the geniuses of this realm. Nevertheless, he still decides to join a guild/school, form his own adventuring party and explore new frontiers. Throw in some beautiful girls and now he has his own harem.

Gentlemen, this is what Kenja no Mago is about (minus the harem part). This series has nothing new to offer and is what I would call, 'the most below average isekai' series out there. It's the shovelware product of manga world where the author decides to throws in a bunch of character tropes with a rinse-and-repeated plot in a giant cauldron, stirs it and ends up with this as a finished product.

Story - 1/10, Character - 1/10

Can you read and write? Do you know what isekai is? If yes, congratulations, you can easily conjure a plot far better than what this manga offers.
Throw in an insanely overpowered protagonist, an evil lord creating an equally evil army, a kingdom, a bunch of classmates as your party member and you get KnM. Our characters offer nothing good in terms of personality, just another recycled shounen trash. If there is a pandora box of cliche out there, then it was possibly opened during this series' inception.

Art- 6/10

Just average; nothing new, nothing groundbreaking.

Enjoyment- 3/10

I don't think I can give a point above 3. This manga is honestly suited for those who want to get an introduction to the isekai genre and can even act as a foundation for their entry into the world of fantasy manga.

Overall- 1/10

Self-explanatory. If you are someone who has been reading manga for a long time, you will chuck this one to the bin.

In short: it's WORTH A READ. Admittedly it has a simple, unoriginal plot, but the characters and their interactions make it enjoyable to read.

There isn't much to expect story wise:
Our MC is reincarnated and adopted by a renowned magician. Our MC grows to become insanely powerful, but he has no common sense.

The art can really make you feel what the characters are feeling, and it conveys the power of casted spells very well.

Most of the characters have distinct personalities that make the story that much more enjoyable to read. The banter between them is funny because it cuts tension and brightens the mood, which prevents ... the manga from getting too dull.

Again the story isn't original, but that doesn't mean the manga is rubbish. What makes this manga enjoyable is how the characters interact and how they develop over throughout the story.
What's important is that the manga is enjoyable to read, even with its flawed story and structure.
There's no harm in reading a few chapters because you might really enjoy it, if you don't then you can always drop it, so I say give it a shot.

There isn't much to say about Kenja no Mago, so I'll get straight to the point: if you're tired of the reincarnated OP MC stories, ignore this Manga.

The story, the lore, the setting and the characters are all by-the-numbers cutouts and, in terms of originality or uniqueness, the Manga doesn't have anything going for it. Comedy is slightly off, although I did chuckle a few times (mainly due to the exaggerated faces), but other than that it isn't that funny.

Art is quite good and detailed for the most part, and action scenes are portrayed as well as in any other action manga. ...

That being said, Kenja no Mago is a meeting of all the cliches: OP MC who steamrolls through everything without any true struggle (at least so far I suppose), a whole heap of maidens fawning over him, pretty generic setting and lore of the world, and that's really it. Nothing new, nothing unique, but if you enjoy these stories just for some quick giggles and power-fantasies, it's pretty good in that department. If not, you best just ignore it.

The recipe is easy and efficient, just put a ridiculously over powered character in a fantasy world with monsters. Well that sound déjà vu. But this one is clever enought to make it well. By that, I mean the universe is kinda mature. The MC can't use his powers all the time to not break the balance between the countries, he may be invincible but he has weaknesses. This is not just a "school boy", he evoles during the story, will eventually have a wife, found a family. The bad points I would put on the series is that beside the MC, his best friend ... and his girlfriend, you don't really care about others. This problem can't be solved since the MC take all the place and it is what it make this serie's force: The MC is damn Badass, there is a true work on how to show how the MC is powerfull. The "Isekai" looks really out of nowhere, it actually is only used to justify why MC is so powerful. I found is really enjoyable especially since the serie is mature enough to make us fear for the MC's friends.

For some reason, i dont dislike the isekai genre even after all those years of overuse. Thus I gave kenja no mago it's chance to shine on my manga list and... Well you see the ranking I gave it.
Let's not lose our time, reading the summary is enough to convince oneself that this manga is generic. Once again we've got the loner loser boy. Then he saves someone from an accident and then dies (well I guess it's what happened cuz everything was so fast and poorly explained...)

Like Mushoku and The beginning after the end (two excellent mangas/manhuas I highly recommend plus they're both highly ... similar to kenja), MC reborns as a newly born kid without forgetting his past life. Unlike those 2 examples, we dont see the MC growing up and understanding how this new world works nor how he trained to gain his astonishing strenght. And that's the first red flag about kenja.

As a reader, I dont know what is this world, how the magic elements work and the outcome is that i'm already bored, lost and more than anything, fights feel like trash because there are no explained limits. In those 2 examples previously quoted, there are elements that divide magic casts = fire or water for example. Or healing, casting abilities, strenghtening abilities. In a nutschell, we understand how fights work and what the MC is doing when he fights. He doesnt come from nowhere and there is no need to explain it in the middle of the fight which is very annoying (gonna come back on later on dialogues).
In kenja, there is nothing. The MC casts things, he is strong and we dont know why, we dont know what he does nor why what he does is special comapared to others. In the end, fights are just a mix with random abilities without any strategy.

Now let's talk about the narrative aspect (dialogues). God it's a hell. Dialogues are everywhere, we cant rest I feel like i'm reading a light novel which isn't normal because picture and drawings in a manga should explain things. We're constantly bullied with rhetoric questions by the characters, useless bubbles (wow MC how did you do that ? that's impressive !!!) and long explanations for nothing. It's crazy how the fighting mecanic and the world were both ruined by the lack of explanations but the author still found a way to give us random explanations about useless elements we dont care about. Explaining how the theory about general relativity from Einstein does work is useless to someone who cant even do an addition. That's the feeling I get from this manga so please stop it's uninteresting.

About characters, well the MC is your random dull boy. The main girl is the cliche of the shy girl who fell in love with the MC quickly for no real reasons without even knowing him. For those woh read/watch nantsu no taizai, she's the princess. It's exactly her. I dont even know what to say about other characters cuz they gave me no feeling at all. They're bland.

Another interesting point, i've hardly critized negatively art in mangas till now but we need to talk about it. First thing first, it has been made on a computer or i dont know what kind of modern tech, maybe a tab. It's not the first time I read those kind of mangas and it's not a shame, dont miss my point. But god it's bland aswell... Characters are poorly detailed, colours are bland (not any mix of colours, there is some white, some black and a sort of grey made using some kind of ugly pixels I dont even know what this is but it's disgusting to see). Backgrounds are white, there is no detail whatsoeve. Hairs are just made using the painting bucket and an eraser to make a "cool" white effect on hairs to give the feeling that it's been worked. The perfect example of quantity over quality. It also explains why it's so full of dialogue. Believe me, if the quality choice had been made, the author would have made more straightforward panels with shorter chapters aswell and it would have been way better that way.

Overall, kenja no mago is probably one of the worst isekai manga i've ever seen. I was bored since the second chapter which is a first not gonna lie... Absolutely everything feels bland and generic. Drawings, fights, characters, the story. I honestly and objectively cant find any way to be positive about it. It's not just the story in itself and its characters that are poor. The whole manga is poor. Even if the story were great, I would have hated it because of how unbearable those overused and uninteresting dialogues are. And EVEN with good dialogues, I would have given up reading this because of how bland the art feels. Sorry but if you wanna see a similar story in 100x better everywhere, go to read the beginning after the end.