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One punch man was an anime I got into in my high school days - my partner suggested we watch it because he had thought it’d be right up my alley. He was right, OPM had been an amazing motivator to keep watching anime despite the lull in good shows, and I fell back in love with the medium, the show really capturing my eye with its witty comedy, well timed jokes and good art direction. OPM season 2 sadly didn’t hit the same marks, but it certainly tried its best - but it definetly left a disinterested taste in my heart.

Throughout my time of ... partaking in general anime community, one sentiment was shared a lot. “Try the manga”. This was a phrase I heard perhaps too much, especially when I didn’t like a series. Didn’t like One Piece? Try the manga. Didn’t like Fruits Basket? Try the manga. It was something that made me put off reading any manga out of frustration and annoyance at those that just couldn't seem to grasp that I didn’t want to or that reading the source material would change my mind. I didn’t try any manga until 2022, when I had had enough of anime and found there were a lot more niche stories that japan really didn’t want to air on national TV. In 2024, I decided to pick up the OPM manga.

I had some nostalgia reading the first few season worth of story --- genuinely I had so much fun reliving the jokes that I thought were hilarious and the art powerful and well drawn, a testament to the skill of Murata and anything he crafts artistically. It was nice, getting to read back through everything. However, my nostalgia gave way to complaints.

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OPM suffers from several glaring writing issues when translating from a silly webcomic to a manga;

- The manga often yoyo’s between a serious plot and a joking one, and unlike many who see no issue, I found it really jarring. In the first few volumes, it was nice, very good jokes, non-reused jokes and when they swapped tones it was well thought out and never really took you out of the action. Even if a joke was said during the fights it never really ruined the scene, and if the action was too important it'd wait till the fight was over. After awhile though? The jokes become stale, the bipolar plot becomes a detriment and I think the manga would benefit from deciding if it wants to be a bit more serious or be a bit more lighter in general tone instead of trying to be both at the same time.
- To add to this complaint, I feel that the best fight in the manga ((the sea king fight)) is used too much as a general plot idea. It feels like after a while every fight is just everyone else struggles, stakes get really bad and then Saitama comes in and solves it within a chapter at most. It's stale, it's overdone and it's made the stakes pointless now. Like why should I get invested, why should I care, nothing can beat Saitama at this point.


- Another issue of mine is just the sheer amount of characters in the manga's cast. For how little time we actually spend with a lot of the characters, the manga spoon feeds us bits and pieces and then expects us to care for people we met maybe a few chapters ago. After awhile it's just too much? In later chapters there's supposed to be a team dynamic but the only team dynamic I'm seeing is a lack there of - so little interactions between characters beyond they're replayed joke that defines their archetypes, which in and of itself IS frustrating because those that are given proper development have REALLY good characters and to see it get wasted because there's too many characters to juggle sucks! Oh it's f-ckin painful!!


- A lot of the jokes, aside the mentioned story gags, are heavily reused. Not much else I can say bar it got a bit annoying after a while and it really made some characters loathsome rather than endearing. ((looking at you King - I won't spoil but you have one of the worst overused jokes to date.))


- My biggest turn off? The final straw that broke the camels back? The ladies. The female designs of OPM are hot garbage - sexualised and appealing to the male gaze bar one character. No, it is not Tornado, thats a loli. Loli's appeal to men.
- The designs are slightly better than one piece, but even the women in one piece at least had some sort of variance in their designs --- OPM women are all big boobs, tiny waste, "thick thighs" and costumes that would make Momo from MHA look decently dressed. Even the ones that look like they're well dressed? Skin tight clothes, or secret more revealing outfits underneath.


All this to say, I think I ruined the anime by reading the manga. It's filled to the brim with a lot of mistakes that litter season two and I genuinely believe if you stick to JUST season 1 of the anime and the manga you'll love the series.

They spelt shounen funny when labelling this manga…those boys were also not just strong friends…

Children of the Whales was a manga I picked up due to the 2017 anime adaptation that was shown on Netflix. I really liked the premise of the show and it was my first real dive into a ‘proper’ fantasy anime as most of the anime I’d been watching up until that point was slice of life, urban fantasy and generic shounen shows that try and make fantasy uber masculine. The premise of the series really intrigued me, the gorgeous and pastel visuals of the show only highlighting the dark and ... twisted nature of the world vs the residents of the Mud whale.

So, after several years, a hiatus on japanese content on the art variety and a reignition of my passion for the mediums later and I decided to finally meet the conclusion of a story I’d truly loved back when it aired by trying out the manga. It was a bad choice.

The mangaka’s work is truly gorgeous, Umeda having a very maximalist and whimsy style that would rather cause crippling arthritis than leave out even the tiniest of details. The art actively goes out of its way to separate people from each other, the mud whale descendants wearing very simple clothing that is more effective for everyday wear and the cast that come from The Empire and Amonlogia having much more eccentric and lavish outfits and hairstyles.
However the art does also feature a few pitfalls, notably that when Thymia is used (( of the manga being in black, white and tones)) pages and spreads become perhaps too detailed, a lot of the forms of characters and places becoming blurred together and it can make it difficult to figure out is happening.

The setting of the manga is a bit hard to keep up with. It’s only an 97 chapter manga so when new concepts are added we don’t get much time to sit and rally digest what is happening, especially because a lot of the time you hear nothing of a connecting piece of information for a long time and it would lead to me going back in the manga to find an older explanation to fully wrap my head around a new one.


The story itself is…well, it’s not a shoujo. Do not be fooled by the tagging for this one, Children of the Whales, after the first arc of finding out about the mud whale and its history, is 100% a shounen. I don’t want to make this a spoiler review but just trust me, future arcs genuinely had me questioning if someone had accidentally written shoujo instead of shounen because the women in this manga are almost always tied to or are outshined by a boy/man.

Speaking of, my other biggest gripe with the manga is the inability to decide who our main character is. It constantly flip flops between out main boy, Chakuro, being the important story teller to the classic shounen emo bad boy Ouni who the mangaka has an obsession with making the one who does everything, in terms of decisions, that our main character should be doing.

I may pick this manga back up at some point to try and get it finished but I have begun to just end every chapter with a giant “why am I reading this?” and I feel thats when you really should just learn to drop the manga.

I will also not elaborate on the second part of my first sentence, if you finish the manga you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Basic one line review: Where anime and manga is right now I'm not willing to look past the third chapter to see if this actually does something with the s!xual nature or if it's just going to be fanservice.

Long review:
I picked up this manga in hopes that some of the s!xual stuff, by merit of the story being called dark, might actually explore these more mature themes with a male lead that discusses the effect it can have on them. What I met with instead was boobs in the first three chapters and a very romanticised female lead who was 20 and he 17.

I ... feel like if the series progressed in a way that slowly shows the female lead in a negative light and her actions toxic and gross I could like this series, however the current state of manga and anime has left me not really wanting to put too much effort into stories that don't do this off the bat - too many times have I wanted to read a nuanced story and just been met with fanservice.

The art looks gorgeous, it really is, especially the coloured pages - but I, personally, am not willing to find out if this story will be a masterpiece or another added to the pile of "you could have done so much"

I picked up Dungeon Meshi not long ago, in fact it was the day after the final episode of season 1 of the anime adaptation aired that I began reading. It’s amazing how the first season somehow improved on such a good manga and it only heightened my enjoyment of the show, the crew of Trigger clearly loving and caring for this project as much as the original mangaka does.

I think in terms of story, the manga is a 10/10 for the majority of the read, set ups paying off chapters after they’re teased, most character arcs actually going somewhere and the attention to ... detail with the world building a truly marvellous feat.

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During the first few arcs, I absolutely loved the team dynamic, the way it grew and was built upon with each new chapter and a lot of the development that comes at the start feels very in character and a natural progression with each person maturing and working through trauma and hardship. Certainly in the middle of the manga this becomes an invaluable strength when we get introduced to so many characters, Ryoko Kui managing to juggle all of the stories in a way that made them feel thought out and not at all tedious to read through! Hell, I adored every single second of watching this party of misfits try and navigate themselves as they delved deeper into the belly of the treacherous dungeon in a way genuinely made me feel like I was watching/listening to the DnD podcasts I've come to enjoy over the course of the last few years.

Marcille, Izsitsumi and Senshi are fantastic characters all the way to the end, all of them going through very natural arcs and progress in a meaningful and believable way. Even if I personally think Marcille’s descent into her weird madness arc was a bit rushed it was waved off by the connection, though unexplained, that she shared with the mad mage Thistle which made the sudden 180 of character feel less jarring which is a testament to Kui’s amazing storytelling.

However, I cannot say the same for Liaos and Chilchuck.

Now let me first preface this with saying I actually enjoyed Liaos and Chilchuck at the start of the series. Liaos really hits the "just like me fr fr" itch that a lot of characters in anime fail to meet when putting forth a character that has a lot of autistic traits. He's bad at communicating, cannot turn off the hyperfixation that drives his story and tries to constantly better himself FOR himself and those around him. He's a genuinely funny guy, unintentionally, and the jokes never seem to actually make fun of him but make fun of some of the traits the plague his monster eating habits. I became endeared to him so much because of his flaws and I enjoyed the fact he wasn't this bombastic personality because it meant that in a manga that delves into the adventure of a group the others got to shine as well. Chilchuck began to grow on me mid way through the manga, what with the little shrimp deciding to stop being a constant plague of bitterness and constant anger, opening up to those in his party and I really began to want to see more from him.

However, Chilchuck became a forgotten player in the chess game of Dungeon Meshi. He’s put on the backburner of development pretty quickly after Itsitsumi’s arrival to the point that Izsitsumi gets a time to cook as the leading narrator but Chilchuck doesn’t?? He’s never more than a helper or collaborator and I think it’s an utter waste of his character which never develops as much as the others in the cast. For someone so important early in the game, he fizzles out half way through. Like I said, I was excited to see the half-foot develop, especially with the kindlings of something being teased mid way through. But in the end, kbitty won out.

And Liaos. Liaos is a passive protagonist, and in a series that culminates in the theming of our desires and passions it makes his sudden change to “world saviour” and in the end “King of the Dungeon” as completely out of character and ultimately doesn’t make sense. Liaos, for where he ends the series, sort of feels less like a character and more like a plot device. Like I said before, Liaos not being a bombastic personality was great for showcasing the other characters in the manga, it allowed for them to get their own piece in and for the party to feel equal and like a group of friends rather than a leader and his lackeys. However, towards the series ending he feels like a character that changed because that's the role he had to fill rather than actually becoming someone that could take the responsibility head on and live up to it. In my mind, it doesn’t feel like Liaos disposition even changes much from when we first meet him and next to characters like Senshi, Marcille and Izsitumi - Liaos becomes a much better friend, I could sing his praises for days about that - but a leader? No, he is far to dependant on being forced to react rather than actively taking hold of a situation and trying to solve it.

I think, personally, Liaos should have ended the manga as not a king, but a chef, a travelling one at that - something I believe is much more fitting for him as a person. Liaos becoming king feels like a “well I’m the main character so I have to be the almighty ruler” than where he actually wants to be in life. He’s the team's heart and he has smart ideas, but so does everyone else. Honestly, even having Marcille, Liaos and Falin becoming a ruling council would have made more sense than Liaos becoming sole ruler!

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On top of all of this, Falin is truly wasted potential! A few friends and I had discussed her state in the manga not long after I made this review and the conversation struck me so hard I had to make edits. Falin truly becomes a wasted plot point in the manga, in fact she gets completely brushed aside for so much of the story that I honestly would've forgotten their motivation was to save her had there not been small interjections of "and for Falin!" sprinkled in. We got teased a proper fight with her, one where Liaos would get truly tested but it doesn't go anywhere. In fact, sometimes I questioned if Liaos even actually cared for Falin because boy did this man seriously ditch his constantly in danger sister for some snacks!!! It really made me feel like, despite what we constantly got told, that no one in the party actually had much of a connection to Falin which derailed the motivations quite a bit.

It may seem like a nit pick, and maybe it is, but the ending really took me out of the story and had me staring at my phone for several minutes with just the word “what?” playing in my head the entire time. It certainly marred the experience of the manga, even if it’s still a damn good read.

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I would recommend reading despite putting this particular review under mixed feelings, because it is an amazing story - just brace for impact for in how crazy the manga gets at the final fight.

Warning: I do mention the s!xual assault and the bullying/Harassment portrayed in the story, please read knowing this and that.
Note: I am not trying to dog on the manga, this is just something that WILL frustrate people and they deserve a warning.

Art: The art style of Ozaki Koari is amazing, the colour pages are perfection and the warmth practically radiates off of the page dragging you into the cozy feeling she tries to build with her work.
The anatomy is generally well done, I've yet to see a wonky eye or misshapen hand.
Her style is very Anohana/Your name but distinctly set in the 2010's which ... does set her apart when reading some of the newest stuff from around the time the English translation dropped.

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Story/Characters: I didn't see much issue with the first few chapters of 'Golden Sheep' - the story had Ozaki's weird obsession with having young boys obsess over boobs and a lot of the story was pretty solid in terms of set up and execution. We get introduced to our 'Main four' of Tsugu, Sora, Yuushin and forgettable charact- I mean Asaki. The group are pretty divided into bullies vs bullied within the first few chapters and very quickly establishes a status quo that the story should follow - before smacking that out of the park and hitting someones car.

Tsugu is literally the best character in this manga; she's complex with motivations and emotions that resonate with a lot of young adults and teens that really make you want to see her happy, a genuinely fun character to watch in every panel and is all around an actual good representation of a "bubbly" teenager without diving into stereotypes too much. I have absolutely no complaints about her, she;'s perfect and I only really have a complain with how she feels less like a character by the end of the story and more like a filler love interest for Sora.

Sora is overall just really boring, he fits that self-insert quota for young Japanese men and the story definitely forfeits some autonomy for Tsugu to further Sora's character. I think out of all the characters his character arc is the best of them all, going from a boy who struggled to even say a word about being bullied to bravely standing up for his friend against someone who'd tormented him for years. Which speaking of -

Yuushin is the biggest piece of scum on this side of the manga world - he's got trauma, that's for sure, but his actions far out way the defence. He actively torments Sora for failing to notice a cry for help and he does so by literally feeding him to the wolves at every opportunity he gets for around a few years. He actively uses the dog that they all found as kids to lure Sora out and literally says "jump off this bridge and die and I won't beat up your dog". He's generally a pretty big douche to even the character's he's "nice" too and the worst crime of all, because he literally commits a crime, is the fact he sexually assaults Asaki. You heard me, he assaults her - while also knowing that she loves him. It's gross, it's disgusting and I genuinely want to actually throw up every single time I think of that.
My biggest gripe with all of these actions though is the fact that Ozaki glosses over it all, she has this boy literally SA a girl and then pretends like he's some wayward soul just doing a small oopsie and not a depraved psycho that committed a literal crime. He gets no slap on the wrist, no consequences to his actions and when Asaki see's him again, AFTER BEING SA'ed BY HIM, she doesn't react with disgust, or fear or even anger. It's like it never happened.

Asaki is alright, I genuinely only really began rooting for her because of the SA situation but she's also not that great. She actively excludes Tsugu because she 'gets pally' with Yuushin which is just? Huh??? And what sucks for her is she doesn't get much time to actually develop - she's barely a member of the main cast and honestly feels like an added extra to the group rather than a character that is important to these """friend""""

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Overall: I think this is a problematic manga - it glosses over some really heinous actions and Ozaki has a weird obsession with randomly putting weird sexual actions/intents on teenagers and it's just a bit weird? I think if you can enjoy this good for you, but truly it does nothing to actually deepen it's narrative and all of the plot is surface level at best.

I only made it to chapter 12.

After God was a series I picked up after looking through the MAL suggestions that were up a couple months ago. The blurb plus the art style really compelled me to give it a try. The style lives up to the hype it got, the anatomy was really amazing and the linework was a testament to the skill of the mangaka - however mangaka are artists first for a reason.

A lot of my reviews have begun following this rule; if I'm spending more time questioning "why" rather than reading then I'm not enjoying it.
During the 12 chapters I ... read through I found myself often pausing to give me eyes a break from essays of "worldbuilding"/exposition and staring in shock at my screen as a random plot point barrelled onto my page. I never felt like I had enough time to fully digest what was being conveyed through clunky dialogue, and speech heavy scenes. Even when the action happened it was over as fast as it started and really left too many spots where a break to just look at art would've helped slow the pacing.

To top all of that off, the thing that made me really just give up was the "gotcha's" the manga really liked using. Twists and turns that had no build up, no real answer besides "drama!" that felt like the ending of game of thrones where the crazy queen plot literally plops itself down and demands to be taken seriously. In the case of 'After God' I too couldn't take these plot twists seriously.

I think if you're into fast pacing, non-stop on the go ADHD on drugs style manga this is the perfect one for you, the story itself pretty good when it manages to get points across - but it didn't do it enough to keep me hooked.

This is, unlike many of my reviews, a really really short one because I ended up dropping this manga fairly quickly with the only reason being: It's not for me.

The manga isn't amazing, I think if it was made for you it'd be a fun little read but this manga is really **not** for me. The demographic is those that sexually like women and actively want to see hot women in semi-revealing clothing.

Also there was a panty shot of a young girl being possessed by a demon so that's kind of where I said "no thanks man"!


The art is gorgeous as always, the mangaka really ... flexing the art nuevo/medieval landscapes and fairytales aesthetic so effortlessly it's unthinkable how he developed such a beautiful art style.

Joshi Kouhei was a story I picked up because I wanted to try out some mecha manga - mecha being one of the first genre’s I really delved into back in my first days of Japanese media. The visuals of the front cover were really well done, the way people described it in other reviews praised it highly and all around it really sounded like a great read. While I’m sure it could be, it was too gross for the likes of me.

The beginning of Joshi Kouhei is genuinely interesting - its psychological impact hitting from some of the first interactions and the protagonist ... being so stoic and grounded in his belief really contrasted how the other mech pilots seem to lose themselves to the fantasy of being a teenage girl. The art is killer and the way the mangaka draws screams grunge - it’s gorgeous.

But there are some glaring issues that really undermine the message that was already in the works.

The fact that a lot of the shots expose the girls underwear. You might think “yea but they’re mech, it’s not actually a girl” but the thing is, the mech are literally designed after high school girls. They, the pilots, can even lose themselves to the mindset of being a high school girl themselves - so to decide to make the mecha be young girls and have panty shots every 5 pages is just jarring and really churns the stomach. It makes you question why the mangaka chose to do this - especially when the people who are piloting these mecha girls are grown adult men. Something just doesn’t sit right about that.

While nudity wouldn’t upset me when used in the way Joshi Kouhei does, the fact that, again, the featured characters are meant to resemble teenage girls just seems like a gross miscalculation that really diminishes the horror of the body horror and taints it in a disrespectful way. It’s the constant question of “why” that really got me to drop the manga - I couldn’t answer why the constant sexualisation was reasonable so I decided it wasn’t worth continuing.

A few times I felt the shots were done unnecessarily and passed into a realm of “this seems very much planned to appeal to a certain type”. The glaring ones to note were;
> Chapter 4, Page literal 1 we see one of the girls who have gone insane and she’s - and I’m sorry for this MAL - penning herself in the nether regions and fondling one of her many chests. WTF. Why? Body horror doesn’t mean whatever the hell that page was.
> There a few chapter pages that just have panty shots when there is no need like Chapter 4 pages 12 to 20 were just a bunch of different “c'mon dude” shots that felt like the artist actively sought to give the characters poses dedicated to showing off their underwear, chapter 5 pages 23 and 24, chapter 6 page 13. Honestly I could go on but it’s kinda self explanatory.
> Chapter 5 pages 11 and 12 which were just. I don’t even want to begin to describe what is on those pages but it’s on the same if not slightly worse than the chapter I pointed out.

I think Joshi Kouhei could have offered a lot had the constant nudity of characters meant to emulate underage girls been significantly toned down. If you’re able to look past it I’m assuming the manga has a lot to offer - but like I’ve said in several of my other reviews I am now unwilling to bend my morals to promote material that really doesn’t seem to have respect for women. Especially women who are meant to be seen as underage.

Stop. Lewding. Girls. Under. The. Age. Of. 15. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Summertime Render is a manga that I decided to give a go when browsing in my local bookshop, the cover art was very seaside adjacent and the front cover of volume 1 reminded me of a mid 2000's style that I found in a lot of Shojo manga at the time. I'd held off on reading it for a while, 159 chapters seeming like a mountain to climb when I was just getting back into the Japanese stories I used to love - however I regret not dropping this one sooner.

The ... story itself is perhaps the biggest strength of the manga - The only reason I got past chapter 1 was because of the story. The murder mystery that spirals into an even bigger supernatural thriller had me captivated. I had so many questions that I wanted answered, so many theories and ever changing thoughts as we found out more and more about the mysterious shadows - what is their plan, why are they doing this, why is Ushio "alive"?! Shinpei and his struggle of loss and settling back into his home town while trying to navigate the unfolding case of murder really made me want to keep reading past the flaws just to sink my teeth into the plot itself. But an enby only has so much patience before the unnecessary amount of underage fan service makes you want to claw your eyes out and forget everything you witnessed.

The art is alright most of the time, though I noticed that there were several instances of wonky anatomy. The ones I noted to be the worst were in Chapter 1 page 40 when Shinpei's hand literally doubles in size as well as Chapter 11 the final page where Ushio's anatomy from head to knee is just all over the place. wonky face, giant forehead, weirdly positioned arms. It's all just a mess.

Now, for the reason I dropped this series. Simply: The fan-service is perhaps the worst I've ever come across in terms of being intrusive and actually subtracting from the story. I am going to go through every single scene that made me uncomfortable to help you understand why I've marked this genuinely amazing plot idea as low as a 4.

1. In the very first few pages, right after the apparent dream sequence that Shenpei goes through, there is an immediate tonal whiplash with the scene portraying the "comedic" trope of man somehow ends up in a woman's breasts and he is consequently slapped for it. Is it cliche? Yea. Did it break my immersion a fair bit? Absolutely. It's a trope though, so I moved past it in hopes it was a rare occurrence, knowing a lot of anime and manga liked using this trope “back in the day.” I soon learned the truth.
2. Only 5 pages after this joke we get not just one panty shot, but a second zoomed in version of the shot featuring a girl who is the age of 15. 15. It is insane that I have to point out how uncomfortable this felt to read and genuinely makes me wonder how people got past the second chapter because I just. I understand the author wanted something distinct to happen so when the time loop hit we kinda guessed immediately, but this was just the grossest way you could do that. She could have still fell into the harbour and just had the outfit the girl was wearing be the same instead of a school uniform.
3. On page 43 we see the police officer watching literal pron in the middle of a cafe, and the mangaka actively draws a naked woman, the officer's thumb barely censoring the woman's nipples. This one really started to get me. 43 pages in and there was this much unnecessary fan service and for what? I mean hey at least this one was, hopefully, a grown adult! I hate that that's the standard - especially because it was all heavily objectifying to women, not a single man had been caught in a similar fashion.
4. The time loop happens in chapter 2, so of course that means we get to see the events unfolding again. I knew I'd have to see the panties scene again but the fact that this time the main protagonist, who is this girl's ADOPTIVE OLDER BROTHER, points out in text that she is wearing the same underwear just feels gross, disgusting, so many words and so little faith in this series. I kept reading out of wanting to give the manga a chance. This was another mistake of mine.
5. Chapter 3, 4 pages in and the mangaka draws a scene of the 15 year old girl in a shower with the mystical clouds keeping her """"decent"""". Seriously? Seriously,??? this is getting beyond a joke.
6. Chapter 6, now not only do we see the teenager showering, but our main protagonist walks in on the 15 year old bathing. I kept reading because I was delusional enough to genuinely hold out hope for this manga. I wish I hadn't.
7. Literally a man who is known as a pervert, still grating considering how much fanservice has plagued the manga, refers to the only mainstay adult woman of the cast as "the woman with big boobs" - it felt objectifying in a way I've not experienced for a long time, until this manga of course.
8. The next one wasn't until volume 2, but I literally had to close out the manga app entirely upon this. 7 pages, 7 pages and a 17 year old has a butt shot, in a swimsuit and is posed sitting over a guy. Yea, I dropped the manga here. I gave up the experience of what could have been a genuinely thought out and well executed plot because I was so sick and tired of fanservice scene after fanservice scene that took me out of the story so hard I think I got in real life whiplash.

If you want to read this manga, prepare for these underage girls to get lewed to hell and back - if you can sit through that I think this story has a lot of promise. But I know my priorities, and praising a generally problematic and all around distasteful trope such as this is not on my to do list, especially considering the frequency of the fanservice through what little story I read.

Edit: I originally gave this manga a 5 because I do genuinely believe the story has an interesting plot - however upon reflection I decided to drop the rating to a 4 because boy howdy does this manga really really not know how to portray women without lewding the sh!t out of them.

Everything that makes a shounen bad is imbued into this work, and is perhaps the seeds that were sown to get the manga cancelled.

Ayashimon is a manga that took me quite a while to get through, despite only having 25 chapters available. It showed a lot of promise, even I admit this - the concept of Yakuza compromising of different mythological monsters from Japan fighting within a red light district setting certainly piqued my interest. It’s unique in that regard, a big problem in manga and anime recently has been ideas overlapping to the point that if you’ve seen/read one work from a genre ... then you’ve practically seen them all - Ayashimon’s concept stood out from this pattern.

The plot, however, was bipolar. The whiplash from dialogue heavy exposition, to a quick fight scene and then to a funny goofy “friendship” moment really battered me. There were times I was heavily invested in a scene, in the characters' emotions and motivations, the juicy bit right around the corner but it’d be rudely interrupted by a completely out of place plot point that knocked the train right off the tracks. A lot of well written scenes got absolutely demolished by the author's inability to hang onto the important panels and I felt it really diminished the characterisation of several of the cast.

The cast themselves suffered from similar issues that plagued the plot. Their base outline was really good, however as the story went on it felt like the main character remained stagnant and those around him grew.

Marou is an ok protagonist, he’s a bit boring after the 12th chapter of him trying to fight everyone who’ll agree and his design is actually rather dull and fits into the self insert style of design a lot of main protagonists suffer from. Despite his constant mentioning of manga, very weird to hear about manga so much while reading a manga, and his inability to really seem relatable I do actually think Marou could have gone somewhere.

Urara and Ten are really the cast you stick around for - both gaining a lot of development in the short amount of run time the series had, even if their developments were really fast paced and, despite feeling like their characters would naturally progress to the end of the arc, it could have been shown more than said they improved.

The art is pretty good, it’s definitely more in the classic manga style that you see in a lot of assistants' work. This isn’t to, again, say the art is bad, it’s really well drawn and the panels look gorgeous no matter where you look, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that the art style is very reminiscent of a lot of different manga and isn’t a stand out in terms of stylisation.

Overall, I’m giving Ayashimon a 6. Despite all the merit the manga has, it’s swiftly followed by many issues and problems that fundamentally lower my enjoyment while reading. I am still sad that it got cancelled as I could see it still had more to offer.