Mar 5, 2022
FIRST CHAPTER REVIEW (no spoilers)
I've been following the author's art for a while so it was awesome to find out he was getting published. I was hopeful and he did not disappoint.
The art is awesome - outrageously stylish like a medley of Atsushi Ohkubo (who he was assistant to), Akihito Tsukushi (made in abyss), and Demizu Posuka (Promised Neverland) contrasting bouncy gestural figures with clean bold geometric hatching. The line art is especially beautiful, creating textural yet ordered motion where other manga would use screen tones or messy hatching - gives everything a distinctive and hypnotic pattern. It's some of the best art in Shonen
The
...
plot is as compact with detail as the art, launching into an outline of the themes in the first pages as every shonen has been doing in recent years. This is the one substantial pitfall of the chapter - the obtuse exposition. Though it's no worse than a lot of recent shonen manga, the overly expositional dialogue breaks immersion and the density of the chapter requires about 3 different vessels to explain the world, going frantically from narrator, to protagonist inner monologue, to bloated dialogue. I wish it respected the audience enough to have a little mystery and use more natural dialogue, or else just show what needs to be shown instead of holding our hand through it. I don't blame the author too much though, as getting your foot in the door ASAP stops these manga from getting axed by chapter 3.
That said, the story makes up for it with the world rich with potential, using it to effectively outline themes of social hierarchy, isolation, and discrimination, from a fascinatingly unique vantage point that looks at the superficiality of consumer culture and how it could bleed into society in how we view people such as ex convicts.
The way this philosophy is expressed so harmoniously with the world, the characters and the decisions they make in the chapters, and the plot (providing a series of surprises and an undeniably captivating hook in a late stage twist) in 70 pages is astonishing.
It feels like the bombastic fusion between Soul Eater and Made in Abyss and easily makes up for its clunkier aspects with the amount of pure unadulterated style and shameless individuality, edged by ruthless social critique.
I have high hopes for this manga and believe it to have the perfect fusion of attributes for survival in the battlefield of a shonen magazine: Ringing endorsement from a big name (Atsushi Ohkubo saying he was passing the baton), an abundance of awesome action and misleading plot that keeps the readers interested (so it the editorial department don't can it), and a fuckn planet of potential to express a meaningful statement in a beautiful badass way.
Don't let us down!
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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