Nov 4, 2021
Hunter's Guild: Red Hood was a serialization by Yuki Kawaguchi, a former assistant of Horikoshi. You can see this from the character's faces and bombastic action panels imo. RH is about MC Velou and thicc muscle lady Grimm going around and killing monsters (with the first arc focusing on Werewolves).
RH failed to establish the 3 G's of Jump early enough
G - uy: Who is our MC, what's their backstory, what's their personality like, can the audience root for/attach themselves to the mc
G - oal: What's the point of the story? What actually drives our MC and does it have potential to keep the story
...
going?
G - immick: Luffy is rubber, Naruto has the demon fox and Ichigo has a big sword etc etc. You want to introduce what the MC's weapon or power is and maybe even how other characters will fight. Especially important for shonen battle manga.
Red Hood achieved one of these well, and it took 5 whole chapters to do so, while the previously mentioned series got it done in the 1st chapter. So of course that lowered its initial reception in Japan. Velou is a pretty bland character, who's motivations seem all over the place at first, going back and forth between protecting the village or going off to kill monsters. This ties into the Goal, which was to defend the village by killing monsters that aren't even near the village. Maybe Velou should have just been the overly empathetic type who wanted to defend villages like his own. Lastly, the Gimmick, Grimm's assortment of fairy tale and literature themed weapons, was pretty good. You could easily see Velou being trained over time to master all these different and interesting weapons by going up against a variety of monsters.
By the time the author began the exam arc, the manga had lost all good will. The story instantly moves away from the potential of its worldbuilding and instead locks us into weeks and weeks of one of the most poorly timed exam arcs in manga history. It's like if Hxh had Gon sail away from home and instantly be put into the Running portion of the Hunter exam, which then goes on for 10 chapters. The strength of the series was its monster designs and use of Fairy Tale lore (which Japanese audiences would be less knowledgeable about) and it wastes that in less than 10 chapters.
At this point the axe is clearly visible, especially because the series had been at the bottom of the TOC since chapter 7 or so. Obviously Kawaguchi was given notice of the axe, because at the end of exam he decided to dump all the late game twists the story would have led to. Velou is a puppet, made by the Mayor (Gepettou) to destroy the book that writes the fate of the world. The author excuses Velou's poor characterisation, Grimm's wasted potential, the unneeded focus on side characters and the odd twists in the story with a meta narrative analogy about publishing a manga. It feels incredibly whiney to read, and if it is intended to critique the industry, it feels quite pathetic coming from a first time author who couldn't last 19 chapters. I would like to hope Kawaguchi is just trying to express his frustrations about trying to please the audience and failing rather than lashing out at them, but meta narrative's always end up confusing to interpret when you don't know the author well.
Overall, the one-shot was nice, but the manga failed to sort itself out fast enough to gain an audience, and lost the remaining audience by rejecting its initial premise for a meta one.
Edit: I know this review is really harsh, but I was fairly excited after reading the oneshot. This plus the constant Phantom Seer level copium and whining from readers soured my opinion of Red Hood quire a bit
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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