Back to Isc_Wsh's Profile Isc_Wsh's Profile

!! This review contains out of context spoilers. !!

I remember the first time when the reboot was announced: I was so excited to start it, and because I rarely get hyped over new anime, it is pretty clear that I had some high enough expectations at that time. It may or it may not be clear by now, but I grew up watching the old adaptation, and I will try to not bring it up that much in this review.

I became more and more disappointed the more episodes I've consumed. The first episode made me meh enough, there was no wow factor to get me ... entertained, but I was hoping that in time it'll get better, right? Right??
Sadly, there is no hope for this series.

I'll quickly resume what is going on animation wise. It looks bad, it looks cheap, it looks boring, weak, uninteresting, there is no compelling thing visually. There are at times some more detailed close ups, but they do not bring anything to the table. The action scenes are just boring, nothing entertaining is going on. The far away shots look strange, the animation is cutted out, it is weird and clunky looking and the frames look junky. Boring color choices. There are times when characters don't fit with the background at all. There is nothing much to explain, it's exactly like this.

It is a brand new adaptation of a 20+ year old battle shonen series, for a 2021-2022 anime it is obviously filled with some outdated and old clichees that everybody had enough of. From the start it can have some lows in its storytelling, but at least is it competent enough to pass? No, I don't think it's enough, worse, it gets worse, and worse in time, and the last third of the story gets so bad you can't even process what is going on in front of your eyes. From a basic battle shounen with some tournament elements in it, this anime becomes an incoherent mess, so bad in fact I can even compare with the Wonder Egg Priority special: in the end it became a "random stuff go", "let's just put something just to fill in" type of story, and not as so bad it is funny as the early mentioned WEP, but it actually gets frustrating to follow up the events.
I wrote so much about how the story gets baaad, but I haven't wrote what's going on. Out of context spoiler warning, after Yoh and Anna's backstory, the story gets confusing, non sensical, random, things just start happening with no coherence or proper explication. Mechas? Aliens?? Random fleet raids that don't have any purpose in the story?? TRAINS!! You'll start questioning yourself what are you watching, you came for some Jojo style shamanic fights, you ended up in a state of constant confusion and fatigue. Everything is so rushed and random, it is a complete mess.

I don't even like the characters in this reboot. In the first episodes the main cast was more open to each other, I think that they behaved pretty normally in the beggining, but after the tournament started it became irritating to see them interact. Everybody is so apathetic towards one another, everybody feels like they want to do their work individually and they're forced to be together. Horohoro is the best example in this situation, I may be too used to the old version of his (and I assume that) which is more comedic and fun, but here he became more and more irritated, more and more serious Bakugo-like character, he became even edgier than Tao Ren. I also dislike how Hao is portrayed in this series, he's more comedic and has so much more interaction with the main cast, it kinda ruins that mysterious vibe I'm used to (again, I assume that). Also one last thing is that I absolutely despise that Tanuki-Fox duo, they were so gross and unfunny I hate, hate, hate them. STOP SHOVING YOUR BALLS ON MY SCREEN!!

It's not a review that I've put a lot of work into, but there is nothing much to say about the newest Shaman King anime. With or without the bias of growing up with the old series, the 2021 reboot is just not good. There is absolutely nothing decent or worth mentioning in this anime. It is one of the worst series I've ever forced myself to fully finish just because of my own nostalgic feelings.

Were you a Shaman King kid who hasn't touched the reboot? I don't recommend to start it like me, it's a complete waste of time. You've never seen SK in any shape of form? Still don't recommend watching it.

!!! This review contains examples from different events from the manga, so spoilers, I guess? !!!



Go Nagai is a well known legend in the anime and manga world who innovated the industry. A prolific artist, on one hand he created a lot of well known and beloved series such as Devilman, Cutie Honey, Mazinger Z etc. On the other hand, he created some despicable pieces of media.

Being a Go Nagai fan myself, most of the times I'm ok and more indulgent with his works, despite their lower scores. For example, Hanappe Bazooka (at least the first volume ;-;) and Kekko Kamen were pretty entertaining and ... funny in my opinion, but other works, like Dororon Enma-Kun are just... Ugh, a total miss.

Omorai-Kun is by far his biggest miss from what I've read so far, and it's going to be like that for a long time, I can actually say that it is also one of the worst comics of all time.





Released from 1971 to 1972, Omorai-Kun is a comedy manga with the worst comedy possible. To summarize it up, Go Nagai's Omorai-Kun centers around our protagonist, a kid beggar named Omorai, and his beggar friends, the young lady Okomo, the elder of the group Kojiji and other minor characters, in their silly misadventures. It's an episodic series, and each of the chapters' conflict starts because of Omorai's execrable hygienic conditions.

Being a gag manga, it doesn't focus itself on the plot or in the development of the characters, its focus is, obviously, in the pure comedic aspect. You want a good comedy? Then you picked the wrong comic, because Omorai-Kun is simply disgusting and unbearable.

Personally, I've never been fan of gross humour, I rarely see myself actually laughing at this kind of stuff, but this manga is in a whole 'nother level of disgusting, and I say this as someone who read some of Shintaro Kago's works.

The gross out humor ranges from fart jokes, body fluid jokes, jokes about mud, trash and other dirty stuff, to highkey scat jokes, eating feces and drinking pee jokes and genitalia jokes. It gets worse and worse, and by the end of the series you'll be exhausted.

We have a lot of dubious content: we have the same jokes about how dirty Omorai is, so dirty in fact that he can canonically poison people by touching them, he can darken easily the water, the snow or a perfectly clean white towel in a few seconds, he has an entire dirt armour around his body where RADIOACTIVE ANTS live, the dirt easily melts on his face when it's hot outside, he leaves entire hectometers of dandruff whenever he takes his hat off, he can easily catch fire by friction because on his body exists some kind of inflamable fat substance????? You got my point.

Omorai, like literally any beggar from this manga, has a strong passion for literally anything dirty and disgusting, there is no exception. He resolves all of his problems by using his snot, excrements, body fluids, dirt, trash, there are no hygienic options for him. For example, one time he created an entire functionable flute out of his body dirt, which was took by accident by his music teacher and the teacher suffered afterwards. An another example, he wanted to extinguish the flames of a burning school with his boogers and piss, just to kill the fireman who wanted to save him by accidentaly throwing his feces on the man, making him fall from the window.

Can we talk about the body count of Omorai? He's basically an indirect serial killer, if this makes sense. Like in almost every chapter of this comic, someone has to suffer, even die, and this kid still lives his life with the widest smile imaginable.

To continue with more disgusting stuff, there is an entire monologue of Omorai talking about loving your own excrements. All I can say is B R U H

You want to know the scenes that made me lose my mind? I can start with a simple idiotic joke of the beggars of giving excrements and pee to a drunken civilian to eat and drink.
What about that time when a girl threw some sew buttons with such precision that they landed on Omorai's anus more than one time, and, yes, there are many close-ups of that place. Ew, ew, ew, I hate this.

You want to understand how bad this manga actually is?

Even the author himself confessed through the pages of the last chapters that he got grossed out by his work. He doesn't think either that his manga is funny, but just disgusting, and I find this absolutely hilarious.
I quote:
"Eww. As the author, I am always unintentionally making my stomach feel sick... Haa haa haa."
"It's not funny. It's disgusting"

Reading the manga, we learn that there exists something called "the Way of the beggar", which is some kind of philosophy about the joy of living this kind of life. It practically romanticizes the dirty, unhygienic way of living in the streets, like eating cockroaches onigiris when you have the chance to consume actually eatable things, or loving the smell of trash cans, sewers and so on.
I know that this is a gag manga and you don't really need to take its content seriously, but I still find this aspect quite bizarre and childish.

I can also talk about the language used in the manga, specifically how poor is the language of the beggars. It's for sure written that way to be more comedic, but it's more troublesome than it should have been, especially for people who don't speak really well english. It was hard for me as well to read in the first few chapters, and even after I started to read it easily, the manga still remained unfunny. Haha they say the word "come" as *insert a stock image of a glass filled with milk* , funniest thing ever.
Being a comic translated 4 years ago, you'll find some not so great, edgier words, like the r word for example.

To be honest, I had 2 or 3 times when some phrases caught me off guard and i chuckled a bit, but those times don't compare at all with the rest of the manga.

Art wise, there is nothing to complain about. It's your typical 70s cartoony Go Nagai style which fits with the overall comedic theme. As expected from a Nagai work, at times you can find some drawings with more effort put into them.





Overall,
I don't recommend this manga even if you're a fan of Nagai's works. It's straight up repulsive, gross and unfunny. I hated this manga when I first started reading it 4-5 years ago, I hate it now when I picked it up to finish it.
In my opinion, Omorai-Kun can be easily considered one of the worst manga series ever made.