What the fuck did I just read ( WARNING ILL BE SUMMARISING THE ENTIRE PLOT BRIEFLY)
This porn star adds a 16 year old on social media starts dating him and eventually got giantess powers. She became pregnant and the day after that she chugs a can of beer before entering a battle against giants created by an Ai singularity with terminator rip off characters who came from the future to stop said Ai from becoming too powerful. Anyways after beating a bunch of really strong giants the porn star gets warped into a spaceship inhabited by Plato and Socrates, one of them wearing a Nirvana
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Sep 29, 2023
Kagurabachi
(Manga)
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Recommended Well-written Preliminary
(2/? chp)
"I want to be a better manga"
"I want to be.... Kagurabachi" 1.0 Executive Summary At the time of writing this, Kagurabachi has been praised (mostly jokingly) as the greatest piece of manga to ever grace planet Earth, a piece of fiction that has has influenced the childhood of billions and the author was even sent letters about how it changed the lives of fans overseas before chapter 1 even dropped. So this begs the question, "Is the manga actually good?", is the art, story and character writing really up to the standard of the hype? The art is effective at entertaining the reader. However, the story, writing ... and and world building overall can be a bit lacklustre. Nonetheless the manga remains charming with its likeable characters although they suffer from a bit of flaws I'll get into later on. This review will aim to provide both points for and against this manga and make a judgement based on it's value to the future of Shounen and the industry as a whole. 2.0 Stronger Points - The Art The art of Kagurabachi is unironically amazing and worked great in achieving a balance of goofiness and tension whenever it's needed. The art style gave the characters extremely malleable and simple to draw faces while maintaining the high detail in the clothing, weapons and background, this allows for the very same faces to be used across in tonally different scenes with flexibility without requiring much change. For example a panel of Chihiro ( the mc's name isn't actually Kagurabachi 🤯) malding over his dad dying has the same amount of detail on his face compared to a panel of him staring emotionlessly at some fish in a tank as his uncle talks to him about how the uncle is larger than him ( height) . This allows for pacing to feel consistent throughout the manga which makes for a more enjoyable read. Furthermore, the artwork at action scenes were beautifully drawn with an inky and fluid style that engulfed the pages with excitement whenever Kagura said it's KAGURA BACHING TIME and Kagura Bachi'd all over everyone, sorry he doesn't say that. One really cool thing about the first major fight in chapter 1, was that the entire fight was drawn as if Chihiro only used one swing. The manga starts the fight with a cinematic buildup reminiscent of a Yakuza movie with a group of men staring down at Chihiro as he draws his sword. Chihiro cuts down a crowd of attackers and we are given two panels where we slowly see the impact of his slice; emphasising the impact as he beyblades into the air and cuts another man's hand off, the motion of his blade never drawing back as he fully extends his arm in the following page and lands while painting the page black with a mixture of his own sword and the blood of everyone around him. While one may raise the valid argument that the monotone face makes Kagurabachi look like Shigeo from Mob Pyscho 100 and just makes the manga a bit silly, it's important to remember that this is a shounen manga and the -_- ahh faces serve the purpose of establishing a less serious tone in comparison to something like Berk which would allow the manga to be a lot more marketable to children, children who are into watching a man kill crowds of people but whatever. Overall, the art of Kagurabachi is really good. 3.1 Weaker Points - Story The story of Kagurabachi is where we begin to start seeing cracks in its potential to become a "newgen big 3". The story is very basic. That's not to say simple ideas can't be executed to the T into something great, however the first few chapters at least have really failed at capturing the audience to believe it to be all that special. Kagurabachi is about a young man with a special sword who goes on a quest of revenge after his dad got nae nae'd by a mysterious and a powerful lookmaxxer with a strong jawline which he obtained from hours of mewing and chewing gum. As a result of this simple premise, the story in the beginning felt cliche and a lot of emotional impact was lost especially at the death scene of his father as the father felt less like an actual character we can care about but rather just a way of continuing the narrative, and the motive of Chihiro as a result became uninteresting to follow. There's this quick test one can do at home which I stole from OSP to see how much of an impact a character's death left on the audience by just imagining the character as a really sexy lamp and see if you still feel about the same. If Chihiro's dad wasn't the one burnt to death but rather his favourite lamp was smashed (non sexually), the weight of the overall death would've felt the same in the long term. The counterargument can be made that it's too much to expect so much to be built within only two chapters but other mangas have been able to do that by focusing on creating an interesting premise at the start and only hinting at the character's motivations to be explored thoroughly later on, which could've been interesting to see in Kagurabachi. Additionally, the world building was fun but also still quite standard and raised a few questions, taking place during a time where trains have been invented but not a single one of the mob was using a gun. Another question the reader may have, was regarding why the townspeople simply just hung around the same place with the Yakuza when transport was clearly open with a working train line, and how come none of the townsfolk ever tried to travel out to seek legal enforcement. All in all, while the story has much time to grow and develop, it its current state its mildly repetitive, confusing and only compelling to a moderate extent. 3.2 Weaker Points - Characters The character writing of the manga was charming but had small kinks in their dialogues. Although it was mentioned above already how the death of the father of Kagurabachi was way too sudden to feel impactful the little bit of characterisation he did have was actually pleasant, as we got to watch him yap on about how Japanese steel has the largest cock in the whole galaxy. Chihiro is quite likeable and foiled his father's cheerful personality with a dead pan expression at all times which in the beginning was quite cute and served to paint him as a very pragmatic and logical person, this also may have been a result of the burden that this young boy had to carry as his mother clearly wasn't around. Only issue Chihiro had was the way his writing made him come off as an aggressively edgy teenager with lines like, "Everyday, I start the morning with fresh hatred", and "I can't allow a slime like you to wield katana". That was just corny, and wasn't even cute in the same way baby Thorfinn was in the beginning of Vinland Saga. However, hopefully the author will work on Chihiro more later on to feel more relatable and nuanced rather than just straight corny. 4.0 Conclusion Overall, Kagurabachi was a very entertaining manga that had excellent art but suffered mainly in its lacklustre storytelling and awkward character writing. And even though it may not be Godfather of modern literature, only two chapters are out as of this review and the author has a lot of potential ways of improving his story, such as having Kagurabachi killing all of Shounenjump in chapter 3 and saving soul society in the progress. Overall, Kagurabachi may not be able to change the scene of shounen forever, but the author has made an earnest attempt at creating an entertaining reading experience. TLDR:it's not bad, read it if you want Art: 8/10 Story: 6/10 Characters: 7/10 Overall: 7(00000)/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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