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It was great!

Hey, if you haven't played Tekken - I don't think this is for you. 6 episodes doesn't give them the time to build characters. Its more like: "hey, its Paul Phoenix! Oh hell yeah, Xiaoyu in her schoolgirl outfit! wow, they animated King's giant swing!". If you are a Tekken fan, you will love seeing all your favorite characters and moves brought to life.

The story is bad only in the sense that the Tekken story is bad, lol. Fighting games have dumb stories. I think they executed everything really well and made it seem less cheesy than I would have expected.

Where it really ... stands out is the animation. And not in a way that is necessarily easy to explain. Its not incredible and breathtaking like Jujutsu or Demon Slayer. I would describe it as "unintrusive". It is the least intrusive use of 3D modeling I've seen in anime - which, if you watch a lot of anime, is actually a pretty monumentous breakthrough. Almost all 3D in anime is hideous beyond reason and sticks out like a sore thumb. People hold up Beastars and Studio Orange as the benchmark in the industry - and I would agree, but only in the sense that they are the least worst at it. Plus, Beastars benefits from being entirely 3D, which makes the animation much less intrusive and noticeable. Tekken uses lots of 3D, but quite a bit of traditional animation as well.

In short, I think its a great watch if your a Tekken fan, and a great watch if your an animation and fight scene fan. If you don't play Tekken... play Tekken! Its great! Then watch this anime after.

SPOILERS BELOW:


Man, what the fuck did I just read. This was all over the place in terms of quality.

Lets start with the art: the first chapter looked great. I loved the design of the werewolves and of course was a fan of thick ass Grimm. And then the next chapter happened. Holy hell, the author could NOT handle the rigor of a weekly chapter schedule. I mean, I can't blame them, I don't know how any WSJ mangaka does it, but the immediate drop in art quality was the most noticeable I've ever seen. The final few chapters had almost no backgrounds, like they just ... gave up.

Next, the story and pacing: Ignoring the ending, when the author knew they were getting axed - the pacing was far too slow. The cops and robbers game took WAY too long. I know Sakaguchi probably wanted to do a very Hunter x Hunter-style weird ass exam, but it was way too convoluted. Hell, I don't even know if I think HxH does that stuff properly either, but thats for another time.

Now, for the ending. Look, when a manga gets axed, the end is never going to be pretty. But goddamn do I respect the hell out of the author for just going with this Evangelion, M. Night Shamylon nonsense. If you got a team of really skilled writers to workshop this ending, and if it was the ending to an actually meaningful, long, and popular story, people would be talking about this as one of the greatest of all time.

But, hey, its not executed great - no blame there, it was impossible given the situation.

Overall, I don't know whether to give this manga a 4 or a 9. I'm going with a 7. It sure as hell doesn't feel right, but I gotta score it something.

Overall a very enjoyable series. While I found the premise and setting to be interesting at first I don't feel that it was executed all that well and I ended up not caring too much about it.

But that didn't matter too much because the character writing and dialogue was superb. This series had some of the must unique humor I've seen in a manga or anime. I really wish I didn't have to simply describe it as "meta" or a "deconstruction" of tropes, because it really doesn't do it justice. Just very creative joke writing and witty dialogue.

I LOVED the main character. Tsumugi was ... so DIFFERENT from most protagonists in Shonen Jump. As someone reading every jump series right now, the Deku archetypes are a dime a dozen. Tsumugi was interesting, effortlessly cool, and hilarious.

I'm very interested to see both mangakas next work. I hope they stay together. I'll read anything they write. It wouldn't even need a plot, just that superbly clever writing.

An interesting take on a sports manga. Sports series (baseball especially) have to navigate the same formula. Its how you navigate, circumvent, and execute the tropes that counts. Every baseball manga is going to be about going to the Koshien. So what are you going to do different?

Well this manga does A LOT different. The beginning focuses heavily on the building of a team from scratch. The protagonist is a cerebral, but ultimately unremarkable player. After being rejected from his dream team he must assemble a ragtag crew to take revenge.

Its approach to the storytelling of the baseball games focuses almost entirely on the strategy ... and decisionmaking involved. I learned a shit ton about baseball just from reading this manga.

Unfortunately Shonen Jump readers are a bunch of bird-brained morons, and this series didn't have enough explosions and tits in it so it got axed before we could reach the climax.

I really respect the authors stubborn dedication to telling the story of the assembly of the team. Every member felt like they earned their spot, even when the last three novices joined because it was clear editorial was rushing him - it made sense and was charming.

I would have loved to see this team grow more together. The character development we got was executed extremely well, and the adversity they faced was well thought out.

I would definitely recommend this series to anyone looking for a sports or baseball manga - with the caveat that it is short and sweet and wasn't allowed a real ending.

I think that this was a very frustrating axe for most of us. Phantom Seer was a good story, with great characters, and superb art and design. And apparently, very good sales - which is what makes this axe so damned puzzling.

My best justification for the axe is that Shonen Jump is a team sport. Everyone has important roles to play - the ace, the battle shonens, the romance, the sports manga, the ecchi, the romcom, the gag manga, etc.

Phantom Seer played the same role on this team as Jujutsu Kaisen, and had peers in adjacent positions that had a setting of Japanese ghosts and ... folklore as the backdrop for its world building.

On its on merits, Phantom Seer was a great manga that deserved to tell the entirety of the story that the authors wanted to tell. However, Jump manga can't always be judged on their merits. Its a goddamn team sport.

I am begrudgingly agreeable with the editors axe decision - because the six newest manga added to the Jump line up all fulfill such radically different areas that needed filling.

I am looking forward to the next works from Kento Matsura and Togo Goto. I think Goto has earned another shot writing in Jump. Matsura is among the best artists on Jump's roster and deserves as many shots as he needs to get a big hit. If he fails to get a hit it will be because Jump failed HIM.

And please Jump - give me a year moratorium on new series about precocious highschoolers with the power to see ghosts/phantoms/spirits rooted in Japanese folklore.

I haven't read an extremely large number of manga in my life, so this isn't exactly the most profound statement, but Our Blood Oath is easily the worst manga I've ever read.

Absolutely appalling. Even with bad manga there is always something about it that was redeemable - something about the authors work that you can see being a foundation to build upon with their next work.

I feel bad for this mangaka but my god, it is truly shocking that they were given a chance in Jump at all. Their art is awful - well below what should be acceptable in non-gag manga in Jump. ... Their storytelling is not just amateurish - its as if this author has never read or experienced a story from any medium.

I have nothing good to say about this manga. I can't even be kind enough to say that any portion of it was mediocre. It was abysmal from start to finish.

Just finished reading all 35 chapters last night and today. Honestly, I don't really have any strong feelings about it. I don't think it was awful, but I wouldn't call it good. Everything about it was below average. Its not suprising at all that it never gained any popularity. The story the author was trying to tell had an interesting foundation, but just never really felt like it went anywhere. I wouldn't truly describe this as a gag manga, but none of the gags were great anyway.

Its always important that the 20 or so series running in WSJ make up a well-rounded and complete ... buffet of series. Battle Shonens, Gag manga, Romance, etc. In the context of the magazine lineup Moriking never broke out of its place as a third rate comedy manga that couldn't find a fanbase.

This series was bad - I am surprised it made it to 50 chapters.

I'll start off with the only positive the series has going for it: the art is excellent. I really like the character design direction by the mangaka, and they created some stunning and detailed scenery. Every few chapters there would be a big full page panel or a two-pager - I would sit and look at those for a good minute, soaking up every detail. I am genuinely impressed with the level of detail that the mangaka could put into a WEEKLY series. That takes talent and endurance that is very rare ... in the industry. Compared to his peers currently running in Shonen Jump, Nakamura's art competes with the top tier and is clearly better than most art currently in the magazine.

But thats it. The humor rarely landed for me. I know that it is a gag manga, but the story and world building were frustrating in how completely random and off the wall it would get. This guy felt like he was fucking around most of the time, scrapping ideas at random, and constantly undermining his own story. The plot had almost literally no direction. In fact, it would be better if it had no direction to begin with, because the fact that he occassionally tried to point back to the overarching plot after ignoring it and undermining it for multiple chapters only made it feel even more pointless.

The authors humor wasn't very good and his storytelling and story direction were catastrophic.

I absolutely believe that his art deserves another shot in Shonen Jump, but only if he teams up with a writer.