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Having recently blitzed through AOT, I decided to give this a go too.

For someone that was grabbed by the initial impact that AOT had, this was… lacking in it. A lot of it felt like some high school SoL.

What did I like about the series? The origin of the ODM gear and its inventors. The Survey Corps of early era that struggle to justify its existence and the politics of the capital city. All of those were cool but not enough to cover for the characters the character development and the plot that really goes nowhere.

The ending arc is unsatisfying. They did their best to ... hype up the final part and in the end, gave me very little to enjoy both in terms of quality and length.

The art is fine, in my opinion. I noticed that the scale of the titans compared to the original series seemed off, though. 10-15 m class titans looked a lot bigger in this series, perhaps alluding to mankind’s unfamiliarity with something so alien as titans.

Some spin-offs can stand on their own but this is at best a supplementary material. A rating of 6 is on the generous side in my opinion.

The book is supposed to include 2 of Hata's early works (before Hayate no gotoku!) and in a separate booklet, a one shot featuring Nagi and Chiharu. The one shot wasn't included in the Kindle version I bought so I'll comment on the first two.

1. Umi no Yuusha Lifesavers
5 chapter serialization from 2003 with Souya (Ayumu Nishizawa's swimmer classmate) as the main character.

2. Kamisama ni Rocket Punch!!
A one-shot from 2002 which is Hata's first published work.

Hata made a lot of references to these two works in Hayate.
Having read these after Hayate, it was pretty heartwarming to see all these ideas surviving after several years.
...
The art is pretty much the early days of Hayate. Might be rough for some.
Also expect some early Hayate type of humour. It ws actually one of the favourite aspect of the series, so works for me.

Overall a good read for all the Hayate fans out there.

Writing this review because this really sucked and I'm hoping people don't make the mistake of reading this. I haven’t seen the original anime or Blood+, so I’m unfamiliar with this setting. I started reading because of CLAMP (and Watanuki)’s involvement.

Blood-C is about Saya Kisaragi, a shrine maiden who hunts monsters. She has a father and close friends that she wants to protect and keeps fighting night after night despite the risks. The monster hunting part along with a bit of SOL was neither unique nor well told in my opinion, but it wasn’t bad either.

Going through the story I found it hard to ... understand what exactly the antagonists were trying to do, which was really irritating. There's never any purpose or logic behind the characters' action. The ending tries to conveniently justify all events in the plot with an absurd reasoning. It’s one of those endings that leaves me going “Huh? What the...”. I feel like whoever was responsible for the plot was very much forcing it to be a fairy tale ending that goes against the whole story's concept. I'm not saying a dark story can only have dark endings but the turnaround felt unnatural. Also, many of the characters don't really serve any purpose.

The art was decent. Wouldn't really say it's a saving grace though.

It felt as though the creator came up with an interesting concept on a whim and dumped it onto a paper while it’s still undeveloped. The messy plot and setting seems like a good representation of what was going on inside the creator’s mind.
It’s a story that gets worse as you keep reading. Just don't start.

Master Keaton is one of the best manga I’ve ever read and I highly recommend it.

It deviates from his other well-known works like Monster and 20th Century Boys that are all plot heavy but, retains the strong main character also present on the said series. The background themes can be heavy at times but the mood is mostly lighthearted. It’s nice to be able to enjoy Urasawa without the constant fear of unknown.

It does not follow any set plot, instead focusing Keaton's short adventures that in most cases last for a chapter. Most characters only feature for one chapter only. Keaton is a multilingual-archaeologist-SAS elite-insurance ... investigator. He's nearly a perfect human being, and yet stays humble and has his vulnerable side that keeps him approachable.

The art isn’t for everyone I guess. It definitely has variety that I think a lot of manga is lacking in though. I'm definitely a fan.

For me the key word in the series would be “relatable”. Urasawa incorporates everyday occurrences into the story and manages to end them in a moral way, and this is what makes the series stand out for me. Although you could say this applies to many manga, I’ve often found that Master Keaton is the series where I’m nodding in reaction to the events/characters’ emotion.