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Taishou Otome Otogibanashi is more of a wholesome wish fulfillment for men than a wholesome series for all. There’s nothing wrong with it, if anything this manga is about a very good relationship, but the complete, total, endless kindness and devotion of the female lead, certain points of her personality, and harem-like bath scenes later in the series make the targeted audience of this manga a bit smaller than you'd expect initially. That’s the reason I am writing a contrarian review for it, because I didn’t know it when I started. I also don’t think it’s 10/10 evenly along its course. (Don’t attack me, guys, ... pls.)

But, boy, is it sugary. You may want to cut other sweets when you read it, and be wary if you’re diabetic. Everyone is cute, everything is round, so much moe, such pleasant art. Doki-doki moments abound as tiny Yuzu tiptoes around on her dot-like feet being the bestest girl of the best.

And it is historical. "Taisho" doesn’t stand in the title for no reason – you’ll see the way people lived then to a degree, there are optional pages full of explanatory data about the way people sew clothes, schooled, cooked, etc. The great Kanto earthquake of 1923 plays a big part, leading to what's likely the best arc of this work. Though I think there were things that looked a bit too modern-like, like, for example, an idol girl.

It’s a healing story about healing, about finding your way and following the right values. An arranged marriage goes right for once. Tamahiko, the protagonist, has grown in a loveless rich home, then gets discarded when he loses the mobility of his right arm. Betrayed and alone, he falls in a deep depressive state, sent off to rot away in a rural home far from the eyes of humans who "matter". Luckily for him, he receives a bride, Yuzu, as his last cut-off-forever gift, and she revives him through her kindness and cheerfulness.

The initial chapters when they get acquaintanced and learn to appreciate each other, while living in an old home on a mountain together, are truly amazing. For me these slow slice-of-life chapters when you see Yuzu open Tamahiko’s darkened heart to the natural beauty of the rural Japan to the people around him bit by bit are the best in the story. But they bond very quickly and easily, and the manga decides to expand.

There are other strong moments, like the events of the great earthquake, both nerve wrecking and historically informative, and the ending when Tamahiko makes his big choice. You see, another big part of the plot is his messed up family, the way they have failed as people so much that many of Tamahiko’s siblings try to run away and find their happiness elsewhere. The elders will get their due, and what’s especially beautiful is that it’s not a matter of revenge, it’s a matter of leaving the evil behind to stew in its own vitriol without future, as it should, as it’s the best in this situation.

The problem is that the road to the cathartic aftermath in the second half is very rocky because of unneeded side characters, many of whom are also cute girls, and they all bathe together showing off their "goods". At some points there were so much fanservice, so many people suddenly flocked to our main couple and made celebratory rounds, that my attention simply trailed off despite my best efforts. It was totally a "flower garden" to ogle. I think it hurt the ending a lot, there were whole chapters of empty fluff, while fates of major characters were moved to additional half chapters.

But the main issue of this work, if there is any, is that Yuzu is just too saintly, too sacrificial and accepting. The manga never manages to empathize with her humanity fully. It may be fine in the beginning when Tamahiko has not yet healed and is not yet accustomed to caring, but later it doesn’t change, isn’t addressed, and it starts to grate. Yuzu is kind and understanding towards Tamahiko, but it’s her who has been sold like property, has had to travel to an unknown home, works there, and doesn’t have her own property or money. Yuzu constantly blames herself for everything, and it stays that way until the very end of the work, it’s seen as cute and as a natural feature of her personality, while honestly it’s depressing. They don’t address her pain at all in any form when they have their first time, for example. And, like, Yuzuki is "healing" (which is already a meh concept) though immediate blind acceptance, body and soul, through total devotion, endless trust, infinite selflessness. She is very small, legally bound to the MC, she has cute sexually attractive features she hides thinking that they are "troublesome", she has high libido, but is shy about it, and wants a lot of kids. She is a saintly bride, not a human being. She is the titular Taisho fairytale you are supposed to want.

The evilest character of this work is in fact also female, and falls on the "whore" side of the dichotomy, because she prattles around menacingly naked in front of her male family members for some reason, in Taisho era, yeah. Actually, about the epoch, it is kinda uncomfortable to see the difference in rights and possibilities between the genders in that time, even though it is accurate. More uncomfortable than it happening in earlier periods, in fact, cause Taisho is in the past, but also close, relatable enough. Yuzu herself doesn't exactly have any options besides doing her best to please her husband, and she is explicitly happy he doesn't do bad things he legally could have done, it's hard to ignore this. The manga doesn’t want to touch it tho, which is valid, cause it's not like it can change it, and it is heavy, and it's not its goal to be heavy, so ok. …Though the author also chose the period herself.

I like the main pair of characters and what this manga wants to show between them. It’s deeply pleasant to see a quality couple building their life in commendable ways. There’re powerful moments of development, characters elevate themselves by denouncing cruelty, by learning to help others through love and loving themselves though others – it’s a good much needed message, which rings all the more true when set in a not so far past with its harsher rules, harder lives. But I also don’t think that for me this manga was a smooth ride I had hoped it would be – the pacing in the second half was jambled, some of the side characters read like clutter, female characters felt more like ideas or pictures rather than full people occasionally.

Taishou Otome Otogibanashi is a good love story for romantic guys, I think. I felt alienated sometimes, but I can appreciate the cuteness and the lessons. I’d prefer if Yuzu had been more human with her own struggles and failings acknowledged in ways that made sense, but I still enjoyed greatly my time with her. Yuzu compares her tall, delicate, and noble husband-to-be to kikyo, a type of bellflower, which denotes eternal devotion – and it’s poetic, precious, and quite bold. And for Tamahiko tiny Yuzu is a powerful spring storm that clears the winter of his soul away, renews the earth, and carries him ahead eternally in her warm embrace. It’s such a special image. Being together for them is ultimate happiness, and I can understand why. This is enough to see Taishou Otome Otogibanashi in good light despite certain narrative issues.

Kamisama, Kisama wo Koroshitai. left a sour taste in my mouth. One should listen to our possum overlords and be more selective with their trash. It has certain good qualities, but at its current state of discontinue it’s a disaster few people should or deserve to engage at all.

Firstly, it was axed right in the lowest point of the plot, with all remotely sympathetic characters outsmarted and dishonored, dead, or on the way to being violently murdered. So you will be disappointed even if you like everything else.

Which is not guaranteed at all, considering the flippant attitude this manga has to killing – it’s totally ... in awe of murderous psychopaths and makes them look special, even superhuman. And considering the uncomfortable sexualization of the main male character and the commodification of women. Whenever fanservice happens, and it happens most of the time in this manga, it’s really distasteful. As in it makes the whole manga unpleasant to consume, despite its rich art and its brutal political satire.

The armed smiley brat on the covers – you are supposed to fawn on him, I guess. The characters constantly comment how cute he is, and he often dresses as a woman with multiple leery panels panning over his panties, lips, and feet. The one thing we get to know about him besides his murder talents is that he doesn’t have pubic hair. After learning it the female lead immediately comments that he has a “cute butt”. So yeah, the implication is we are to look sexually on a psychopathic teenager with prepubescent features, sometimes directly on his crotch in a gender bent disguise (I feel weird specifying this, but I know it's important for some readers: no, there is no bulge).

The female lead gets less visual admiration, more attempted rape. That’s basically the plot for her – she moves from one attempted rape scene to another, occasionally an attempted murder for a change. The terrible things that happen to her in the process of the manga are sorta hand waived because she’s suicidal and willing to sacrifice herself for vengeance, which is seen like a valid goal. A whole collection of bad things had happened to her before it all began, so much that it feels manipulative. She is a sad being through and through.

And then there are female props. To build a corrupt politician as this immoral tyrant the author makes him have sex with women in lowered positions in front of his employees. Say, we see buttocks of one woman, to whom he makes sex doggy-style, then he gets distracted, and she gets abandoned, her naked butt on the forefront of a comic panel with “twitch” sound effects. Or once our male lead gets sad, paints his face a la Joker (yeah, it all does feel very imageboard culture), and when he runs into some prostitutes he randomly murders them – to make the next scene look more impressive amidst a heap of mutilated tits and asses. It is cheap, gratuitous, and cringey, even for the depicted world. I know some people would ask me, why chastise this but not murders, but you see, the murders advance the plot at the very least, and these girls were included only to be chopped as decorations. It’s sick AND pointless, it’s not even all that aesthetic.

This manga becomes somewhat better, occasionally good, when it leans on its over the top worldbuilding, on the wacky characters tearing apart the landscape with exaggerated violence.

The best part of the story, one that feels raw and inspired, is its dark political aspect. Politicians, the court, the mafia, and the police are united by greed into an all-encompassing world of corruption that is so bad a maniac does look better, seems more pure. The writing delivers striking moments sometimes. A yakuza bends to admonishments of a political leader besides a lavish koi pond. The old man sounds wise and benevolent when he talks about the betterment of the country – but his words are a signal for kidnappings, torture, and deaths of innocents. According to the fan traslators’ notes the manga may have been discontinued because of its political themes. And it is indeed not far from real life news.

Kamisama, Kisama wo Koroshitai. is also not so bad when it is a clash of opposing forces. Its cast is thriller stereotypes taken to the fun extremes. The aforementioned “pure” and “innocent” super murder kid, who’s explained as a natural predator, the way he is just because. (The manga does jump between him being cruelly dismissive or simply cruel to the girl lead and him being a protector whenever it sees fit, sadly.) A hunting maniac grandpa, ya murderous Crocodile Dundee, ya shady Bear Grylls. An OCD inspector, who is so mysophobic he is in a respirator all the time and so cool he wears a suit and a mohawk haircut together. The Yakuza has a short devious sadistic megane bishounen and a giant brawler in a Jason-like mask to offer. They act in an over the top way too – call a helicopter randomly, wreck a whole highway of cars, use a morningstar on a rope to fight, torture with dried wakame. It’s silly, it’s fun, and it plays into the image of an immoral rotten upside down world they inhabit. But then you have to stare at the panties of a cross dressing boy for some reason or observe twitching lower halfs. You have to switch your brain off to agree with the heroine protecting the murder kid despite knowing that he will kill her later.

What I cannot criticize is the quality of the art. Backgrounds are detailed, full of personality, clearly modelled after real lived-in places. The characters are distinct, the action dynamic. You can see the experience of the mangaka, his accumulated skill in the confident, seemingly effortless direction. It’s the big cinematographic seinen art it’s hard not to respect and like. The art is probably what made me pull through till the end.

And in that end Kamisama, Kisama wo Koroshitai. left its main team in the worst shape ever. Maybe it was the pivotal moment, after which they were supposed to rise again. Or the mangaka butchered them out of spite knowing it was the end. Either way it was disappointing to drag through all that nastiness with no emotional payoff. Maybe I could have overlooked the fact that the manga departed in a wrong moment, tbh, if it hadn’t been so sleazy too. Kamisama, Kisama wo Koroshitai. as a whole, as it is now, feels like it asks obnoxiously for your attention, then falls into dirt and rolls in it, rubs it in some places it shouldn’t, and then hits on you physically. Titillation touches you directly emotionally, chemically, unlike fictional fighting, and here the thing that touches you is at the minimum questionable. I should straight warn people about the big amount of attempted rape scenes, for example.

In short, Kamisama, Kisama wo Koroshitai. goes so far in its god-defying edge that even if you are in the non-judging murder shlock headspace, it is likely to cross your lines, offer unneeded fetishes, or be outright unpleasant, especially for female readers. And it doesn’t have any aftercare. I would save your energy, if I was you.

You and I both know when going into a manga like this that it’s going to be stupid edgy, stupid trashy, that a lot of murders will be stupid to up the headcount. These are not reasons to shame. You don’t go to a nightclub and complain about naked bodies. But is “Lesson of Evil” (oh my god, the naming) stupid overall, as you’d expect from a story about a sexy serial killer? It is unrealistic, sure, it is corny, maybe campy, occasionally cringy, but stupid? I think no. I even gained new ideas and cultural knowledge out of reading it, which both confounds and ... amuses me to a great degree. You shouldn’t read this if you have a strong emotional response to the topic of school shootings though, as the main issue of this work may be its gratuitous violence in later chapters.

I dropped Aku no Kyouten once. The thing I overlooked then was that it is not episodic, bullshitting its way from one magazine issue to another, as I thought, it is based on a book (which was also adapted into a movie). Thus it has a finished story with a proper composition: two distinct halves and a lot of broken reader expectations. Because of the latter it is not humanly possible to explain what this manga is without some spoilers, and it’d be better if you went in blind… but if you wish to read this further, I promise to reveal things gradually at the very least.

The manga starts with a sympathetic handsome English teacher Hasumi Seiji, nicknamed Hasumin, getting a whole class of troubled schoolkids under his black wings. The children have so many issues, so their sensei and counselor tries to help. It just so happens he is able to murder without remorse, and uses this to resolve the gravest of woes. During the first few chapters I fully expected this to be a school version of Dexter, with a psychopath solving people’s problems because he tries to redeem himself and/or contribute. I stopped reading when Hasumin acted rashly to get one of his students into bed. There were other issues too: unevenness of the art, which falls off model periodically, deeply stuck in the uncanny valley between godly and ugly; overdramatization of the school setting; Hasumin doing silly “cool” stuff like breakdancing… Based on my experience with overwhelmingly poor writing in psycho killer manga I fully expected the love subplot to be shoehorned purely for titillation and didn’t like an astute character acting stupid.

And now I wonder why. Why did I expect an unhinged murderous psychopath to be sacrificial for the sake of a higher goal? I guess popular fiction has us trained to expect high levels of reason from psychopaths in the main cast, if not outright protectiveness towards neurotypicals. But why? Why would someone with a diagnosis that indicates total egoism, recklessness, lack of fear, and sensation seeking strive for anything other than self-gratification? A psychopath cares about him/herself, seeks pleasure for him/herself. So it’s actually logical that Hasumin takes a risk to get some. He simply wants the sexu, and he wants to show off, because he is vain. This is good writing, not bad one. He shits where he eats too, sure, cause he doesn’t care, is overconfident.

Aku no Kyoten plays with this a lot. Hasumin is attractive and charismatic, loved by people around him. His opposition is ugly, stupid, lame, hated, has a bad personality. Hasumin pays attention to his students, teaches well. Most importantly, we follow him. You constantly expect good things from him against the logic. The manga teases the readers with his past: an understanding mentor, some human-looking connections, righteous revenge. You excuse and excuse.

Hasumi is clever and bold, successful in his endeavors. As the time goes by, he indulges a bit too much though, the lies accumulate. Just when you start to think that Hasumin is a perfect machine, his – technical – humanity catches up somewhat. The school setting reminds him of his formative years, wakes up memories. His mind shows subtle cracks. Plus the kids constantly get under his feet, little shits just can’t shut up and stay away from places they shouldn’t go to. One very unfortunate day Hasumi slips and snaps. The poor guy gets a big problem on his hands. And Hasumin deals by his favorite method.

I returned to Aku no Kyouten knowing only that the second half is “depressing”, according to internet commenters. I am thankful for this. But the main turn definitely needs a content warning, and it changes a lot in the manga, so further I will spoil the general plot progression again.

Hasumin has a lot of work after that, but he is super, so he manages. He drinks some coffee, stretches a bit, and then goes to do exactly 10 chapters of extreme manslaughter, during which he muses about his supper, plans how he can get sex afterwards, and makes a ton of English-Japanese puns. We mostly follow his victims though, as the manga turns into a full-scale survival.

The violence is indulgent, there’s no way around it. That’s why the movie was heavily criticized, especially because of its similarity to real life scenarios. But in manga we are freer and have seen worse. One thing I love about this part, besides the whole suspenseful hunting game, is that Hasumin gets hit in the face, and swelling robs him of his deceptive handsomeness. It immediately changes the way you perceive the character, which is so saddening and telling.

Aku no Kyoten begins with the flashy lyrics of Mackie the Knife the main character likes to whistle. It takes you aback how straightforward it is for a murderer and for a manga about murderer. But as the plot progresses you notice it follows the song somehow. As Wikipedia puts it, Aku no Kyoten has a lot of references to “German culture”. It often cites The Threepenny Opera, to be precise.

The Threepenny Opera, apparently, has an interesting history: born as a revolutionary play in Germany, it had to move overseas and soften to reach its modern popularity, or maybe even stay relevant. At one point characters in the manga notice and tell Hasumin that he whistles Moritat, but he says he whistles Mack the Knife, the jazzy Broadway version. Hasumin may prefer the version popular in the US because he teaches English and loves the US culture, but it is also melodic and pleasant, as following the footsteps of Macky is fun to the character. The word “moritat” makes you think about Brecht’s music drama, which was a dirtier angrier political critique. This manga is fun to read through, with its showy main character, sex, gleeful murder, and nonsensical scheming, it’s a pop grindhouse flick through and through. But it also works as a cautionary tale, because for all its absurdity, people like Hasumi get away with worse things all the time, and the society allows them to thrive through its cowardice, vice and petty squabbles. There are positive characters in Aku no Kyouten, but the world is immoral and hilariously broken, so they aren’t doing great, the evil triumphs just like in The Threepenny finale, sorta. Most importantly, I like how this manga breaks the image of a cool reasonable psychopath we’re dangerously overfed with.

Speaking about cinema, the art here evokes complex feelings too. I’ve checked several other works by the artist – and they are much simpler, lighter in linework. He sure went all out with the level of realism and the heavy lighting for Aku no Kyouten. It’s hards to tell the girl characters apart, the anatomy suffers as much as Hasumin’s victims from time to time, but the backgrounds reach a very high level by the end, and Hasumin is always easy on the eye, but stimulatingly creepy. When I wondered whether Aku no Kyoten was exploitative with its depiction of violence, I looked through types of exploitation movies, and giallo felt similar in feeling to the art here, though the panelwork in this manga is rather bland. It offers spectacular pleasant art nonetheless.

I can’t say Aku no Kyouten is for everybody. I was likely in a unique position to enjoy it. I expected the worst, I was on board with suspending my disbelief AND disgust for the sake of slightly unhealthy entertainment. I was ready for something pandering, discordant, and controversial. I am fairly forgiving towards B-grade stuff. I ended up with a fascinating meta-commentary, a self-reflection séance, a bad boy, a couple of sweet kids, and a lot of murder, which to me feels like a catch. The author of the original wrote Shinsekai Yori, by the way, so there’s hope I am not fully projecting.

Aku no Kyoten is not high art, it is a shock content school slasher with a handsome scheming killer dude – it’s not something you enter in a suit with a bow. But it has richer sides to it, it laughs at you if you try to be fully mindless when reading. It’s also a music show by its heritage. The main character whistles Mack the Knife when he’s happy, a song called Karn Evil 9 is introduced at the turning point of the story (oh my god, the naming). But if you’re a dirty pleb like me you can also put Pumped up Kicks by Foster the People on your speakers, take your metaphorical pants off (or real, ffs), grin as madly as you can, and dive in the fun, the awfulness, the theatrics, the thematic face slaps, and the thrill of this work.

This josei/shoujo astonishes you with great fighting scenes and an intricate mystery plot, but may disappoint romance-wise for several reasons. Yet in the end it is a story about a relationship, for better and for worse. In my opinion, worse. Is action shoujo a flawed concept by design? I hope not. But Koroshi Ai, while mostly enjoyable, sure makes you wonder.

Koroshi Ai is one of the pixiv-born series, which I will be calling “ASMR-manga” starting now, because they get their popularity thanks to a particular tone/mood and when serialized cultivate it. In Koroshi Ai it’s a suspenseful romance where a fox eyed cool assassin ... hits relentlessly on a stoic bounty hunter girl and she is “nah, pls go away, nuh-huh”. The thrill comes from the duality – is this courting playfulness or a cat-and-mouse play? What are his true intentions? Why is she so non receptive to his advances? You want to see sexy times, but is this even safe? The same duality reigns supreme in the setting too, where a funny fluffy relationship is wrapped in a setting with so many deaths. Children suffer a lot of trauma here, I must give a warning.

The focus is squarely on the male lead. Fox eyes are a rare, important feature, since they are essentially a mask. Foxlike characters are impenetrably smiley most of the time, playful, socially adept, and seemingly eager to serve, until they show their eyes – and you know the shit has become real. Song Ryang-ha fits to the letter – he is murderous as hell, this is the nine tailed fox in the room you have to ignore to appreciate this work, actually. At the beginning he fully reminds you of a small sadistic predator: he gifts tortured bodies to the female lead and resides in rundown buildings. He mellows pretty fast. Credit has to be given to the author for his understated but powerful design. Ryang-ha always attracts your view. He is smooth, sleek, functional, ever casually stylish in his suits – he evokes the image of an S-class armored car you'd see with a convoy, or a timeless elegant pistol. He is dangerous because he is, very naturally, and therefore classy. The story offers several attractive guys with different flavors in leading roles, but Song remains the undisputed star, you read for him and then do the inspirational “for him” desktop collage.

The female lead, Chateau, feels simpler in design. She is somewhat similar to Saber from Fate visually, similarly very quiet and stoic, cute all the more for not understanding it or caring about romance.

What else does Koroshi Ai do right? The atmosphere of night shoot-outs and high-class crime! This shoujo has an unprecedented amount of violent night mob raids. The human fodder is rough, scary, armed, and professional. Brains fly, buildings burn, snipers on the roof work as a team and coordinate ground troops. I love the attention to the bladed weapons, the care with which they are drawn, and a very unnerving blademaster child bodyguard who uses them the most. The little guy will be a force of nature if he grows, but it’s unlikely he’ll have a chance with his attitude.

The drawing style is delicious, backgrounds rule much more than I could ever expect. There’re hiccups here and there, the author messes up feet, for example, and Chateau’s weird hips bug me. This is not an in-your-face shounen with two-page spreads too, the panel composition is much calmer here. Instead this manga offers detailed tasty interiors you expect, you want to find in this kind of story – a cruise ship, a hotel, a private castle, dingy hideouts, mafia offices, an abandoned factory. All come with realistic layouts, a big amount of items, and great nighttime lights. There are suits, weapons, and cars all around. And, of course, as I have mentioned, terrific shooting scenes. Character designs are clean, tidy, maybe even sweet – fitting for the demogprahic, but not flowery. On the side manga offers funny yonkoma about its characters, costumed special pages, and lush colored covers you badly want on your walls.

What doesn’t happen in this manga? The amount of everyday dating “porn” is low, they have no time to eat cakes together. They don't show any skin either, this manga is low on naked bodies. And there’s no competition between the leads at all – Chateau loses to Song on the first few pages and stays helpless in his hands, which a) may be unnerving; b) lowers her agency and makes her ultimately disappointing as a character.

Which brings us to what is likely the core question of action shoujo. Is there a place for a female lead in an action story? As Koroshi Ai progresses, as it weaves its very complex and sometimes hard to follow, yet fairly consistent, plot (be ready for a multitude of reveals, cliffhangers, flashbacks, and schemes), Chateau becomes more and more of a princess in destress waiting for her prince. Together with her initial extreme reservedness it turns her into an object around which everything revolves. She’s both the main driving force and the main problem of this manga in all regards. No, yes, she has an inner conflict, and she has an annoying tendency to attack stronger fighters inefficiently when she throws a tantrum, but she becomes a prize valued not because of her personal qualities, but because of her past/her accidental role in the events. Is this the desired outcome? Does this please readers?.. Interestingly, even Song becomes less foxy in the second half, with his irises visible most of the time. I guess the whole tone of the work slightly shifts.

Overall, from my point of view, I would say that the implied pureness of the female lead makes her empty and unrealistic in her profession and/or setting. Sure, diving under enemy bullets is also not reality, but it makes more sense character-wise than going along a blood trail unprepared. As a result both sides of this manga are wounded:

– If you like action, you will be likely annoyed by the totality of the female lead’s careless powerlessness. She acts, but she’s woefully inefficient, and it is not a good look. Then you have to suspend your disbelief when true professionals do stupid things to save her.

– If you like romance, you have to be content with teasing and tension only. Because of Ryang-ha they often look like lovers, but as of chapter 55 when all hell is loose in the plot already I can’t yet say confidently it is sexual/romantic and not parental for him. They have never truly connected because of the striking difference in experience and conduct, after all.

Nonetheless, the shootouts are good, the ikemen are good, I like fox eyes, and I simply can’t ignore how happy seeing a josei/shoujo romance with so many quality fights makes me. Actually, there isn’t that many series with modern firearm action out there in all demographics, so what we see in Koroshi Ai must be cherished and appreciated. Chateau may be true to her name and become this static beautiful fortress to conquer in the later chapters, but the men here go all out, and I am fully on board with seeing them show off, struggle, suffer, expose their dark secrets. Shoot on, guys, for what this manga could have been.

Ugh, well, maybe burn it for real. I have noticed it with other old timers returning to work on new shounen series – they often just can’t or don’t want to grow the story properly, they want to jump right into profitable “coolness”. But the coolness comes from a well-built world, without the foundation it falls flat. Burn the Witch feels way too superficial to properly magic and soar in the sky on its broom.

The story is set in an alternative modern world again – this time it’s Reverse London. I have read several mangas with a fantasy London, and none of them were good ... – neither the mangas themselves, nor the versions of London in them. The same here. The London in this work is postcard-garish and paper thin, like pages of a cheap tourist guide. Some red phone booths, some castle wall textures, a random skyscraper and a coat of arms... Can’t give you more because the backgrounds don’t form a coherent picture – they aren’t even filled on most pages, it’s all just characters striking a pose or cheap action effects. The author tries to play with the characteristic British “cool weird” names – I think – but the end result is Wooly Wally “dragons” eating grass on Ninebrook Pastures, an organization named Wing Bind, and a character called Bang Knife (fine, “Bangnyfe”, doesn’t help) saving the day in a skull bandana.

Speaking about characters, they probably could have worked if they had not shouted and bickered constantly. We have a duo of girls, one red haired, abrasive and loud, the other a black haired ideal Yamato Nadeshiko with Japanese roots. They serve as Pipers – a two person squad of witches tasked with handling dragons, the mystical creatures that inhabit the reverse world. The premise doesn’t sound bad, but the thing is these two lines are it all, the rest is shouting and making faces. The red haired lead is also not endearingly annoying – rude, spiteful, and destructively envious.

The series drops the ball hard with misplaced preemptive humor and bad fanservice. Misplaced humor is, for example, the protags’ lazy boss, who uses them, but can’t do anything without them. I call it preemptive, because I believe you must build your fictional world before subverting anything or replacing important details with jokes, yet here not so good jokes come before the meat, and cream roses before the main dish is a bad dining experience.

The fanservice is ceaseless and corrosive. The third mainstay character, who moves the overall plot in fact, is a human perverted guy, who the witch girls have to keep on a leash and look after because reasons. He has exactly three features: he is creepily obsessed with the Yamato Nadeshiko girl, he is sort of unlucky in their world, he has a cute-dog-with-a-secret he dotes on all the time when he doesn’t beg to see the protag’s panties. And he is on screen a lot, a dated trashy gag, who should’ve left in the very chapter, at maximum in the very arc when he first appeared, but stays for god knows why. There’s also a female character, whose costume is cut out at the crotch in the shape of a heart to show panties, a scarf knotted above and below he giant rack, while everybody else in her group is dressed sensibly. This level of in your face randomness with fanservice is annoying and breaks the little immersion this manga manages to muster.

If I am very honest – I don’t think Kubo is cutting it with Burn the Witch. Bleach dissolved in its later stages, but early on it had a fascinating otherworld full of beauty, strong characters, and symbolism, thriving on Japanese aesthetic sensibilities, spiced up with a bit of Spanish/Latinx detail. And here he thinks he is clever when he shows a bland animal form with a propeller in it and says that witches use dragons for energy or when he adds some flowers on the horns of an otherwise regular poorly drawn deer.

I was stoked for a female-led shounen about witches in a European setting from a mangaka who once shone, but this is a boring mess. The world feels stale and low effort. You can’t just slap the word “dragon” with cookie cutter monster designs on top of a bad caricature of one of the most recognizable and vibrant cities in the world and expect it to work. The action is nonsensical because of the lack of context and because it is random mumbo-jumbo "spells" causing cabooms with no proper system behind it. And the only sympathetic character is the quiet female lead, but she has the worst case of a side kick tied to her hip, quite literally, salivating, blushing, and bleeting “panties” all the time.

They say that the movie adaptation was ok because of its high energy, fun designs, and, mainly, the quality of the animation, thanks to the studio behind it. Maybe this series can thrive as an anime, I dunno. But as a manga Burn The Witch is a bit worse than bland, and unless there’re plenty of people who are very into the specific type of fanservice that plagues it so badly (which I doubt), once the bosses milk Kubo’s name for what it is worth now, I fully expect it to get the axe like Jack the Ripper’s victims and burn down like London in 1666.

While Kuro by the same team was a niche hit, Shadows House now is an AOE crit hit. It’s colored, it has one of the most unique worlds in recent manga, it’s fantastic. Shadows House seems to be beloved in France, and the French are right - they know good bande dessinée when they see’em.

First of all – this is not slice-of-life as some people call It, evidently judging by the covers, the description, and the few first chapters. The manga starts slow, because of delayed exposition. The characters learn about the world together with us, cause the world is the main mystery here, ... and also the main attraction. When they learn enough though, they start to act.

I have the chance to write a review at the time when this manga has run for a while already, so I can say that it has separated into two main distinct halfs so far:
1 - The first is mostly eery subversive exploration, from the point of view of Emilyco, the young maid you see on the covers. She’s plunged in a vast strange Gormenghast-like world of a castle, where she’s both limited and free, overlooked, as lowly servants are. She serves her master, deals with her problems, and tries to learn more about the space. The subversion comes from the juxtaposition of her cheerful open personality and the closed-off terrifying “habits” of the place, which her pure soul tends to overlook. It is normalcy for her even if it looks horrible to us, after all.
2 -The second is a high tension political intrigue between nobles with some action elements. Here the attention switches to Kate, Emilyco’s master. This part has a bigger cast of distinct characters, spy-like mental battles, deathly competitions, and a fight against the oppression of the elders.

Both are united at heart around the secret of the order in the house. Who or what are shadows? Why do they act this way? What is hidden beneath the many bloody lies the giant house is built on?

The majority of events takes place in the giant labyrinthine stone castle of the Shadows family, divided by class and age and the favor of the ruler. It’s heavy and inescapable, lost in the perpetual mist – its own surreal world, reminiscent of European dark fantasy, of its many feverish dystopias and disturbing dreams. The style of interiors and clothes is also European – we see Victorian things, some art deco, the characteristic imagery of English industrialism. It’s also colored as European comics usually are. The team cites Edward Gorey (an illustrator beloved by Tim Burton) as an inspiration apart from the Japanese horror manga.

This work has the intense narrative consistency of Japanese comics too though, and a great cast of characters mangakas like to grow. I don’t want to spoil, since discovery is so fragrant, do delicious here, but there’s a complex interplay between the servants and their masters, and within the classes – between different groups of servants and nobles. The manipulative rules of the house are masked as duty and care. Beneath them, behind the impenetrable masks every character fights for their own survival and goals, mostly warped goals only warped people can cook up, while slowly losing themselves further. The stakes are death or complete erasure for all.

The art is very pleasing even besides the color. The characters are distinct, interesting effects are used to show the shadow people’s difference. There's clear juxtaposition between the cuteness of designs and the bone chilling elements of the story, which compliments the same device in narration. The cuteness is good on its own as well. The interiors are well realized and combine European high class late XIX - early XX century interiors with steampunk and surrealist oil art. The outfits are especially eye catching and elaborate (and no wonder, since it’s the most Shadows get to show their personality, which is absolutely vital for them), the maid/butler outfit fans also won't be disappointed.
The art in Shadows House is soul food for the eye. As for fanservice – one can point out that the protags look like children, and there’s some cleavage shown off, but it’s wholly ignorable.

Shadows House is simply without peer at the moment, in many ways because it creates a playing field of its own. It’s very distinct, combining the best of Japanese and European comics, aesthetics and art inspirations into a unique captivating fictional world. While at the time I am writing this it’s announced that Shadows House will get an anime adaptation, this work is literary-inspired, so it feels right to read it. It’s also very carefully planned and focused, it's clear that the whole story is ready and thought through, so it is more pleasurable to read it as a whole. Anyways, whether you plan to wait for the adaptation or not, whether you prefer manga like me – this is a work worth picking up for everyone and all. Shadows House is magical and deserves more attention and more readers.

One of the best mangas I have read, and so very impactful. Yeah, looking at the covers I also expected an edgy slice of life with schoolgirl pantyshots – and maybe this manga even was it for the first half of the first chapter. But then the author fell victim to his dirty desire to make a good horror story, and Mieruko-chan degraded into a supernatural thriller to behold. There’re two main things on which this unexpected greatness rests:

The first is that the heroine tries to live her normal life while constantly internally screaming. That’s what made me finally pick this manga up. I mean ... “normal” life is indeed hard as nails and horrifying, I cry inside silently every day for hours. I felt the premise in my bones and I was not disappointed, the mood and the irony of the unending utter terror Mieruko-chan must at all costs contain felt fresh and delicious. Interestingly it’s what most seers actually do, from what I know. No one has no time to deal with hostile astral entities, so they screen, tone down, and hide.

The second is the power and the energy of monster designs. It’s hard to stress this enough, since commending monster designs in so par of the course with manga, I myself do it for many other works, but the monsters here are genuinely one of the best in the medium. The main qualities that distinguish them are:

The style. The author underlines the otherworldliness of monsters by drawing them differently – with expressive dynamic black strokes, as if scratched by a terrified hand on paper. They seem to shimmer and warp slightly from panel to panel. The rest of the manga is done in a clean detailed modern seinen artstyle that allows for a great contrast.

The presence. When the monsters become visible, they are very much in the space, interacting with the environment, active, and aware. They are very dangerous, and the rule of the fictional world dictates that if Mieruko-chan as much as acknowledges them, they will likely attack, so they are a constant palpable danger just a hair away, which creates tension and drives the events of the manga.

The malice. Again, it is difficult to experess it believably, but the designs are just so fully realized and so strong, that you don’t need to make any effort to feel that they are scary, you don’t need to be understanding or to suspend your disbelief – the scary comes naturally. These are mean terrifying bad bad things you never want to meet, you can’t do anything about, you just can’t – yet here they are in all the disturbing glory.

To place them on the chart: There’re monsters by Ito – a mindfuck between Lovecraft and an anatomy theater, covered in offensive surrealism. There’s eroguro with its body horror, damaged sexuality, and the joys of irreversible defilement. There’re urban legends of, say, Seeds of Anxiety. There’re demonic fighters of action series. And there’s subversion for every type. Manga simply has a lot of monsters to offer. In this manga the monsters are reminiscent of Silent Hill – they are terrifying unholy shapes that used to be human souls but then degenerated into otherside predators. The mangaka doesn't use cheap tricks like sexual details or subverted childhood imagery too much, these are simply dead people ground to the pulp and mixed up with the evils of human dwellings to reemerge as some huge cursed beasts. The designs are complex, varied, and plentiful. If we continue to reference games, this manga shows off elaborate horror bosses in every second chapter, sometimes several of them at once. It’s hard to not respect the amount of imagination and work invested, it’s difficult to not admire the results.

Furthermore, while the manga is initially slicey, it has a plot. The major, overarching story is forming as of now, but in previous arcs the author has established a sturdy cast of characters with their own quirks and complex relationships, laid down hooks for suspense. Even the schoolgirl mains end up being relatable and human-like, without excessive schoolgirl fetishism. The girls are somewhat sexualized, the author likes to draw their bodies, but it’s not disrespectful or lecherous.

The main criticism that can be directed towards the narrative is that the heroine seems weirdly inactive in looking for the cure for her condition. But it’s also shown that there’s not enough info to go by, she expects the “sight” to go away as it has appeared, by itself, and this is absolutely a series that grows a plot out of the initial slice-of-life status quo. There’re many chapters dedicated to the initial situation before the characters start to actively move. The initial setup is complex enough and deserves it however, plus there’s also a subplot to follow now and then. There’s also a side of very black comedy to this work, which can come onto the forefront at times.

The author is actually also an expert in subversion of expectations. This manga plays with perception in multiple ways. It does focus on perception as a topic, cause the characters have different points of view and abilities to view, which the mangaka uses to create alternative panels (a thing in one pov, the same thing in another pov), and the plot also carefully builds and then betrays the expectations of readers.

For me this manga has a lot of things that I tend to enjoy: dark tension-filled mood, black humor, elaborate meaningful monster designs, urban fantasy, mysticism, relatable down to the earth characters, mind games, compelling plot, ability to genuinely surprise me. I switched the lights in my corridor at nights way more often during the week when I read it! I urge readers with a taste in topics similar to mine to give it a chance. The only thing you are to watch out when picking it up is that it's actually scary. (This manga is also very recommended to people with a fetish for scared girls, obviously.)

Mieruko-chan is a clever nightmare fuel with great art and outstanding monster designs. It is a rare work that deals with urban mysticism head on – with proper esoteric rules, stakes, and dangers. Narratively, it may start slow and have unneeded ecchi in the first chapter, but it quickly gains impressive storytelling depth, emotional range, and power. Even the main characters are likeable and make sense. This is a disturbing, great, and genuine manga I heartily recommend to all readers except for the easily scared who also don’t want to be scared, and maybe even to them on this Halloween night.

We are taught to equate power with violence and with aggression, but there’s also great power in being yourself in the best way you can. Majo to Neko no Hanashi is essentially that and about that. It's about growing through interactions with other creatures. And about cute little witches, cats, cakes, and flowers – the four things the author obviously loves. Majo to Neko no Hanashi is simply what it wants to be – unabashedly magical, unabashedly feminine, and unabashedly good.

It’s one volume of greatness structured as a framed anthology. Most chapters share the pattern – one of the apprentice witch friends gets her cat ... familiar, meets her elemental spirit and learns a thing or two about herself. The rest of the chapters touch on the past of older witches and even on lives of some non-witch civilians. The main message of the work is the need of growth: learning about yourself, embracing you strong and weak points, accepting the difference between individuals, and appreciating the insights others bring in your life. The lessons are neither saccharine nor overly didactic. Thanks to the variety of presented characters most readers will likely connect to at least one or two stories.

A bit more on the cuteness and differences: all too often moe in manga is creepily sexualized, overly marketed, excessive, and/or makes characters samey. None of this happens in this healthily endearing work. The witches are proper little brats, and their uniforms are adorably practical. They are different in personalities and designs. And what’s especially impressive all the cats strikingly differ too – old and young, big and small, wise and easygoing, intense and timid, black, white, blue, spotted and tabby… One must love cats to make them both so realistic and so full of personality. Cats are simply top notch in Majo to Neko no Hanashi. There’s also a wealth of flowers and a variety of spirits. The author scatters her treasures - little witch girls, cats, flowers, cakes, and jewels - generously and evenly, from the first page to the last. Chapter covers are especially pretty.

It looks great, it reads easily. The art is light, lively, loveable. It is very dynamic and has the finish of traditional book illustrations. The linework is delicate and flowy. The faces are rather simple, maybe, and the focus is mostly on characters so you won’t have overdetailed backgrounds... – the only faults I can think of, if I try and reach for negatives.

Together with the characters the readers still get to visit many places a young girl playing a witch would dream of: bakeries, herbal shops, perfume shops, gardens, a school campus - all rendered with taste and a with decent amount of fun details. There’s also solid worldbuilding at the background. This fictional world has its own problems and prejudices to live and to deal with, which witch girls do through sweets, songs, aromas, flowers, shiny stones, foreign languages, friendships (of course), and ultimately acceptance – of others and of their own self.

Majo to Neko no Hanashi is just so tasty and wholesome, I want to urge everyone to pick it up. It’s beautiful, pure, even a bit helpful. Kind witches, cats, cakes and flowers – don’t we all need more of these things in our lives?

This manga starts with all the parts necessary for a good postapocalyptic thriller, but fails to develop them in time, while fanservice slowly piles up. The main secret stimulates curiosity though, and robust art makes reading pleasant.

Tengoku Daimakyou conceptually is a polyphonic narrative – each chapter is named after the leading character in it, but in practice there’re two main plotlines. The first is a “Yakusoku no Neverland”-like slow burn mystery inside a very special orphanage, where we follow a group of kids and try to understand what’s brewing. The other is “The Road”-like journey across a calamity-ravaged Japan, riddled with picturesque debris, suspicious ramshackle ... villages, bandits, and occasional monsters. These two parts are obviously connected, the hooks for their meeting are set, but it’s not clear how it will happen in the end – this is the main question of this work, the main attraction of its story.

The second strong point is the art, reminiscent of “Ibara no Ou” or “Apocalypse no Toride”. Tengoku Daimakyou has a similar attractive steady linework and very well-designed debris. It is even, maybe, more cinematographic. The composition of panels, the life-like designs of clothes, buildings and items, the many weathered faces and human types make this manga feel like a modern sci-fi TV movie – enriched with the imaginative freedom of a fully drawn medium and with a strong pedigree of Japanese quirky postapocalypse acutely felt.

The characters also begin in a very promising way. The kids in the shady facility are easily discernible, bright and sympathetic. The slow way in which we catch glimpses of the bigger picture in their simple lives feels natural. The pair of heroes on the road has good chemistry. The dynamic of an older more experienced but somewhat awkward bodyguard lady and a younger, active and capable, but not yet fully grown special boy feels fresh. The two share the childhood of being a post-calamity orphan, so they offer funny opinions on our civilization, now lost for their world.

So far so good, and indeed I couldn’t stop reading for the 10 (very substantial) first chapters or so, but then problems started to become visible. The cracks showed the most in the road story part, with exposition been delayed too much, which harmed characterization. Subsequently the author strained my sense of immersion by swapping genders of several characters in a convoluted way, seemingly largely for shock value and banter jokes. I can’t comment whether it may be interpreted as queer representation, maybe it can, but for me it seems to lack realism, attention, and gracefulness to be a good one or a plus in this story. The narrative is also very clearly male-centric. Only women are sexualized, sometimes in strange ways. The fanservice is light, but it’s all over the place thematically.

And after I had finally made peace with the new data and the new expectations from the characters, another issue arose – and that was the lack of engagement in the road part of the story. As far as post-calamity wastelands go, this one is fairly typical, I am afraid – the ravaged world here doesn’t whoa me by itself. The monsters are rare and there’s too little data on them, likely withheld for the final arc connecting the two plotlines. There’re too many red herrings and inconsequential events, places change way too fast to care, the danger for the main duo stops feeling real. While characters chat plenty, the author keeps readers at a distance from their thoughts and feelings – our connection with them is mostly voyeuristic. Clumsy attempts at unnecessary romance and convoluted sex jokes, increasing in volume with each new chapter, also don’t help.

So, gradually, I found myself not caring about the traveling pair of characters despite the richness of the events which happened to them. The kids’ side still interests me, even if it is oftentimes disturbing. (Speaking about the disturbing part, there’s human experimentation, several suicides, and a bit of body horror – all typical for these types of stories.) And what I am still genuinely curious about is how it all connects. I will definitely come back to Tengoku Daimakyou to check for it.

Overall my rating and personal opinion on Tengoku Daimakyou, based on subjective readability, is not terribly high. But I would recommend this work for its slow-building intrigue. I think it may suit people who like postapocalyptic stories in general. I can gladly advise it for its hearty brisk art. I even think that many others won’t share my problems with the story. However I can’t discard the overly slow exposition, sparse characterization and uncomfortable gender juggling, which disqualify Tengoku Daimakyou for character-focused readers. I have to warn about fanservice, which may put off some people. This is a manga definitely worth trying for yourself, but there’s a non negligible chance of disappointment.

A stunning example of writing failure (so much more surprising because Naruto nailed the initial emotional turmoil), an unusual case of masterful tech designs being a detriment to enjoyment of reading, Samurai 8 Hachimaru Den is seriously stunted.

Samurai 8, most likely, was supposed to be a lighter, more upbeat story, separating itself from Narutoverse by going into a techy spacefaring future and swapping ninjas for samurai. A space fantasy with magic-like consistently designed technology, with interstellar travel, mysticism and cyber superhuman warriors … A more contemporary hero, initially frail and disabled, gaining powers through his parent’s sacrifice and gaming… What could go wrong?

Turns out almost ... everything. Even the art is problematic. For starters, it’s unreadable because of the lack of shading, and shading had to be omitted to make way for the wealth of tech details. The situation becomes better in later chapters, but page layouts still look like a mess. It boggles the mind, considering the amount of effort put into visuals here. The samurai designs were carefully bred to become viral, to ensnare little boys, they have it all – variable, complex, dynamic, yet recognizable, sporting that linework oomph with a tiny pang of cool nasty. They travel on turtle spaceship. They have support animal cyborgs. They can fight in space. The level of pandering is on par with MMOs. Yet in the end it all drowns in visual debris. Consequently, with the plot failing to take off, the richness of visuals becomes an annoying dissonance.

These types of overcomplicated settings often fail, and Samurai 8 addresses none of the typical major issues. The old Japan and a biotechy sci-fi have different audiences, which may not intersect much. Advanced technology mimicking pre-industrial world structures and practices needs a very strong suspension of disbelief. And info dumps are unreal. Just like the art, the text of this manga is more often than not rendered unreadable by the amount of terms, titles and names. I love delayed exposition with passion, but it should never take up to 80% of text, which happens in Samurai 8. And then the remaining 20% of narrative are mostly pow-pew-friendship rules-woosh.

The characters are rubbish. I try to see the best even in standard stories, it’s very possible to do them right, but high energy doesn’t hide the vapid emptiness of the cast here. I couldn’t connect to anyone, and the speed and inelegance of introductions are painful. The main group is supposed to be a band of misfits – a formerly sheltered orphan, a cutely uncute freckled girl, a gender ambiguous weird kid – but they are not truly human-like or sympathetic. The protagonist, initially physically disadvantaged, immediately gets the whole adventure-ready package – a body that can do it all with a guarantee, an old legendary weapon, a famous mentor (somehow now literally a cool cat), a robot buddy (both feline and canine), a homely fate-bound girl, institutional support and recognition, and an unfolding galaxy saving quest to take on. He’s lost some things, but he’s reached his dream of being a samurai, the best social class and immortality right from the start, so he’s happy. He’s also a gaming champion, because of course, and that’s how he’s learned all about samurai and how to fight as one. The rest of the kids just tag along, somehow captivated by a former social recluse. It’s boring, he’s boring. Naruto was much more alive and balanced.

If you stop and think even for a moment the whole setting is very disturbing. The samurai are enshrined as manifestations of a warrior god, they give up their bodies in a ritual suicide to gain immortal vessels and then only seem human. The naturally following moral dilemmas and the highly probable body dysmorphia are not addressed in the manga at all, as far as I saw. Everything else in their world revolves around the samurai. They are neither “natural” superheroes, nor a separate society of jianghu, everyone wants to be a samurai, they are a major asset for a nation. I find a militaristic religion revering inhuman war machines and a society focused on producing them off-putting. Girls are driven to the role of princesses, who sort of give birth to samurai, are bound to a predetermined samurai by “fate”, give them power. There’re some female samurai in the lore, but 99% of them in the main story are male, even though it makes no good sense considering they are cyborgs. Seems like this technologically developed future digs ancient times not only in aesthetic. But it’s hard to speak about nuance here, not only because I dropped this in the first half, but also because there doesn’t seem much of it going on. It is just a loud by the book adventuring, which tries to hide its narrative failures by flexing the character design muscle.

Samurai 8 is a chore to get through, nothing sticks for me. It’s too in your face with its plan to be a self-insert “awesum” adventure for a tween nerdy gamer weaboo, and maybe to cash in on toys. And, like, that’s what Shounen Jump is for, but both story and visual composition here collapse in an unsightly way. The impressive cyber samurai designs can’t compensate for all, and they have ethical and aesthetical issues too.

According to the wiki, they try to save a galaxy from the entropic death in Samurai 8. The underdog protagonistin overcomes his initial limits, has an exciting journey and leaves a mark on the world. But the manga itself remains underrealized and weak, the entropy in it almost palpable. The garbled pace of an axed work right from the start, the bad page composition and the cumbersome unnatural narrative make it very hard to follow, to immerse or to care. I believe this is objectively a poor manga, sadly, the only thing to take out of it for the majority of readers being certain points in designs.