- Last Online1 hour ago
- GenderMale
- JoinedMar 14, 2010
Also Available at
RSS Feeds
|
![]()
Feb 20, 2025
This manga is essentially a kendo version of Hikaru no Go. The protagonist, Kurogane, is chosen by a ghost named Sayuri to serve as her pupil and become the greatest swordsman in Japan. This is despite Kurogane knowing nothing about kendo and being incredibly weak physically. However, as is pretty standard for sports manga, he is strong willed and hardworking so he's able to grow really fast. He also has supernaturally great vision, which is enough on its own to make him strong enough to become a regular for the kendo club. As things progress, his amazing vision becomes less important, but it does pop
...
up from time to time as his key to victory.
This manga is grounded but I wouldn't exactly call it realistic, even ignoring the ghost stuff. In terms of kendo, it greatly simplifies some things. For example, only after about 2/3s of the manga and a lot of actual victories does Kurogane learn that he's supposed to be predicting his opponents' actions. Other things are clearly exaggerated, such as some moves that basically involve creating optical illusions or jumping over the opponent's guard. Overall, I guess this keeps things interesting, but at the same time it feels kind of bizarre.
In terms of characters, the manga wasn't that great. Kurogane has a decent enough character arc in terms of growing into the type of person he admires. His clubmates, Ebana and Hazakura, had a fun dynamic, but were shallow as characters. Sayuri is amusing, though the deeper parts of her story weren't written very well. Everyone else was pretty half assed and just in general felt really haphazard. For example, about halfway through the manga the mangaka seems to have decided that there weren't enough girls in the manga so he introduces a girl's section to the kendo team. However, they never actually do any kendo. They just kind of hang around without any sort of plot significance whatsoever.
The ending to the manga is incomplete in typical axed manga fashion. The final match works really well thematically, but plot wise the manga ends in the middle of a tournament. After that there is a flashback that explains everything regarding Sayuri, and then a two-year time skip into an epilogue where everything is resolved perfectly. Well not everything. The romance subplot for some reason it seems to bring up just to emphasize that it hasn't reached a resolution. That felt pretty dumb, in that if it was just suddenly pushing things into an ending, it might as well have forced progress on that in as well.
The art in the manga isn't all that unique or especially high quality but it works well for a kendo manga. The designs similarly are really basic, but it's a grounded manga set in modern Japan so it is what it is.
tl;dr: An axed kendo manga that even before that was nothing special.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
What did you think of this review?
Nice
 0
Love it
 0
Funny
 0
Confusing
 0
Well-written
 0
Creative
 0Show all
![]()
Feb 19, 2025
This manga is set during the Tokugawa period, predominantly in Edo. It features the Mushibugyou, which means the Insect Magistrate Office, who are a group dedicated to the extermination of giant insects that appeared in Japan 100 years before the start of the story. It primarily follows Tsukushima Jinbee, a very earnest samurai that joins the Mushibugyou in place of his injured father. He starts off weak compared to the other members, but thanks to hard work and some secret abilities he turns out to have, he quickly becomes one of the most powerful.
The plot begins with the Mushibugyou simply defeating random mindless insects that
...
attack Edo. The overarching plot, which is centered around the origin and true nature of the giant bugs, begins in volume 5 and continues to the end of the manga, with a bunch of smaller character focused stories thrown in in throughout. The plot is solid enough. It’s not amazing and the main themes are the standard shounen stuff like power of friendship and such, but it builds upon itself well with some good twists and ultimately reaches a satisfying conclusion that overall felt very fair.
The way the story flows isn’t very good though. It feels very segmented. It’ll focus on one thing and it’ll go all in on that. And then after that’s over it’ll move to focusing on what feels like something completely different. Everything is ultimately connected, but in the moment it kind of feels like it’s jumping around. This is heavily in part due to how the manga doesn’t really lay the foundation most of the time. It’ll introduce something new and then it’ll just suddenly become the most important thing in the manga. The anime actually did a pretty good job at fixing this, in that it added filler scenes that built up to certain plot points.
Character wise, Jinbee is a generic good guy that just wants to help people without any more depth to him, so he’s certainly not a very unique protagonist. Still, I felt the execution on him was good, in that he’s just so earnest and straightforward all the time that he naturally helps bring out others best selves. Most of the rest of the cast have darker aspects to them, and Jinbee having a positive effect on them and their way of viewing the world is satisfying.
The rest of cast overall are developed pretty well too. Their backgrounds and character arcs aren’t anything too special, but they’re solid enough. However, the issue with segmentation that applies to the plot also applies here. And it really screws over some characters who don’t get properly fleshed out until very far into the manga. For example, Tenma is one of the main characters from volume 1, but he isn’t really fleshed out until volume 24, and he doesn’t have much of an impact on the plot or in battle until then either. The side characters are a mixed bag. The villains I felt are especially bad. Some of them actually worked decently as just cartoon villains, but then it tried to add depth to them by giving them more complicated motivations, but those motivations often just turned out to be really dumb.
The manga also has romance, but it’s kind of half assed. Jinbee has a very positive effect on the mentality of Hibachi, a ninja member of his squad, and Naa, a girl that’s at the center of the mystery behind the giant bugs. As a result they end up falling in love with him, and this is fleshed out reasonably well. There’s also another girl, Haru, who is just a waitress at a local shop without any major plot significance who just falls in love with Jinbee because he’s awesome. This sounds kind of stupid, but in context it felt fair enough. However, there is absolutely zero development on Jinbee’s side of romance with any of them. Despite that, I felt the ending to all this was really good. It caught me completely by surprise in that there’s an actual proper ending and not an indefinite one. It’s one that probably wouldn’t work if the romance was taken more seriously, but this manga did not, and thus for this manga I felt it was absolutely perfect.
The action in the manga was good but not great. There is a general progression to the ability set of Jinbee and Mugai’s abilities and thus their fights are the best because they build upon previous ones. With everyone else it was much more random and thus not as good. The art is okay. The style looks messy, but it’s a manga about bugs in feudal Japan so it fits pretty well. The character designs are a mixed bag, though that heavily comes down to how I don’t really like bugs and like half the characters are bug themed, even the ones that aren’t actually bugs.
tl;dr: A shounen manga that’s somewhat cliche and very messy but still comes together really well.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Feb 18, 2025
This anime is a pretty generic isekai with an overpowered protagonist. This time around, he gives up all the memories of his past life in order to gain more skill points, which is part of how he ends up overpowered. Despite not having any background I think he is a decent enough protagonist, but nothing too special. I really do like his name though, Kelvin Celsius. Its so dumb its actually kind of genius.
Anyway, for the most part he’s the standard hero, but he’s also a battle junky that does pretty wild things just to fight strong foes. The writing frames this as enough to
...
make him as somewhat of an anti-hero, but he always prioritizes doing good over his battle seeking, so that doesn’t really work all that well. He’s also technically a Summoner, but in standard OP MC isekai fashion his power set is pretty arbitrary and full of a medley of overpowered abilities. As such, he’s basically just a generic protagonist for the genre but with some crazy battle hungry moments.
Beyond that the anime does quite a lot, and does mostly all of it decently. But it doesn’t really do anything well. Plot wise there’s two overarching threads. The first is relating to the rise of a new Demon King while the second is in relation to a nearby militant nation trying to take over the continent. Both seem interesting enough in broad strokes, but neither gets fleshed out properly and very little progress is made in either. The anime just kind of ends at some point without really feeling like any sort of conclusion.
Character wise, everyone in Kelvin’s party seems to have some sort of background that shapes their personalities and motivations. However, after this background is introduced, the characters don’t really seem to grow at all beyond that. Kelvin does have a sort of harem dynamic going on with three members of his party. But the moments that play into that are incredibly rare, and the vast majority of the time it doesn’t feel like there’s any romantic attraction between them. There are also a decent amount of comedic moments, but overall they’re not that amusing.
The action goes deep on stats and specific abilities at first, but as things progress its just random nonsense. The overpowered moments are fine, but they don’t really hit the right tone and atmosphere most of the time. The action is well animated and choreographed, except for the heavy use of CG. To be honest, I think the CG generally looks fine, except for when its used with human characters, in which case it is terrible. Beyond that the art and animation were decent enough but not particularly great. The character designs are pretty generic but not bad.
The OP was really good in terms of visuals and the song. The ED was also solid enough, though I’d have to say I prefer the first song version to the second. The OP/ED also do this thing where they hide what a character looks like until she gets introduced within the show itself, but that felt kind of pointless since how she looked like didn’t really matter anymore than how any of the other characters looked like and it didn’t hide them. The soundtrack was just okay, but had some pretty great battle tracks.
tl;dr: A generic isekai that’s good enough in most things but doesn’t do anything particularly well.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Feb 13, 2025
Biorg Trinity starts off centered around people dubbed Biorgs gaining the ability to absorb things in order to obtain super powers and a group known Biorg hunters coming into being in order to deal with them. However, the plot starts getting more complicated pretty quickly and ends up getting immensely convoluted. The broader details aren’t too hard to grasp, but I think most of the finer details completely elude me. Thus, I don’t think it’s really worth it to discuss the overarching plot.
What matters more is the characters involved. At the core of the manga is a group of four friends amongst whom exists a
...
love polygon. The manga is primarily an exploration of their bonds, both friendship and romance, in an extremely larger than life way. The actual character arcs and relationship development aren’t all that great. Rather, there’s a general lack of cohesiveness to everything. However, what the manga excels at is really conveying what the characters are feeling incredibly well such that you can feel for them, even if you don’t entirely understand them. That’s enough to make them likable and thus get invested in them. With the side characters it mostly goes in a different direction in that it just tries to make them as weird and interesting as possible, and often that’s enough to make them likable and worth getting invested in. The end of the manga builds upon all this pretty well, and I was quite satisfied with it.
But really, what matters more than even the characters is the vibes. It feels that moment to moment, the manga is much more focused on doing whatever would be coolest at the moment than it is trying to tell the reader a proper story. A lot of what is said in the manga is made much more complex than necessary. For example, the writer loves using intricate metaphors to explain things that are actually really simple. Various themes are also touched upon in a way that tries to sound deep, but is in fact super shallow, especially as they’re never really brought up again. A lot what is shown also doesn’t really have any sort of plot significance whatsoever.
The point of all this comes down to the art, which to put it simply is fantastic, as one would expect of Oh!Great. It has a really unique and elaborate style with great design work but despite that the artist manages to keep it really high quality throughout the manga. Rather than trying to keep things manageable, he seemed to go out of his way to force opportunities to show off artistically as much as possible, even when it didn’t make much sense to do so. And that’s probably one of the main reasons this manga has ended up so hard to follow. But honestly, considering how great the art came out, I can’t entirely say this was misguided. Ultimately, the art is what makes this manga worth reading and I would highly recommend reading this only to those that love the art.
tl;dr: A really messy manga with amazing art.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Feb 12, 2025
Engage Kiss is an original anime written by Fumiaki Maruto with designs by Tsunako and animated by A-1. That’s definitely makes it sound like it has quite a lot going for it. But on the other hand, it wasn’t exactly reviewed all that well and it’s part of a mixed media project that culminated in a mobile game that ended service in less than a year. So that might make you want to stay away. I don’t know what’s up with anything beyond the anime, but the anime on its own isn’t as bad as the reviews suggest. Rather, I’d say it’s actually very good.
This
...
anime takes place in Bayron City, an artificial island independent city state that is infested with demons. Due to various circumstances, the extermination of demons is handled by PMCs. Most of these PMCs are professional outfits, but one is composed of just a man named Shuu and his partner Kisara. They’re incredibly unprofessional, but they’re also the best PMC in Bayron due to the fact that Kisara is a powerful demon, and the only demon fighting on the side of humanity. However, that doesn’t make this an easy job for Shuu or Kisara, in that most all the other PMCs hate them and after damages are deducted they usually get paid so little they often aren’t able to make ends meet. Despite that, Shuu is determined to stay in this line of work because his true goal isn’t money, but rather to find a lead on who killed his family twelve years ago.
Shuu is an incredibly interesting character who has a lot of depth. He’s actually very similar to the protagonist of DameKoi, a visual novel also written by Maruto. He’s someone that can be incredibly proactive and willful when it comes to what he cares about, but when it comes to things he doesn’t he shrugs them off completely. In addition, he’s someone whose idea of doing the right thing is sacrificing himself for others. However, he completely ignores how that affects the people that care about him and he pays little attention to their concerns or them trying to help him. He’s incredibly immature and fundamentally hypocritical. However, that’s what makes him such a fun character.
Over the course of his character arc, he comes to value himself more and shows more appreciation for those that care about him, though it’s not like his good for nothing self disappears completely. This character arc sound simple, but it’s actually a very fascinating mess due to the fact that the primary way that Shuu sacrifices himself is through burning through his memories to empower Kisara. As such, over the course of the anime he becomes less and less himself and more and more oblivious. That made how things came together at the end pretty rough, but also much more impactful than a straightforward character arc.
The other main characters are the women that are interested in Shuu. The first is of course Kisara, who is a semi-yandere. The second is Ayano, the daughter of the owner of the largest PMC in Bayron, and also Shuu’s clingy ex-girlfriend that hasn’t been able to let him go. Neither of them really have much in the way of character development. Rather, the focus with both is primarily their relationship with Shuu and each other. It’s a great dynamic that’s really amusing due to the fact that they’re constantly bickering over him and due to this even straight up fighting each other at times, which is surprisingly rare when it comes to anime harem or love triangle antics. But at the same time, they’re still pretty close and help each other both physically and with emotional support when it truly matters. It’s somewhat similar to the relationship between Utaha and Eriri in Saekano, another work written by Maruto. Though here it’s definitely much more extreme. There’s another woman that kind of sort of fits into the dynamic, Sharon, who is a nun that had a one night stand with Shuu at some point. Her involvement was kind of weird though and just made things messier, for better or worse.
The plot of Engage Kiss is centered around Shuu and company slowly honing in on the truth behind what happened twelves years ago and then dealing with the emerging aftermath. It’s not especially well written, but it flows decently enough. The conclusion doesn’t resolve everything, but it resolves the main issues and ends at a point that felt like a pretty satisfying ending. However, despite that I still feel that this anime was too short. It doesn’t feel rushed per se when it comes to the main plot, but this feels like the type of story that needed more time to flesh out the world and let things sink in before actually dealing with the main plot.
I think a few arcs of the cast just dealing with random demons with the focus being on world building and expanding on side characters would have helped a lot. For example, I think an explicit explanation of what exactly is going on when Shuu is shooting teeth at demons would have been nice. Also, having more insight into the various other PMCs would have made their involvement in the final battle hit harder. And more time spent on things like Kisara being a highschool student that has friends at school or Ayano’s friendship with Linhua would helped round out their character.
The art and animation in this are really good. The action especially is really exciting and looks amazing. The character designs were pretty great too with the focus mainly being on the girls. The OP and ED both have pretty good songs and really fun visuals. The soundtrack was also pretty good, though I didn’t really find any single track especially memorable.
tl;dr: An anime with a fun protagonist, amusing heroines, and great action, though it could have benefit from being longer.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Feb 11, 2025
Renai Flops is an original harem anime, which is pretty rare actually as they’re usually based on manga or light novels. The only other one I can think of is Tenchi Muyou. As such it’s an anime that tells a complete story from start to finish in one season. However, ultimately this anime is trying to do something pretty different from most harem anime, and thus it ends up getting incredibly messy.
The first episode is essentially the prologue that sets things up. The protagonist Asahi is a high school student that’s living alone as harem protagonists often tend to. On his way to school he
...
ends up getting into lucky pervert situations with five girls, all of whom turn out to be bride candidates that begin living with him. This is about as formulaic as you can get for a harem anime. The next five episodes each focus on a single heroine and give each some sort of story that results in relationship development with the protagonist. These stories are wildly different and the one in the sixth episode gets downright absurd to hilarious effect. All in all things are pretty shallow and mostly pretty generic, but the comedy and romantic fluff is good so I’d still say its pretty entertaining as a harem anime.
Throughout the first six episodes, there are clear signs that there’s more going on than what is readily apparent. The seventh episode is where that becomes fully clear, and the eight episode is where the true plot begins. Things get much more serious than in any of the previous episodes and the anime begins to tackle a lot of heavy subject matter, though so as to avoid spoilers I won’t mention what exactly. Still, my point is that concepts of a good substantial story are there.
The problem is that the first half didn’t properly set the foundation for the second part. There are a lot of what are supposed to be strong emotional beats centered around the five heroines. But the first half of the anime didn’t build up enough investment in them and these moments are packed too close together, so they don’t land anywhere near as well as they need to. The final plot is centered around someone other than the five heroines, and though they’re kind of related to her they’re also not her. As such, the final two episodes of the anime are very heavy on the flashbacks building up investment in the new heroine, and it feels really rushed and pretty disconnected from the rest of the anime. I feel that moving these flashbacks into the first half would have worked a lot better. The ending I’m half satisfied with, in that it’s perfectly fine as the ending of a harem anime, but its pretty lacking in terms of the subject matter introduced in the second half. Still, I feel like they probably would have screwed it up if they tried to do something with more depth, and thus I’m happy with what we got.
The art and animation are pretty good. The character designs are also pretty solid. There’s a decent amount of CG use, but it felt like it fit well enough. I will also note that although this is listed as ecchi, there’s less than I expected. It kind of comes and goes in that episode 1, 4, 6, and 7 have a good amount, but outside of that it’s surprisingly rare. The OP was solid in terms of the song and visuals. The first ED was pretty good in terms of the song and visuals, but what I really liked about it was how it changed from episode to episode. The second ED was also decent enough in terms of the song and visuals. The soundtrack was decent too, though nothing too memorable.
tl;dr: A good harem anime that doesn’t quite deliver on trying to be more than that.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Feb 6, 2025
Ayanashi is a manga that takes place in a world where mindless monsters known as Ogre’s have driven humanity into living underground in what are known as Grottos. An organization of people known as Ayanashi is dedicated to protecting these Grotto from the Ogre’s as well as protecting those travelling the roads between Grottos. This manga primarily follows the story of an Ayanashi named Holo who’s searching for the man that killed his younger brother, Rico. Holo is incredibly strong when it comes to fighting Ogre’s, but he hates socializing and reacts violently whenever someone touches him so he’s not good at dealing with other
...
people. The manga follows Holo and eventually his companions as they go from Grotto to Grotto, dealing with whatever Ogre problem their facing, while also keeping on the trail of Rico’s killer.
The world building in the manga seems pretty generic at first, but there’s some pretty interesting stuff once it starts getting into the details. There are some pretty intriguing aspects to how both Ogre’s and Ayanashi work that results in some pretty good action. The way things are revealed slowly and steadily while leaving a lot mysterious also works pretty well for most of the manga. Alongside this, Holo also makes slow and steady progress growing as a person. His character arc is pretty basic in that he’s basically overcoming his trauma and coming to trust people again, but for the most part it’s handled pretty well. A number of side characters also slowly get fleshed out with some pretty basic but still solid enough character arcs. There’s also a very light amount of romance, and by light, I mean so light it barely registers and is basically just hints setting things up for later.
Unfortunately, the manga seems to have gotten axed and thus it has to rush the ending. The ending basically involves the cast just happening to run into some high-ranking antagonists and the antagonists just outright explaining the answers to a lot of the mysteries that had been built up over the course of the manga. Though even then, a lot is still left unexplained. The finale also pushes the plot forward considerably and though it doesn’t resolve everything, it essentially tells the reader what needs to happen for everything to be resolved with the expectation that Holo and company will do so after the end of the manga. There’s actually a lot of really good stuff in there and if this manga was twice as long and actually managed to do all this properly it would probably be great. But alas, that’s not the manga that exists in this timeline, and the ending that does exist is incredibly slapdash and unsatisfying.
The art style was pretty rough but worked really well with the story being told. The action especially came through really well. I felt the character designs and monster were pretty weak though.
tl;dr: A manga that slowly but steadily seems to be telling a great story but ends prematurely with a lackluster ending.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Feb 5, 2025
The second season of Eminence in Shadows is essentially just more of the same. It’s a bit wider in scale seeing as how most of it takes place outside of Midgar, but it largely still follows the same formula. However, as the first season was great that’s certainly not a bad thing. Rather, while this season doesn’t do anything too different, it does manage to change things up enough to provide enough variety to keep things interesting even if you’re watching this season right after finishing the first.
Furthermore, the execution overall seems to be quite a bit better. It’s overall much better paced and spends
...
more time on the parts that are great and less on the parts that didn’t work so well. There’s a lot of Cid just doing crazy nonsense while having no clue what’s going on, but everything somehow magically managing to work out absurdly well without him realizing it. There’s a lot of Cid being absurdly overpowered and leaving his foes flabbergasted. And quite a lot of the members of Shadow Garden worshipping the ground he walks on. There’s not much of Cid’s normal school life. And there’s very little time spent on characters whose character arcs don’t really seem to be going anywhere, such as Iris’s.
With that said, this season Rose does have a proper character arc and it is by far the best character arc in this anime so far with some really painful and some really satisfying moments. The Seven Shades also get fleshed out better. It’s not like they really get their own stories or arcs, but the anime spends more time highlighted their unique personalities and their relationships to one another and Cid. At this point I would say I’m invested in them.
I should also note that the ending to this season is somewhat of a cliffhanger. The second half of the last episode of this season is actually the beginning of the next arc. As you would expect, it’s basically just an introduction to what the arc is going to be about with very little progress made. It’s not some shocking twist, but it’ll still leave you wanting more. It’s still a pretty epic ending though so I can understand why they chose to do it this way.
The art and designs are just as good as last season, if not a bit better. The animation also seemed somewhat improved in that the action is still just as great, but there were also fewer slower portions that were noticeably weak. The OP was pretty good in terms of the song and visuals. The EDs were also decent enough. The soundtrack was fine. Also, I would like to note that I really liked how Cid’s voice changed when he was John Smith. Absolutely perfect casting.
tl;dr: A sequel season that does more of the same but a bit better.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Feb 4, 2025
This manga is about a group of high school students surviving in a world going through a zombie apocalypse. It has most of the standard story elements you would expect from such a story, such as coming up with plans to stay away from the zombies, getting into conflicts with other groups of survivors, and building up new infrastructure for a zombie infested world. What makes this manga a bit different is that nothing really unexpected happens. One of the main characters apparently smart enough to come up with plans that can deal with everything and there’s generally very little trouble in executing these plans.
...
This is a positive in that it results in the manga moving faster and allows showing the cast dealing with lots of different issues. But on the flip side, eventually it doesn’t really feel like there’s any tension at all as nothing bad ever happens. There’s also a good amount of comedy so ultimately the manga is much more lighthearted than you would expect of what is a pretty straightforward zombie apocalypse story. It’s not deep at all, but it’s enjoyable enough at what it is.
The main cast is composed of three main characters: a smart and somewhat psychopathic girl named Miki; a strong but somewhat airheaded girl named Karin, and a good hearted but pretty useless guy named Masaru. There’s very little to these characters beyond that simple description. Their background isn’t expounded on at all. They have no character development. There isn’t really any development of bonds in the form of friendship or romance either. The various side characters they run into, including one that joins the group, are all pretty much at the same level and also really underdeveloped. It’s all incredibly half assed. The ending is also pretty half assed and doesn’t really provide any sort of conclusion. It kind of just ends with them continuing to do what they’ve been doing throughout the manga as they have been. But as the manga doesn’t really build up any investment in the characters a more significant ending probably wouldn’t have helped much either. As such, the ending is as good as it could be for such a manga. This is very much a manga where you should turn your brain off and just enjoy the moment to moment events without thinking too much about the bigger picture.
The art is of pretty good quality but I found the art style somewhat generic and the designs pretty unmemorable. There is definitely some ecchi in this manga, but it’s surprisingly rare so this is not a manga I would read for the ecchi.
tl;dr: An incredibly simple and surprisingly lighthearted take on the standard zombie apocalypse story.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Feb 3, 2025
Sidooh is a manga about two brothers and their lives as samurai during the chaos of the Bakumetsu period. The manga starts off with them as orphans simply trying to survive, with this ultimately leading them to join a cult. However, they end up betrayed by the cult and then go on a journey to get stronger in order to obtain revenge. Up to and at this point, the manga is pretty character focused. It focuses on each of their personalities, their bonds with each other, and their desire to survive and go stronger. The associated themes its trying to convey also come across pretty
...
well.
However, their goal of obtaining revenge seems to go by the wayside and instead the brothers basically just become samurai serving the Tokugawa Shogunate. At this point it doesn’t really feel like it’s their story so much as the story of Japan with the two just being along for the ride. The two play key parts in conflicts, but beyond that there isn’t really anything special about them. They’re just following orders while fighting for their lord, the same as anyone else. The both still have side stories in a sense related to bonds between them and various others, such as both of them getting married eventually. However, these are pretty rushed and the key emotional beats aren’t very strong. The portrayal of Japanese history was also somewhat rushed, with it showing a lot of key events but not really providing all that much context. The narrative doesn’t flow well and is hard to follow unless you’re already familiar with the history surrounding the events that are taking place or perform research to become familiar. The ending to the manga is fitting but nothing too special. I wasn’t particularly satisfied or dissatisfied with it.
I didn’t like the art style much and found it far too rough. There is some good action and landscape focused art, but when focusing on characters emotions or them speaking it’s pretty mediocre. Still, even with that caveat, the fights are still pretty great due to being carried by great paneling and a good sense of flow.
tl;dr: A manga that’s pretty rough in terms of its characters, plot, and art, but that has great action.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
|
