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Zai x 10 is a gag manga by the mangaka behind The Daily Life of High School Boys. It is similarly just a series of gags featuring a reoccurring cast of characters with no real plot. The gags are centered around crimes committed by various criminals, ranging from airplane hijackers to phone scammers. Many of the criminals and their victims appear in multiple chapters, but they’re still not fleshed out at all. They’re simply whatever their role is, such as hitman or shoplifter. There are some relations between characters, but they’re basically just for the sake of the relations themselves being unexpected and serving as ... the punchline.

The only thing the manga has going for it is the comedy. And overall, I’d say it was decent enough. Compared to The Daily Life of High School Boys, the humor is much more ridiculous and nonsensical. It’s the type of humor where there’s no real logic to anything and no sense of continuity whatsoever in order to have punchlines that are even more unexpected. For example, characters are constantly dying or getting arrested, but they’ll just show up again in another chapter as if nothing happened. It’s a bit too random for my tastes, but those that are really into this type of humor will probably enjoy it.

The art is pretty plain, and while it doesn’t really make the manga better it works well enough so it doesn’t make it worse either.

tl;dr: A wild comedic series of shorts about different kinds of criminals with no plot whatsoever.

This is a manga adaptation of a light novel that also has an anime adaptation. The anime adapted only the up to volume 5, while the manga adapts up to volume 10, though it skips volume 8. So the manga does get significantly further into the story. However, the light novel is twenty-four volumes and still ongoing so the manga still adapts less than half of the full story. Still, this manga in and of itself is still pretty good.

The story is centered around Glen being forced into becoming the teacher at a magic school despite hating magic. This hatred of magic is due to ... him essentially serving as a magic assassin in the past and ending up traumatized as a result. Over the course of the manga he has a pretty solid character arc where he forms closer bonds with his students and overcomes his trauma and his past in order to protect them. He’s also an incredibly lazy good for nothing most of the time which is hilarious and makes him a really likable protagonist.

The rest of the main cast is also fleshed out well and overall are pretty likable. Sistine is a girl that’s working really hard towards her dream and though she starts off book smart she gets absolutely terrified in actual battle. Over the course of the manga she gets stronger in terms of combat abilities and mental fortitude, though she definitely still has a ways to go. This might not seem like that great of a character arc, but the manga manages capture her fear really well so her making progress on that has a lot of impact. She’s also a pretty fun tsundere.

Rumia is an incredibly kind girl that has a complex past which makes her wonder at times if everyone around her would be better off without her. Thus, she struggles with if she has the right to work towards her own happiness in such circumstances. Her character arc involves her becoming more selfish, which also results in her putting more effort towards her relationship with Glen.

Re=l is a girl that somewhat lacks emotion and simply works for the sake of whoever she’s dedicated herself to, but over the course of the manga becomes more human in terms of having emotions. She’s a pretty generic kuudere but she’s written decently well so she’s a solid enough character. Though the manga skips volume 8, which is an arc focused on her, so she gets less development than she deserves.

The side characters are also pretty solid. The most important is Celica, who is a sort of step-mom to Glen. She’s somewhat similar to Rumia in that she has a complicated past that makes her wonder if she deserves to have family, and her arc involves accepting her bonds with Glen. She’s a fun character because she’s a doting mother than can get really extreme when Glen pushes her too far. There’s also Eve, Glen’s former boss when he was a soldier, who has the beginning of a really solid character arc in that she starts off incredibly arrogant, but her pride gets completely and utterly crushed so now she has to build herself back up, though the manga doesn’t get that far yet. A lot of the rest of the cast also have hints about their pasts and motivations, though it doesn’t do all that much with them yet.

The world building isn’t that expansive and the magic systems of the world aren’t fleshed out all that well long term. Despite that, the writing does a good job of building things up within the scope of each individual arc. In each arc, there will usually be minor events where aspects of the world or mechanics to the magic system will be shown and explained and then in the climax one of these will generally be critical to resolving things. This results in the story flowing well. This combined with the great action results in the manga overall being pretty exciting. And add in that there’s also a lot of good light hearted parts with great comedy and it results in a really well paced manga.

The final arc ended up pretty rushed though, despite it being the longest in the manga. It’s an arc that definitely takes thing up a notch so it’s a pretty epic way to end the manga. Though at the same time the ending isn’t anywhere near a proper ending, so ending right after it’s raised the stakes considerably results in an ending that feels considerably more incomplete than the anime ending. Still, the parts that took place after the anime’s ending are pretty great so I don’t regret reading the manga.

The art is decent but not amazing. The style and quality are fine but not particularly noteworthy. The character designs in general are really good though. The school uniforms especially make absolutely no sense but I love them. There’s also a good amount of color pages.

tl;dr: A manga with a great cast and great action that flows well, though it only adapts part of the story.

This manga is an ecchi harem rom-com that also has a good amount of action. For the first half or so of the manga it simply tells the story of the daily life of the protagonist, Kogarashi, as he deals with various hijinks centered around Yuragi-Sou, which is a hot spring inn that had been converted into a hostel for those of the supernatural persuasion. Kogarashi is a pretty fun character during this portion because although he’s a pretty generic good guy and lucky pervert, he’s also incredibly competent at pretty much everything due to having been possessed by ghosts that were experts at pretty ... much everything. He’s great at everything from baking cakes to taking out youkai. There is some action in the first half, but it’s mostly just centered on showing how overpowered Kogarashi is.

The heroines introduced are also pretty great and very likable with good starts to their character arcs. It’s also a nice touch that unlike the vast majority of manga with lucky perverts, after the first volume the heroines don’t blame or attack Kogarashi for all the crazy stuff that ends up happening. While for the most part the manga is a pretty straightforwardly focused on simple ecchi and harem tropes, there’s enough variety surrounding that to keep things pretty interesting. Still, that can only take things so far and things do start getting kind of dull eventually.

That’s probably why in volume 14 the manga starts changing quite a bit. It begins to take itself more seriously and has a much larger focus on drama and action. There’s still a good amount of the harem ecchi comedy stuff that serves as the core of the manga. But intermixed with that there’s a real plot with real stakes. Unfortunately, the serious side of the manga isn’t very good. There are large scale plot threads with intrigue, mystery, suspense, and big twists, but they feel pretty rushed. It moves through major plot points way too quickly without fleshing anything out properly. The world building in this manga is really weak, which wasn’t an issue when it was just harem ecchi comedy, but it becomes more of an issue once the overarching plot becomes important.

The action is also too messy. How supernatural abilities work is played too fast and loose for most of the manga, so in the moments where it actually takes them seriously and tries to properly structure things, it just felt inconsistent. For example, the numerical power levels are completely absurd and make no sense. There are a few great fights, but they don’t fit into the manga all that well holistically. The serious parts of the manga are pretty good in terms of helping with the pacing of the manga and in terms of preventing it from getting repetitive, but don’t really elevate the manga all that much on their own. And thus the parts that emphasized the serious plot lines over the harem rom-com hijinks felt like it was putting the cart before the horse.

The cast was also a mixed bag. The writing does a great job with all of the main heroines with most having good character arcs. However, Kogarashi felt mishandled. It doesn’t really flesh him out at all until volume 18 and even then, it doesn’t really feel it does all that good of a job with his character arc. And while the writing does a good job on the heroines’ side of relationship development, Kogarashi’s side is very underdeveloped. While he’s great as a simple harem protagonist, during the latter portions of the manga to the change in tone and atmosphere it felt like he should be more than just that, so his lack of development is pretty disappointing. The side characters could also have been handled better. Most of the important ones weren’t really focused on enough to have any substance, but were focused on enough that the amount of focus they got in the absence of anything substantial felt like a waste of time.

I also can’t say I’m fond of the ending and epilogue at all. It’s somewhat hard to describe this in such a way that there aren’t spoilers, so my apologies for this being kind of weirdly written. Near the ending of the manga, there’s some convoluted plot events that result in basically going through an omnibus of different endings with one for each heroine. However, after everything has been resolved it picks one of those heroines as the true heroine that Kogarashi ends up with. I feel like I would have been okay with either one of those things, but both together don’t work.

While my favorite heroine wasn’t picked, I honestly wasn’t expecting her to be, and I was okay with who was picked as she seemed the most obvious choice. However, the endings for all the other heroines were pretty decently written, and the main ending felt like it was undermining them and any emotional impact you felt from them, which was pretty unpleasant. After showing the possibility of endings for all of the heroines, I feel that this became one of the rare manga that would have been better with an ambiguous ending. The epilogue was also really weak. It was essentially an image and a paragraph of text describing what they were doing for each member of the cast. This resulted in spending more time than necessary on most of the characters, but not enough on the most important.

The art in this is excellent in terms of style and quality. The art for ecchi is great from the beginning. The art for action starts out a bit weak but it also becomes great by the end. The character designs were great too with a lot of fun outfits as well. Translation wise there was some really weird word choice at points, though I can’t say for sure whether it’s due to the translation or the original text. There were also some minor mistakes, such as the wrong description being in the text box for Hiyori in the character introductions at the beginning of volume 24. Also, for some reason volume 15 says “Older Teen 15+” on the back in yellow, despite all the other volumes saying “Older Teen” or “Older Teen 17+” in orange. I don’t see anything different about the contents of volume 15, so I suppose it was a mistake. But I suppose now I’m just being nit picky.

tl;dr: A harem ecchi rom-com manga that intermixes its light hearted and serious parts pretty well, but the serious parts are pretty weak and the ending is really messy.

Crazy Food Truck is a manga that follows a food truck driver, Gordon, as he journeys around a post-apocalyptic desert with Arisa, a girl he found sleeping in the middle of the road. Arisa is being hunted by the military, but Gordon isn’t just a normal food truck driver and is more than capable of dealing with them.

The manga is pretty underdeveloped in a lot of ways. It provides the absolute minimum necessary in terms of world building and character background. There are character arcs but they’re very simple and not that important. And just overall there’s nothing too special or unique about the manga. ... Still, the protagonist is cool. The heroine is cute. And the manga is a good blend of action, adventure, comedy, romance and cooking that flows pretty well and at a pretty decent pace. Thus, it was pretty enjoyable most of the way through.

However, the ending I felt was pretty bad. People say that it was axed, and to be honest I don’t know whether it actually was or not, but it didn’t particularly feel like it. There’s a common set of issues with the endings to axed manga, and this didn’t have those. It had a completely different set of issues. Most of the manga is pretty much happy go lucky, but the end suddenly tried to be deep and go for a bittersweet ending. This doesn’t fit the rest of the manga tonally and is thus really disappointing. On top of that, the epilogue makes absolutely no sense plot wise, so it’s not like there was any point to it. It was just altogether unnecessary and unsatisfying.

The art isn’t all that unique, but it’s pretty good quality and the art style fits the story being told. There’s a good sense of flow to the paneling. Character design wise for the most part it’s pretty dull, outside of the main duo. Neither Gordon nor Arisa looks all that special at first glance, but they just work really well in context. The designs of the various post apocalyptic beasts is pretty good too.

tl;dr: A simple but enjoyable manga, other than the ending.

Witchcraft Works is a manga that just seems aimless. By that I don’t mean that it doesn’t have a plot, but rather that it doesn’t really try all that hard at it or anything else. It’s just very meandering at everything. The central premise of the manga is that the main male lead, Takamiya, is being protected by the main female lead, Kagiri, who is a powerful witch. This is a pretty standard gender role reversal and it isn’t all that uncommon in manga so I don’t think that it’s enough to make the manga interesting. Rather, I think the execution here was rather weak.

The ... problem is that Takamiya is a really lame protagonist. Even for a main character whose primary role is to be protected, he’s really kind of useless. In other manga, the protectee usually support their protectors in some way, whether it be as physically supporting them or even just emotionally supporting them. But Takamiya doesn’t really do much of anything. He just kind of goes with the flow being protected and occasionally throwing out generic shounen heroic lines without actually contributing much of anything.

A lot of that has to do with how he doesn’t really grow at all as a person. Both in terms of not having a character arc, but also in terms of not really getting any better at magic. Early in the manga Kagiri takes him on as an apprentice and begins teaching him magic, but that goes nowhere, and he never uses the magic he learns for anything all that important. Thus, the only thing that matters is the power sealed inside him. And while that is important plot wise, it’s not really used all that much. And furthermore, when it is used, it feels like less Takamiya is a proper character using the power and more so like he’s just a vassal for the power without much individual autonomy. And that combined with his motivations pretty much just being wanting to be a generically good person, results in him being incredibly hollow and impossible to get invested in.

Kagiri doesn’t really fair all that much better. She’s definitely a kuudere, but beyond that she’s a very hazy character. There are different types of kuudere. The type that has emotions but has trouble expressing them and over time learns to do so. The type that genuinely doesn’t have emotions but grows to have them. And the type that’s just genuinely cold and doesn’t care at all about most things. Kagiri seems to flip flop between all three. Now in addition to that, also add in a major yandere streak and it becomes really hard to get a read on her.

The two of them also have terrible romantic chemistry. Kagiri has a pretty unique personality, but Takamiya doesn’t really seem to respond to it at all. He has no reaction to most anything she does and ignores pretty much everything strange about her. But it isn’t written as if he’s accepting of who she is. It feels more like he’s just not looking at her at all. On the flip side, there is some background given regarding their past as to why Kagiri is so devoted to him. But there are never really any events in the present where it feels like she’s getting closer to him or loves who he is as a person. There’s not really any sort of relationship arc shown. They’re just kind of in love with each other and that’s that. The ending in terms of romance is fine I guess, but that’s it.

I found Takamiya’s younger sister, Kasumi, a lot more interesting than Kagiri. She’s weird as heck in that she’s a major bro-con that doesn’t seem to even understand that she’s a bro-con and considers herself and everything she does as perfectly normal. But that made her fun. I’m certainly not saying that she should have replaced Kagiri, but rather that she in her role as the jealous little sister was better written than her. She was consistent in how she behaved even in the extremes, and was just all around really amusing.

The rest of the cast unfortunately was also really weak. There are a lot of characters, but the vast majority feel incredibly underdeveloped. They have very little personality, little to no character development, and no clear purpose in the plot. They don’t really have any sort of major motivations driving them or background that pushes their actions. They just kind of get pulled into whatever else is happening and that’s pretty much it. For example, Chronoire, beyond the beginning where she gives Kagiri a magical candy, does not actively do anything at all for the rest of the manga. And Medusa at some point just starts helping the protagonists for some vague reason and never really stops.

This stems in part from how the world building in the manga is really weak. Early on there is some really cool development regarding how there are two factions of witches, workshop witches and tower witches, each with their own rules and philosophies. The conflict between the two seems to be important. But in the end, it doesn’t really seem to matter at all. The magic is also just random nonsense. No one’s magical abilities or the systems that govern magic are even close to well defined. So magic is whatever it needs to be in that particular instance with characters being as strong or weak as they need to be without really any sort of explanation for what’s going on exactly.

That results in the action also being pretty weak. While this isn’t entirely an action manga, it does play a pretty important role and thus that detracts from the serious half of the manga a good amount. The other half of the manga is slice of life and comedy. This was good at first, but I feel it started getting kind of trite as things progressed. I do think it improved towards the end a bit though, in that it started taking the serious parts less seriously and throwing comedy into them in ways that felt pretty fresh.

The art in the manga I kind of feel got worse as the manga progressed. It definitely improved in terms of quality. However, I feel it declined in terms of style. The style starting out can get really extravagant. Sometimes to the point of ridiculousness. It’s somewhat like a combination of old school scary witches and fluffy and frilly magical girls, which can look weird but also really cool. The mangaka also did some crazy stuff, like just casually drawing strange stuff in the backgrounds with no explanation, like a tank parked in front of the school or a lion just walking around. It felt full of personality. The stuff later on was much simpler and more generic. The way characters were drawn was especially boring.

tl;dr: A manga that’s pretty charming early on, but that doesn’t really use any of it’s charm points all that well.

This manga is about Lecan, an adventurer from a fantasy world, that enters a portal and is pulled into a different fantasy world. While there certainly are differences that require Lecan to get accustomed to the new world, ultimately both are pretty similar. Thus, he doesn’t have too much of a hard time getting back into the swing of things being an adventurer. This is no small part due to how Lecan is pretty powerful by the standards of the world he gets pulled into. This certainly isn’t like isekais featuring overpowered protagonists, but at the same time Lecan is competent enough that as a ... reader you expect him to be on top of things regardless of the circumstances.

Lecan overall is a pretty interesting character. He’s very cold in a sense in that he’s always on guard and tries to reveal as little about himself as possible. But at the same, he’s a pretty good guy all things considered, and it’s not like his emotions don’t shine through at all. His likes and dislikes especially. Especially his love for adventure, which is his primary driving force throughout the manga. He doesn’t have any sort of overarching goal other than exploring, defeating monsters, and growing more powerful. But that’s all a good adventurer needs, so he comes across as pretty likable.

Unfortunately, that isn’t enough to keep the overarching story interesting. Lecan goes on various adventures and takes on various quests. But they’re all really small scale and ultimately have very little lasting impact. There’s world building, but it doesn’t really seem to actually be building towards anything. There are side characters that have their own stories, but they’re all incredibly simplistic and not enough to get invested in them. There are no big twists or especially emotional moments. It’s all somewhat flat.

The manga ends at the of what is just another adventure pretty much. One that doesn’t really stand out much at all compared to any of the others in the manga. I suppose the manga was axed and thus there was no avoiding that. Still, I can’t say I was dissatisfied with the manga. It’s pretty short, only three volumes long. Even if the substance isn’t that great, it flows well enough and has art that isn’t all that visually appealing but fits the story pretty well, and thus this manga was an okay read.

tl;dr: A manga that has a pretty dull story, but has an interesting enough protagonist to hold it up somewhat for it’s short length.

This is the story of two very different people swapping bodies. The first is an elementary school boy named Minato, who has to take care of himself and his younger sister on his own due to how their mother is away from home for long periods of time. The second, Kuromatsu, is a professional hitman, who was recently screwed over by his employer and is now on the run from the police, his former employer, and the yakuza. The plot involves Minato doing his best simply to survive and ensure Kuromatsu doesn’t harm his sister, while Kuromatsu does his best to take over Minato’s life ... while also trying to extort money from his former employer.

This manga is a very fast paced thriller full of twists and turns. It’s the type of manga that’s easy to get sucked in and just breeze through the whole thing at once. It’s all really messy, but there’s a charm to that because the chaos fits the premise really well. After all, you would expect Minato and Kuromatsu to be absolutely terrible at living each other’s lives. So it makes sense that leads to all sorts of unexpected consequences and unrelated story tangents, though most of them don’t go anywhere.

Minato is ultimately fleshed out incredibly well. He handles things much better than I would expect a kid to. But at the same time he is really emotional as you would expect of a kid, and that that can hit pretty hard. He’s just a child, but he really loves his sister and tries really hard for her. Nagisa is a really cute kid too, so this is really heartwarming and both of them are really likable and easy to get invested in. Kuromatsu on the other hand wasn’t fleshed out enough. It’s clear what the author was trying to do with him and you can see bits and pieces of it, but overall it wasn’t enough. As such, stuff related to him in the finale doesn’t really land all that well.

The final stretch overall was kind of rushed. There are some overarching plot threads that include some deeper connections between Minato and Kuromatsu and a true overarching villain, but the way they were written felt like they were being forced in. The mother who is absent for the vast majority of the manga also had her own story going on that was deeply linked to that, but everything related to her was relegated to an infodump in the epilogue. Still, in the end the ending does explain essentially everything that matters and resolves things well enough. Thus, even if the ending was rushed, I was satisfied with it.

The art is the typical Sanbe Kei style, which is kind of rough and plain. Though compared to his earlier works that I’ve read, I feel like in this one the mangaka wasn’t even trying to make it look good other than the cover art. That surprisingly seems to fit this manga reasonably well. While it never looks amazing, it’s incredibly clear and easy to follow. That combined with how you don’t need to slow down to appreciate the art results in it being a really fast read, which is a plus considering how suspenseful this manga can get.

tl;dr: A manga that’s messy and has a rushed end, but is still overall a pretty enjoyable quick read.

Tohru is a high school student that has so little presence that even his family sometimes forgets that he exists. This invisibility results in him accidentally seeing a witch transform. See, when a witch’s magic is exposed to a human, the witch gets hit with a curse that greatly limits her magical powers. The only way to lift that curse, is to grant a heartfelt wish from the human that saw her magic. Thus, in order for the witch, Raza, to get her power back, she must grant Tohru’s wish. Unfortunately for her, his wish isn’t something that magic can easily grant. He wishes to ... become someone that is no longer invisible so he can confess his feelings to his crush, Tsumugi. Raza finds this an enormous pain in the ass, but she’s got to do what she’s got to do so she decides to help him.

This manga starts off as exactly as you would expect, full of rom-com fluff. Raza’s wild and arrogant personality is a lot of fun. Tohru on the other hand is much more passive and earnest, so the two make a really amusing combo that have really good chemistry. Though the initial premise is centered around Tohru’s crush on Raza, it’s pretty clear from the start that things will eventually progress to Raza being in love with him too. After all, one of the core mechanics of this manga is Raza having to absorb magic powers from Tohru through kissing him. The two have pretty great relationship development and Tohru has some pretty solid character development too.

What surprised me was how plot oriented this manga became as it progressed. Things got much more complicated than I thought. Tohru, Raza, and Tsumugi get pulled into a conspiracy involving the magic world, and a considerable amount of the manga is focused on them trying to get to the bottom of it. A number of side characters are introduced as a part of this, and though none of them are fleshed out all that well they definitely do make things more interesting. There’s also some pretty interesting world building, with things like ‘Uselesses’, magic users who can only use one type of magic and are thus discriminated against, and some hidden aspects to witches granting wishes. There’s also ‘L’s magic’, which is supposed to be a sort of legendary impossible magic, though to be honest the explanation was convoluted and just confused me. Still, overall the plot was well written and paced and worked incredibly well alongside the slowly progressing relationship/character arcs.

Unfortunately, all of this comes to naught because the manga was axed and ends with nothing resolved. Tohru’s character arc was very much still in the middle of things. The love triangle surrounding him involving Raza and Tsumugi was also just getting to the point where things really got moving. The identity of the big bad is revealed to the reader, but they haven’t even close to have been dealt with yet. There are loads of mysteries that are left unsolved and lots of foreshadowing that went nowhere. The ending was immensely dissatisfying. This isn’t the sort of manga where a non-ending makes the entire manga feel pointless, but it’s still incredibly disappointing.

The art in the manga was great. The style is eye pleasing and fits the story well and the quality overall is pretty good too. There are also lots of great character designs, mainly on the witches. The translation was pretty rough. There are loads of small but clear mistakes throughout and some parts have really strange wording.

tl;dr: A manga with good romance, good comedy, and a surprisingly good plot, but one that just straight up does not have an ending.

Princess Resurrection Nightmare is listed as a sequel, but that’s not really a good description. When things come to a close, it becomes clear that it is technically a sequel, but in a pretty convoluted way. This manga begins with the cast of the main series waking up without any memories of who they are or of their relationships to one another. They gain what memories they need as they go, but a full recovery of memories doesn’t occur until the end of the manga. Thus, for all intents and purposes all character development and relationship development has been reset to what it was at ... the beginning of the original manga. Furthermore, the battle for the throne is seemingly ongoing so the overarching plot has been reset as well. Thus, I think it’s probably better to think of this as an alternate story or side story, though neither of those fit quite right either. Still, this is definitely a series you should only read after having read the main series and thus this review will heavily use comparisons to the main series.

The cast was one of the highlights of the main series but unfortunately, the cast of this sequel just isn’t as good. They’re the same characters for the most part so it’s not like they’re terrible, but the writing is noticeably worse. Hime doesn’t pull off her regal air as well as in the main series. Riza and Reiri don’t pull off their frenemies relationship as well as in the main series. Hiro is even more useless and unlike the main series, doesn’t grow at all into becoming useful. And Sherwood got replaced by someone who isn’t anywhere near as fun or likable. Another area the writing is weak is the overarching plot, which this time is ultimately complete nonsense. The plot in the main story had issues as well and left a lot unresolved, but it was nowhere near as bad as this. It’s overtly convoluted and ties things together in an incredibly forced way. And the ending made it all feel completely pointless, resulting in it being incredibly unsatisfying.

As with the main series, this too is mostly composed of unrelated episodes of Hime and company dealing with supernatural incidents. The writing on the mini-episodes was fine, but they still didn’t work as well as in the main series. They just aren’t able to capture the atmosphere as well. I think this largely comes down to the art. The art is better in some ways and worse in some ways, but for the story that the manga is trying to tell overall I’d say it’s worse. It looks more sanitized and cleaner, which doesn’t really work well with the somewhat horrific and mysterious atmosphere it’s going for.

tl;dr: A sequel that’s more of the same but not as good.

This anime is about Princess Hime and her entourage as they deal with various supernatural phenomena. Her followers include the werewolf Riza, the vampire Reiri, and android Flandre, her younger sister Sherwood, and her blood-servant Hiro. Hime has a very cold demeaner, but she’s pretty smart and has a very commanding presence. Riza is incredibly prideful and somewhat battle crazy. Reiri on the other hand is mischievous and pretty lazy. Werewolves and vampires are sworn enemies that are fated to never get along, but despite constantly being at each other’s throats they seem to actually get along quite well. Flandre is part of an overpowered ... android series that can only say hooba (fooga in the Japanese version). Sherwood is super enthusiastic about their family’s noble duty, keeping track of supernatural wildlife, and is constantly going on expeditions to research new or unknown beings. Almost all of them are interesting enough characters that they’re enough to make the story engaging.

The big exception was the arguable protagonist is Hiro. I think it’s very arguable because he is technically the one from whose perspective the story is primarily told. However, he really doesn’t do much. A blood warrior is someone that dies but is brough back through the blood of a royal, in Hiro’s case Hime. He’s immortal now so long as he continues drinking Hime’s blood. However, the only other ability he gets is the ability to detect when Hime is in danger. Other than that, for the vast majority of the story he’s a completely normal human. As such, his contribution to things is simply taking hits for Hime, which is important as he’s saving her life in these cases. But also, pretty boring.

His personality is also really flat with essentially no development so that doesn’t help him much either. This manga is listed in places as having a harem or romance, but it really isn’t at all. Though Hiro is surrounded by a bunch of girls, there’s like a few panels per girl where they show some interest in Hiro, and then it’s never brought up again. It’s not even a slow romance or subtle romance. It really doesn’t feel like there’s any at all. As a result of all this, despite being quite prominent, Hiro is underdeveloped as a character to the point that it kind of feels like he’s dragging down the rest of the cast.

The structure of the manga is short stories, usually only a single chapter, that show the various incidents that Hime gets involved in. These incidents generally involve some sort of supernatural mystery or fight against some sort of supernatural being. However, this isn’t really a mystery manga or action manga at all. The solution to the mysteries is generally some new supernatural phenomenon that only really matters for that story. The fights also don’t really have any depth or complexity to them. The manga is also okay with straight up skipping the climax of these, meaning, it’ll build up to a big fight, and then just skip to the aftermath. Ultimately, it feels more than anything the manga is focused on establishing horror and mystery vibes and atmosphere. And due to the fast pacing and the heavy variety to the supernatural phenomenon, it does an incredibly good job of that. However, things do get repetitive eventually, at which point the manga starts getting pretty dull. This may not have been as much of an issue for those reading the manga as it released, but binge reading it it definitely felt like it was dragging.

The majority of incidents that Hime gets involved with have very little if anything to do with any overarching plot. However, there is an overarching plot involving a fight for the throne and the secret background of Hime’s family. There were certainly some very interesting aspects to all this. But overall, this story was badly told and came to a pretty half assed ending that left a lot unresolved. I think one of the biggest issues was the pacing. The story tries to keep every incident confined to as few chapters as possible. So there would be a bunch of chapters that don’t advance the overarching plot at all, and then a chapter that advances it a lot in a pretty rushed manner. And then a bunch more that don’t advance it at all. Things did speed up eventually, but it still felt really haphazard and jarring pacing wise. There is a sequel series so maybe that resolves things better, but I can’t say I was all that satisfied with the ending to this one.

The art was a mixed bag. The quality is definitely good, barring some rough edges towards the beginning. The environments and monsters were also well designed and helped considerably in establishing atmosphere. The character art I wasn’t as much a fan of. The character designs themselves I feel were somewhat boring for the setting and premise. But more so than the designs themselves, I feel it wasn’t really using them all that well. There wasn’t really much art that made them look beautiful or eye catching, and though there was a lot of art that was meant to look cool, it was all of Hime and was mostly very similar so the effect wore off pretty quickly.

tl;dr: A manga with a mostly interesting cast and a pretty good sense of atmosphere, but pretty weak beyond that.