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ITS A GEM

If you loved Kentaro Miura's short about the giant and the little girl, this is kind of the same read. And by this point, everyone and their granny nows Guin Saga inspired Berserk.


So : Insanely good art, simple but mildly mysterious story, glistening heterosexual muscleness.
Its very short so go ahead if you're into fantasy. Even though it's so short i don't know why there's no review yet. It's a great example of a manga that achieves what it sets out to do, very simple but very good.

Unfortunately only 3/6 volumes are available in english, so don't even think about finishing it. For the ... story this is a manga adaptation of a 130 books long japanese fantasy series which is pretty popular over there. Of those 130 books, only 5 where translated in english, a sadly recurring theme for this series...

the prince is a whiny bitch though

Shigurui feels like a walk to the slaughter. It's very intense if you can get into the story.

STORY 8, gut wrenching, very intense, because of the way the story told (flash-forward in media res) , it very much feels like a slow decent into insanity, even though we know where we are going already.

ART : 9 , some amazing panels, the art is always on point, only default is its often hard to differentiate secondary characters, and sometimes even the protagonists, especially at the beginning.

CHAR : 9, here the protagonists are both blank slates for the reader to sometimes identify to, and ... at the same time, well-defined ideologically strong characters with intense personal motivations. When i see this kind of characterization it always reminds me of Berserk, who's one of the most well known example of this kind of "drama" where the characters stand for themselves, but also an ideological stance and worldview, always makes for a good story.
The characters are very intriguing and I nowadays relish having protagonist that are not clearly cut as "good" or "evil". Whenever i pick up a new manga nowadays it just feels like the author is saying "this guy good, this other guy bad just because", probably to cater to the autistic demographic who can only understand the world in black and white.

ENJOY : 7, yeah, not really a fun read, binge material tho

OVERALL : 9 , well it's just good you know. You can argue that it's sometimes soulless and bland in certain parts, but i'd argue back that it was probably intentional to make it such. A cold, cruel, simple, realistic story hits me more than a well-defined world with colorful characters. Here the world is so simple that it's basically a sandbox for the characters to oppose in.

Reaaaallly cool until the first "mystery" is solved. Afterwards the following "mysteries" feel uninteresting, inconsequential and it almost feels like Araki is stalling for time somehow.

Seriously though the characters are flat, Araki should have used initial momentum, and a few cool stand battles to finish with a bang. The first stand battles where kinda weird and cool, which is what we expect, the introduction to the "main" cast was awkward and standbattle-prone which was very cool. Some iconics and very pretty panels, including one in a bathroom that I used as a PC wallpaper for a while.


He should have ended the arc 20 chapters after ... the "reveal", so that the intensity would be kept and he could move on to the next, very much expected third (and last) arc of this universe reset,

TO A NEW UNIVERSE WHERE WE USE "THE FART" a mystic force created by mongolian throat singers using powedered penguin beaks in milkshake to give people stands. Or something.


It feels like he's stretching this arc forever to cuck us from the afterlife.

As far as I'm concerned, the story ended at chapter 131, and all is well in the world. Seriously I rated the manga 10 until chapter 131 but I'm pretty sure it's going downhill super fast after that. But I wouldn't want to ignore my best manga reading experience just because some editor forced the writer to write 200 more crappy chapters.

Story : 9, captivating from the getgo, as an over anxious kind of "edgy" dude, I totally sympatised with Ryo, the "protagonist" and thus was taken in by the story. I'm honestly placing Shamo131 story's on the same level as Berserk till volume 18 ... or so. It's that intense. Not in the apocaliptic hellish scale of berserk, but in the personnal and archetypical opposition between the characters, and the constant shifting of expectations which makes the story stimulating and thought-worthy.

Art : 9, Very simple but efficient, detailled and powerful art. It made me think about the medium in new and dynamic ways. The fights arent always 100% followable, but its a 95% in my book. The faces are much more human-like than what I'm used to in other mangas. It's not hyper-realistic, but it's just human with a slight exagerration of traits.

Character : 10, The characters are archetypical in that they represent ideas and have also very strong motivations as individuals. It's up to personnal experience and liking there, but I found only 1 almost useless character, all recurrents characters were usefull and thought-provoking.

Enjoyment : 7, Not gonna lie, it wasn't joyful. It got pretty frigging dark in ways that I can't spoil. But I was hooked much in the same way that I was when I was 14 reading Berserk. It's very curious how something so emotionnally scarring and exhausting can be so stimulating that it gets addictive.

I you really like the protagonist (I won't judge you buddy) you can prolly enjoy it till chapter 340. I sure as hell don't wanna dirty my Shamo image in my brain mcbrainy, so I won't. It just seems like regular shounen stuff from then onwards, so zero intensity, predictability, and generic motivation. It even got fucken Kung Fu movies cliches within the next 5 chapters after the ending. Jesus. Imagine that, going from Berserk to Karate Kid in 5 chapters. Fucken editors with their muney.

To be fair I didn't finish the manga, so maybe halfway through something interesting happened to a new character that had meaningful implications. Though I doubt it.
This manga is I think a pretty good first seinen, or transition seinen for someone who has only been reading manga about joyful worlds of superpowered pirates/ninja/cowboys with cartoonish fights (nekketsu).

I think that's why the manga is so overrated. I kept hearing about how the story was really cool, the characters well built and felt like a literary masterpiece turned into manga form or something because it's a "TRAGEDY". But none of that is true, the literary reference ... are forced and stinking, almost cringey in all instances : "THE OTHER DAY I WAS READING KAFKA'S METAMORPHOSIS, STORY ABOUT A MAN TURNED INTO A MONssteRRRRR. AND NOW I AM A MONSTERRRRRRRRR". "I READ SHAKESPEARE, THE GREATEST BRITISH ENGLISH EUROPEAN GREAT CLASSICAL AUTHOR TRAGEDIST, AND MY LIFE IS NOW A TRAGEDY" even though his life is just the one of a regular shounen protagonist but he has to eat people or something. The supporting cast is one-dimensional and gets emotional for no reason.

Maybe it's because I'm not used to shounen but the whiny characters, predictible cast and story tropes are just too visible to be considered anything more than a shounen with some gore, although it tries to be much more.


In short, its a great first "seinen", but an awful, awful read for anyone looking for something stimulating or original.

On a side note :
I like to think of media has being "witty or not", ergo, is what I'm looking at feeling organic, natural,inspired ,artistic, or is it simply a frankenstein recombination of tropes with themes mecanically throw in and no true creative process. And while it's not as bad as most other mangas nowadays which are mostly the equivalent of netflix series in that they are solely there to satisfy an audience, a market share, looking for specific themes ("I like video games and I'm a loser, so I'll read this manga about a VR game that makes me forget my shitty life and not try and make myself a better person"), it's still a very mecanichal and unnatural story.
The author is not trying to tell a story, and it's very aparent. "Now kaneki is sad and he has to build himself again", "now ghoul girl is not sad at kaneki because they feel compassion for one another", "now side character 5 will have his story building arc about how he's sad and in pain".
But the characters feel more like living tropes than real people with subtelties, so I personnally find it very hard to emphasize with crying, hyper-emotional robots.

For people looking to dig deeper into real seinen themes : "GTO" is not well know by the newer generations but it's fun as fuck and talks about real stuff in a relatable way.
"Shamo" is the other side of the seinen, it has the story structure of a shounen, a bit like T.Ghoul, the themes are rather dark, like TG, but the way it's approached is entirely different, and I personnaly find, more intense while being more realistic (no super-power).