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Gewalt review.

2011 manga by Kouno Kouji. I wanted to read it after starting" Kurokouchi", since the art was done by the same artist.
I guess I'll be there first thing review it.
It's a short one, published in 3 volumes only. Its targeted audience : teenage males. I would say you would have trouble finding any enjoyment in it UNLESS you're a teenage male yourself.

I know I would have loved it in high school. But now that I'm older it feels really cliché.

+ VERY good art 😎
+ Clean lines, funny facial expressions, 100% consistent till the end
+ Good fights, you see how the action unfolds, never ... messy
+ Short enough, didn't drag for too long
+ Ok character development

- Overused story, young wimpy boy who gets tougher through fights
- aside from the main protag, all side characters are 1 dimensional
- very predictable story
- would have liked to see our main protag do at least some training, some self improvement instead of just using his will.
- fights aside, there isn't much to it

Mixed feelings overall.
Would recommend it for the art/fights. Not much else

𝐍𝐎𝐓 recommended!
Slight story spoiler so watch out.
I decided to take a look at this manga because of the author. He worked on "Kurokouchi" and I hoped it would turn out interesting as well.

The other two reviews mentioned the art, which was highly rated. I would definitely say the drawing style is the high point of this manga. The rest however did not interest me in the slightest. My main issue is the story / characters. There's very little character development, if any at all. There's this one character who goes from wimp who's scared of everything to super killer in just a few pages. It's ... extremely fast, it feels really unrealistic.

Same goes for the protagonists or any side character. Everything happens way too fast, with very little context. The very best trained military teams in the world can lose in 2 min. Why even hype them up then? All the confrontations are one sided. There's very little suspense, almost no weight to the fights as you can guess the results before the battles even start.

Another issue is the author thought he was writing some Hollywood style Jason Bourne movie. We go from Romania to Jason, to Turkey to China, to Korea to Mongolia without any transition. It goes on an on, we get introduced to some politician, some dude character and boom! Move on the the next ones, repeat. We are just witnessing the plot, but instead of being captivating the book feels boring in its predictable plot.

The lack of character development creates a lack of attachment. Why should I care about this guy or that one?

Another problem I have is how some characters are written, totally unrealistic. Female protag is not only an archeology expert, she's also a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and Krav Maga badass who can defeat the a CIA ! I mean c'mon, it's tropey to death. The make hero is WANTED by several countries and Europol but he just goes in a book shop and gets new passports, like how did the guy even get the biochip and the laser markings? Then he takes the plane but no airport flags him because, hey he's got a new ID! His huge serrated knife, no problem of course he can travel with it!

Characters with no cars travel hundreds of kilometers , unexplained. Where does the money come from? How does the protag go everywhere without a job? Unexplained.
I won't comment on the villain as I found him to be non-appealing.

Too many plotholes, unrealistic characters, no character development, the villain is just not interesting either. Exposure, the Manga.
Not recommended.

Hilarious!

Okay, first you cannot take this manga too seriously. Or you should not take it seriously at all if you prefer.
I first got to know this author after reading "Aku No Hana". From the get-go, Devil Ecstasy is deep into this kind of humor.

The characters act totally crazy, their reactions are over the top and the whole story is completely bonkers. If you're into this kind of manga then you will like. If you expect something serious come on then please this is not for you.

The art isn't the best to be honest, as it is one of his earlier works. But I ... have rarely laughed this hard.
I highly recommend it.

Review for Mada Ikiteiru, I Am Still Alive.

Story : 6/10
Nothing original. A city dwelling man who lost everything decides to live in the wilderness. But the little challenges he faces over time change him. And that's where it gets interesting.

Character : 8/10
Chara development is the forte in this manga. From a wimpy, weak salaryman to a hardened mountain man, seeing the growth in our protagonist is what brought me the most enjoyment. There's a female character who also goes through a transformative progression, but I don't want to reveal too much of the plot.

We learn more about our hero's family in the 2nd ... volume and it does add a good layer of bittersweet feeling to the story. Again, I don't want to reveal too much or spoil the second volume, which is to me even more emotional.

Art : 7/10
Correct, good. But not exceptional. Could do a bit better, but it does fit the manga and is solid without dipping down at any point.

I would recommend it for a more mature audience. I know I would not have enjoyed this one at 15, but it hits different at 30+.
Also the criticism of man's role in society, the work culture, is a background (though not sufficiently explored) to the story.

7/10 enjoyment overall

Watched in June 2023.

Usually I enjoy older anime because it has a different humor and tone to it. That's why I decided to give Wild 7 I try.

However I just struggled so hard to stay awake during the first episode. This anime is really really terrible, and I absolutely mean it. It has poor animation that flows sluggishly, the frames are choppy and the color palette shows how old it is. When the cars move around, it looks like there are at least 10 frames missing in between shots. The motorcycles aren't much better and they are animated about the same. For an action ... enemy it doesn't look good at all.

The gore and brutality I expected were very present in the action sequences. It is so poorly drawn that it looks more cartoonish than gory. For an anime that was advertised for its brutality, I found almost nothing in it.

The story is laughable and very one-dimensional. The characters are cardboard cutouts in the most stereotypical way you could imagine. Nothing new but they could have at least pretended to ride you see my interesting backstory to one or two characters.

Overall I give it a 3 out of 10 (generous) and save yourself some time to watch something better.

-------------- Golden Kamuy Review ----------------

Over rated anime that had a lot of potential.

Story :
definitely the string aspect of it. The setting, the time period, the people, everything is there for a good recipe. Ainu, soldiers, conflicts brewing in the background, it is here you feel the potential of the series.

Art : absolutely TERRIBLE.
Below average in every way. I will not mention the poor CGI bear again which is a running joke at this point. But the animation overall is very bad. From the soldier's faces, the badly animated animals, the switch between 2D and 3D wolves, the refusal to use correct models for proper ... anatomy.
There's nothing more irritating than having to watch an action anime with this amount of mediocre animation.

The way people move is beyond laughable. I had to force myself to watch it because I saw all these high score reviews. But an anime is visual first, audio second. And the visual part was painful.
I have read some of the manga and the art is much better there.

There are so many soldiers, the animators could have spent more time using partial rotoscopy to animate the reloading/shooting better. Also the hunting is something that could have been interesting but it was so bad looking at how the weapons were drawn and animated.

Sound :
I never expected some Michael Mann level of sound quality, but the gun sounds are muffled and weak. War, shootings, hunting, it makes up a huuuuge portion of the anime and yet the sound effects are some GTA 4 level on average.
The voice acting is ok, but how about some subtitles for the ainu words which are unintelligible??

Enjoyment :
Not much. I see so much potential. I really had to force myself to make it to 10 episodes. I dropped it when the animation managed to go even lower than low. I couldn't make it. I always see some reviews unfairly low grade above average anime, but this one is over rated for TECHNICAL issues to me, not the content not the writing.

I actually feel like another studio could have made it an epic piece.

4/10

----------------------- Manhole review ----------------------

This manga is a police/detective one, not so much horror or psychology in it.

Story :
Not the most original, but not too bad either.

Art :
Below average. Some pages have no shading, some other pages have some photoshopped textures that felt really cheap. Towards the end the art gets a bit better but it was so mediocre overall that I cannot give it a good score. Some main characters looked pasty white and flat because the mangaka put no shadi g, nothing on them.

... The characters' faces are almost always crying, fr0wning, suffering. For 3 volumes straight. Such a variety!!

The background is laughable. Just traced over a photograph. 4/10

Characters :
Shallow presentation, unexplored, generic. In 3 volumes we don't have the time to have so many useless side characters. Too much time is wasted on some nobodies that nearly advance the plot, yet the main characters are overlooked. What about their families? Their routine? Their house? They feel like props because nothing is explored.

Instead we are shown some of the bad guys/ victims and their backgrounds only to move on to something else right away. The whole plot cannot be for into 3 tiny volumes.
Either the writer should have made more volunteers or decreased to scale, reduced the number of characters.

Enjoyment :
It took me 4 days to go through 3 volumes. They were just half baked. It felt like the magnitude of the plot needed more volumes to develop. It felt very impersonal, as we spend more time on random people than the main protagonists. The pacing is another problem : sloooow then everything is solved in 2 chapters way too easily.

The conclusion almost felt like a parody. The writer tried to keep things scientific and grounded in realism but instead made a half baked mediocre piece.

5/10 would not recommend

------------ HEADS review ------------

Predictable but OK manga.

Story :
starts very sweet, quite predictable, not overly dramatic. I wouldn't say it is sci-fi, more like a thriller. It is not action packed at all. See it as a slow burn thriller. My criticism is about how some chapters acquire firearms so easily in Japan. Obviously for plot convenience all stories have a necessary "bad guy with a gun" but this is what actually took me out of the realistic approach the most. I'm sure most readers will overlook this point.

Art :
Good! But not consistent. It shines and looks incredible beautiful at times but dips in quality ... at other moments. Still, it remains a high point.

Character :
Very real, all of them had normal reactions to the story and people around them. None of them felt like caricatures and it gives a very adult-like them.

Enjoyment : 6-7 out of 10.
Most readers will guess how events unfold quite early on. There aren't crazy twists, it's quite predictable. I enjoyed it. It's only 4 volumes.

7/10 overall

---------- Distant Sky compete review (until season 5) --------

The two other reviews on this manhwa only went up to chapter 3. It wasn't easy to find but I managed to get my hands on chapter 4 and 5, reading Distant Sky in it's entirety.
Before I start to review the content, I should mention the last remaining chapters are not officially released in English so it was fan translated from some Chinese versions.

Story :
4/10
I did not enjoy it much to be honest. Many korean manhwas suffer from this extreme nihilistic misery porn kind of setting. I'm no happy hippie, but I had to literally ... ENDURE the story and push through. My main problem was the story telling followed a repetitive pattern : the author relies on flashbacks so much it's become redundant. He skips a few mins or hours forward, so the reader doesn't understand what's happening. Then the author goes back to reveal the plot in the flashback.

It's ok once ot twice, but he does it all the time. There are some massive time jumps, making the plot extremely convoluted. Some time jumps are several months ahead. Then the story goes back in the past, then back to the present, skips a few hours forward, then present. It's unbelievably frustrating.

Used intelligently it could work, but not continually over 100 chapters!! It seems like he used this pattern to cover some unexplained plot holes.

Characters:
4/10
Save for a few characters, everyone is unbearably negative, aggressive, murderous. I understand the post apocalyptic setting but it's hard to have chapter after chapter of cannibals, murderers, crazy animals, etc without any positivity. Everyone screws everyone.

Also some characters later come to act in the main story line. We know NOTHING about them and will learn nothing. Why? Because they are from other manhwas! Just go read the other manhwas bro!! It really feels cheap, like the author didn't know how to sort the plot so he just ass-pulls some characters from other places without ever explain a damn thing!!

Art :
3/10, ugly. You can disagree, but compared to other works, it's just ugly.
Rough lines scribbled by a marker that's about it. The last chapters have a change of setting and the drawings become suddenly better. Too bad you have that at the very end only.

Enjoyment :
4/10.

I would NOT recommend it. Not only because of all that I've mentioned above, but also because there's no official translation so it's quite hard to find. It's very nihilistic and full of plot holes.
The ending is mildly satisfying but again with a lot of unexplained parts.

Review Route End. I will put a spoiler tag below.

I'm having trouble finding anything positive about this manga. I read every single chapter trying to find something, after reading all those overwhelmingly positive reviews. I mean with such a high score, you would think it was at least half decent!

Art : 3/10.
Ugly characters, very basic background, faces all look the same. Not even pleasant to lay eyes on. There are some parts where you can tell the artist had no idea how to draw feet, eyes, action. It was amateurish and I'm being polite. I forced myself to read the 8 volumes. With such ... awful art I regret everything.

Characters :
All they do is cry and scream. The story is about suicides and murders, obviously I didn't expect any super happy moments but it's just misery from chapter 1 to 54. There's no saving Grace, nothing redeemable.

Story :
This is my biggest problem. It's supposed to be a police, detective story. It pretends to be realistic but there's a big SUPERNATURAL element that disrupts the police investigation and is never explained. The police work with finger print, blood taxes, DNA, evidence. But it's all out of the window once you introduce supernatural elements in the mix.

**** Now SPOILER below !!! ****

The police are like "the 2 victims are twins, oh no they're triplets! Oh but the same guy with the same DNA is alive, they're quadruplets actually!!"
Sorry but it felt like a big asspull by the author. Then it's never explained who this guy actually is out came to be, though he is the central pivot for the whole plot! Worse, he just called himself God.

Then a 30 year time skip, that guy comes back and everyone looks like they barely aged 15 years max. The end. No explanation, nothing. What a conclusion!!!
And you have reviews praising it as the best story-driven manga!?!

*** End of spoiler ***

Enjoyment : none.
It was really just me forcing myself to understand why do many liked the story. I found no pleasure in it. Just felt miserable from beginning to end.Would not recommend it.

3/10