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If you're like me you've probably seen some of the panels online that just looked so ridiculous that you had to check this manga out. Don't bother. There is nothing of substance here. I'd expect this level of writing from an edgy 18 year old. There is absolutely nothing profound to be found here. The author isn't trying to convey any sort of message. The short 'stories' are just edgy nonsense with no conclusion. All I learnt from these stories is that the author has a scat/eyeball fetish. The author even gives weird detail at the end of one of his stories about how he ... has personally tasted scat and it was more bitter than foul tasting than he thought it would have been. Now I have to live with this forever and for that, I despise the author.

If you're aware of the premise of this manga and you're hoping that it's at least a semi-realistic, it isn't. You will find martial arts so powerful in this manga that they can tear down tree trunks. This scene was ridiculous. Out of no where, some characters have KI now and literally reference DBZ when preparing some charged KI attack. Later on you will encounter a guy that literally got shot in the face but is still able to do backflips everywhere. It's just dumb. There is an endless amount of examples of how ludicrous this manga gets. It is plot holes and discrepancies' galore. ... Be prepared to turn plenty of blind eyes to the author just lazily letting people do very convenient things in fights. Hidden weapons coming out of nowhere, last minute recuses, an insane level of endurance. I lost count of how many times someone got shot in the leg and casually kept running for hours on end. Ammo. We need to talk about ammo. It is RARELY addressed, RARELY an issue. The people with Uzis come across as if they have unlimited ammo which just gives them an insane advantage over everyone else. Which leads me into how they set the game up. Every person gets a bag with essential items and a random weapon. These can range from forks to machine guns. While comical at first, it's just blatantly one sided very fast.

This manga is filled to the brim with flash backs. 9 times out of 10 they are boring as shit and go on for way too long. On top of this the author has the audacity to reuse old panels to 'remind' the reader about things that happened previously, even if it was only 5 chapters ago. Blatant filler. The characters are absolute ass and I loathed the MC. All he ever did was preach really lame shounen "believe it" nonsense. What makes him worse than a generic shounen character is that his words are hollow. He hardly does anything of significance in the entire story. It's bizarre, so many of the characters in this manga talk so highly about the MC but there's absolutely no reason why they should. He's a weird Elvis larper who just repeats his utterly dumb arguments again, and again, and again. Then There's Noriko. Noriko was so boring, we hardly know her. There was nothing even remotely interesting about her at all, we were just expected to care about her because the MC did. I swear, a quarter to half of the story is just the MC with two other people in the forest having the same dumb arguments time after time while other events around the island unfold. So many side plots just lead to nothing and just feel like an utter waste of time.

There's so many series I love that are clearly influenced by Battle Royale (Gantz, I am a Hero, Hunger Games, Danganronpa) but the execution here is absolute ass. The morbid premise is fun in itself, it doesn't need over the top martial arts and matrix bullet dodging to improve it. As it doesn't, in my opinion it weakens it. If you want to read something similar involving kids being stuck in a dog eat dog scenario then I would recommend The Drifting Classroom over this. It's not perfect and has some really bizarre sci-fi elements to it. But the way the kids conduct themselves in that scenario seems a lot more believable than what was displayed in Battle Royale. I would argue that Battle Royale draws some inspiration from The Drifting Classroom. Even if you think my suggestion is a crappy one, that's fine, I would still not recommend wasting your time with this series. It can't be taken serious and your time would be better spent elsewhere.

It's too random and funny to be taken serious but it is also way too edgy to be considered a comedy. In the first chapter you will discover a room filled with dead and tortured bodies, it is a very horrific scene. The next panel shows the person responsible for this trying to comedically tip toe away out of the situation. That is just one example of many. The fight scenes are terrible, in one scenario the MC is clearly overwhelmed and can't move, then out of nowhere he cuts the persons arms off with no panel explaining how he got out of the predicament ... he was in earlier. Another time Akame CLEARLY got cut vertically and yet the injury is horizontal.

It is absolutely baffling that this abomination is a two man job. The work load is cut in half and yet it feels like neither of the two really care. The 'author' has created an incredibly generic story here that relies on fan service to distract the reader from how garbage the plot is. It is the most generic, uninspired Shounen story you will come across, and yet it has Seinen levels of violence. This is a very jarring combination and I am left wondering who is this aimed for? Because besides the high levels of violence every other aspect about this manga is clearly just run of the mill Shounen tropes. I already mentioned my gripes with the fight scenes earlier, but it once again puzzles me how the artist seems to have no issue with creating fight sequences that make no sense. Admittedly, the artist is good and his fighting panels are decent its just the very obvious gaps and missing information in them (off scene ass pulls galore) that bother me.

If you like massive amounts of fan service, meta humour, random humour, out of place humour and don't care about investing into something that has a garbage plot then I suppose this is for you.

My issue with this series is that it could never truly decide if it wanted to be a comedy or a battle manga. Multiple times it felt like the author was about to ditch the main focus on comedy and settle for a battle manga as the world building for that kind of set up was quite good. However, the author always ended up taking it back to ridiculous comedy outcomes, which is fine when done properly. I feel as if this series could never really create a good balance between these two ideas and instead just awkwardly went left and right on the spectrum ... as opposed to creating a good balance between the two.

An example of a series that does this well would be Mob Psycho 100, and if you haven't read that then I highly recommend you check it out before bothering with this awkward/mediocre time sink.

OVERRATED

Probably the most overrated manga I have read to date. Basically, the story is about a coomer who develops feelings for a girl in high school and then eventually faces a moral dilemma.

It's a generic romcom, but with 'protagonist is a serial masturbator' as the selling point. The MC is at the start relatable but then does a complete 180 when he deals with a moral issue and turns into some generic shounen kid. Also, the author clearly hamfisted in a romance ending in the last 2 chapters.

This is no where near the worse manga I have ever read, but it absolutely baffles ... me that it has such a high rating on MAL. Incredibly overrated.

This is a must read. Not because it's the greatest story ever told or anything like that, but it is simply fascinating. At times it feels like a generic shounen and then at other times it's like going down a deviant art rabbit hole and reading someone turn their bizarre fetish into an epic adventure. On top of this, it's written by Masashi Kishimoto's lesser known twin brother, and I can't help but feel that Masashi really doesn't want any association with a manga like this and yet is forced to.

All of that aside, there was a lot of genuine potential here, if it wasn't ... axed something really great could have happened. But, the journey is still worth taking. It also has a very unpredictable ending which is maybe a plus??

I have tried to like this manga, I have tried to force myself to keep going because I know it's a classic. A part of me is even disappointed in myself for dropping this series but I have to be honest with myself, nothing can please everyone.

I respect this manga. I respect the art, it's fantastic. I respect the themes, not everything is as simple as good and bad. I respect the amount of research that was done to create an authentic feudal japan setting.

My biggest issue with this series is the episodic format. I understand this is a completely subjective thing and from ... an objective point of view this is a really bad reason to not be a fan of something, but personally I prefer a consistently flowing story. I dropped this series after the 19th chapter and have been told that eventually it reaches a continuous arc, but that is apparently near the end of the series. Some information flows through between chapters but it's very minor and you will basically be dealing with the same two main characters the whole way through. These are also long chapters, eventually some reaching over 50 pages. So to continuously have to slog through these long chapters for some self contained story that doesn't even matter in the grand scheme of things is not a good pay off in my opinion.

There was a chapter or two about the MC's past and why he does what he is doing now, they were easily the best chapters I managed to read. You will get bits and pieces of character development flowing through but it's very minor.

If you're like me and don't care much for episodic series, then you might not be a fan of this. It definitely has good qualities, don't get me wrong. If you like episodic series then by all means please give it a try, you will probably enjoy it.