Big Order

I'm kind of surprised that, at the time of writing this, there are no complete reviews for Big Order. The only two that exist are preliminary reviews. I can't blame them either. The manga honestly starts off engaging and strong, but soon fizzles out into a manga of nonsense, time wasting, and idiocy. The story itself spirals into shit almost immediately after like, the second volume. I, however, persevered through the trash, and can proudly say I finished the manga from beginning to end. This is the first "complete" review of Big Order.


Though story is listed first in the scores, let's start off with art. The artstyle of the manga is... poor, but average at best. For someone reading and reviewing it in 2020, the art looks outdated. The manga debuted in 2011, yet I've read older manga that have better art styles. Even with this outdated style, there are some choices I can nod to. On almost every scene with Eiji in it, his territory (I will "expand" on this later [pun intended]) is consistently drawn. This was a nice little feature, as it was always a reminder that other order users can always see his territory, and in scenes where Eiji loses his power, seeing there be no territory under him reflected his vulnerability. I did not like how the Orders themselves are drawn. The weird skeleton design they all have looks very bad, and it is reminiscent of the bad CGI of the anime.

Moving on to characters, throughout the manga, it is VERY clear that Eiji's companion, Rin Kurenai, is just a mirror of Yuno Gasai (even down to the hair color, which Esuno didn't even attempt to hide). Eiji Hoshimiya's character formula is also not too far off from Yukiteru Amano, except one (in a Powerpuff Girls-esque incident) got a little bit too much of the crybaby and idiot genes than the other. If you didn't already know, Mirai Nikki and Big Order were created by the same mangaka. These character similarities are NOT a coincidence. Big Order debuted only a year after Mirai Nikki, mind you. Sakae Esuno clearly thought, "If the characters are not broken, don't fix them" because reading two volumes of the manga will show you that Gasai and Amano's personalities were just transferred over to Kurenai and Hoshimiya, but then Esuno realized that they didn't fit well with the story, but it was too late to turn back, so their personalities got worse in an attempt to make them better. Main problem is I really hate how Eiji acts. Even when it is clear to literally everyone in the world that the bad guy is [SPOILER], Eiji still has that "they can still change themselves!" mentality that all protagonists have, except this character is proven evil and cannot be turned good. Eiji even goes so far as to want to kill himself numerous times to potentially save this character, even though they don't give two craps if Eiji dies or not. My secondary gripe with Eiji is that he doesn't fully take advantage of his Order. Eiji's Order is Bind Dominator, which gives him the power to command any living being or inanimate object to do anything. Wherever he walks, that space permanently becomes his territory, and if he encircles an area, everything in the circle is under his control. Honestly, when watching the anime (and at the beginning of the manga) I thought this ability was badass. Even though I hate the series, I do still think Bind Dominator is one of the coolest abilities a character can have. Unfortunately, Eiji only encloses an area once in the series, and after learning what he can do, every other character is smart enough to not get caught under Eiji's dominion. The rare occasions they do get caught, instead of giving them creative commands like, "Become my ally and do not betray or try to harm me" (like he did with Rin) or "Tell me exactly where [spoiler] is right now and how to defeat them" he says something dumb and useless like, "Stop shooting". Bind Dominator has so much potential, but Eiji never quite learns how to use it to its full power. It takes him about seven volumes to figure out he can manipulate air too and create shields from air pressure or whatever. I would have loved to see Eiji find out more about his abilities, but as someone who has read the entire manga, I can tell you, there is nothing.

Okay, now we're getting into the story. There are going to be a couple of minor spoilers here and there, but if you're considering reading this in 2020 or beyond, then you clearly need to do something better with your life. Big Order starts off making no sense. I only stuck around for the action and clung on to the hope that Eiji would use Bind Dominator in a badass way. After being disappointed in both of those areas, I honestly don't know why I kept reading. Probably because I didn't want to leave another manga on my eternal "reading" list. A lot of the things in the novel could have been avoided if the characters weren't so fucking dumb and one dimensional. Eiji literally has nothing on his mind other than to protect his sister for the entire fucking manga. Esuno even tries to incorporate some romantic elements into the series, but Eiji IGNORES the two women who love him and instead pursues his sister more. There is even a very odd scene in volume 9, I believe, where Sena suggests to Eiji that he loves her incestually (which, if you didn't know they were siblings, is totally plausible) but he denies it. The ending is so, soooo stupid. Like, the story is shit in general, but the last two volumes made me want to put the manga down altogether and delete it from my list. Initially, the plot is: Bad man wants everyone to have their wishes granted (Everyone to have Orders) and Eiji has to stop them. Then, it turns into: Bad man wants to turn the spiritual energy of God into the material world and kill everyone, and somehow Eiji must fight God. Yes, you heard that correctly. Eiji Hoshimiya has to FIGHT GOD. Oh, but get this: Yoshitsune Hiiragi just SOMEHOW predicted that the enemy would summon God, and has the perfect plan to combat him. Seriously? How the fuck do you predict someone is going to summon God and fight with him? That's such a random move that no one could possibly predict, nor refute, it. The story is so incredibly stupid, what made Sakae Esuno even want to write this? Surely, this is a bad April Fools joke. There are a hundred things wrong with the story, but that would deserve an entire review itself.

Enjoyment factor is very low, a two. Sometimes it's stupidly hilarious, like so bad it's funny. Other times I just don't want to read it anymore. I won't spend too much time talking about this, because the review is already long as is, but I think you can tell how much I enjoyed it based on the previous paragraphs.

Overall, Big Order starts off very actiony and promising, however, it becomes apparent that it is a Mirai Nikki clone and that Esuno just wanted to cash cow out the same characters in a different story. I'd actually recommend watching the anime over reading the manga. At least the anime ends your suffering after just twelve episodes, but the manga drags on for ten volumes (which is actually not too short but not too long, but this story could have ended way sooner than it did). This is probably the only case where the ANIME is BETTER than the manga. I know, shocking. Anyway, if you've gotten to the end of this review, thank you for reading, and I hope you don't read this manga. Like, seriously, don't read it. Please don't. Save yourself from 10 volumes of misery.

Big Order is horrendous!

Everything in this series puts an fowl taste in my mouth, literally making me cringe and deform my face every time it did anything.

Before anything, I want to talk about the super powers in this series known as "Orders."

"Orders" are just "Stands" from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
If you read ANY review or comment section of Big Order, people are going to compare this series to Jojo. However, I want to get into why this bother me so much.

Stands, in Jojo, are defined as "Life energy" that are given a visual form and "stand" next to it's user, or is a "physical manifestation" of their "fighting spirit." That is kind of vague, but it gives you a general idea of what it is.

In Big Order, Orders are defined as "a supernatural power that's granted by a fairy," as a result of a "wish."

... That's it. That's the only explanation we get. It never explains how they really work, or why they appear as skeletons, or anything, really. Orders are just super vague reasons why these characters have super vague powers that stem from super vague wishes.

The problem with Orders, compared to Stands, is that the series just kind of expects you to know that it's a rip-off. The writer felt that, since people will know what Stands are, that they don't have to explain what they are. You just GET IT.

But, this backfires. The writer tries to also make Order seems different from Stands, as they seem to follow a different set of rule. The rules are NEVER explained, but they don't seem to act like Stands. If you want to know the "rules" of Stands, please just look them up, this is long enough as it is.

Basically, it tries to have it's cake and eat it too.

Now, onto the characters...

The character are boring. They look bland, they act bland, their wishes and powers are bland.

The main character, Hoshimiya Eiji, is such whiny bitch throughout the 4 chapters I've read. He is constantly talking about how the world is shit and it's "All my fault" (albeit the world seems just fine). This can work, but the way this series goes about doing it comes off a VERY melodramatic and annoying. He also has the power to "control everything in his zone" because he wanted to "conquer the world," but never explains how this works. It's just a weird square below him with a mummy in it and things happen.

The main girl, Yuno from Mirai Nikki, is just that, YUNO FROM MIRAI NIKKI! She's just some bland Yandere girl with no personality, other than that she's a Yandere. Her power is the "heal really fast," so fast that she is immortal. Also, she has a skeleton for a Stand.

Neo from the Matrix is in it, and bunch of other generic characters that don't "stand" out at all.

In short, BIG ORDER is shit. Read Jojo.

tl;dr: Some interesting concepts but writing that overall, simply isn't up to par.

The most succinct way I can describe this manga is as one where the writing simply isn't good enough for the story it's trying to tell. There are a lot of things that when looked at in hindsight from a broad eyed view seem like good concepts. However, in practice the mangaka couldn't make them work.

The first and most obvious issue is the powers characters have. The characters in this manga have a lot of strange powers as one would expect from a set of powers that stem from wishes themselves, and as in most cases where characters have unique powers, a lot of the manga is these characters using these powers to oppose each other. The thing is that a lot of these powers are ridiculous and the only reason the manga proceeds the way it does is that everyone with powers doesn't use their powers anywhere near effectively, which makes pretty much everything involving powers in this manga seem kind of forced.

The most prominent example of this is Eiji, the protagonist's, power. Having the ability to control not just people, but anything in his territory ranging from physical entities like bullets or the air itself to even the laws of physics with control of things like gravity, is absolutely overpowered. The manga doesn't really try to establish rules that limit it either. With a power like that he should simply be able to power through everything in his way on his own. But that would be really boring, so for the sake of the plot most of the time he simply doesn't. To a certain degree that would be fine, but the thing is that Eiji is generally shown to be an incredibly weak character that can't pull of much of anything on his own. That personality is fine too, as it's a part of his character arc, but to put it simply his powers and his story simple do not fit with each other.

Speaking of character arcs, that would be another issue. Eiji and what felt like the other main characters, Rin, Sena, and Iyo, got decently fleshed out and once everything was wrapped up and over felt like they had decent character arcs. However, this involved a lot of abrupt changes in the direction of character arcs before it seems the author finally picked tracks to settle on with previous developments just being forgotten. So while where things end up is good,  the build up to it felt pretty inconsistent. Furthermore, it felt like the author wasn't very good at conveying the emotions of characters all that well, so there were scenes that I believe were meant to be impactful in that regard that simply weren't. This wasn't always the case as there were some scenes where the author did manage to pull it off, but not as much as were needed.

Still, with the main characters it was possible to get invested in them and even to a degree find them likable. The side characters on the other hand were a mess. There were a lot of them and they were all pretty unique in terms of character designs and personalities, but because it was trying so hard to make everyone seem special no one ended up standing out or being memorable. It also felt like the plot had them popping in and out in order to keep using the same characters for different roles which felt kind of forced at times with how it resulted in them being inconsistent.

The last major issue is the plot itself. The plot is good in terms of the world it builds up, and in the end looking back the core of its plot  it is a pretty good story. What I mean by the core of the plot being good is that it has what I felt like were two really solid twists, one at about the half way point and one near the end, where it reverses pretty strongly what was presented leading up to it. Unfortunately, the buildup to both of these wasn't very good.

With the first twist, it feels like the author did have it planned out since the beginning, but didn't want to go immediately from the beginning directly to it so the plot of the manga in the first half is a bunch of random nonsense that doesn't matter with sprinkles of things that matter in between as actual build up for coming events, ultimately leading up to things finally getting interesting and good when it finally really gets into the matters relating to the aforementioned twist.

With the second half though, it very much feels like the author didn't have the final twist planned out very well if at all. It very much feels like the twist at the end was something that the author came up with when they had almost gotten there, because the only foreshadowing of it is really close to it actually happening, and it's really not subtle at all. Now the twist itself is really good I think, and ties in really well with the first twist. However, it doesn't feel well built up to at all seeing as there weren't any hints at all of it even though it would have been really easy to drop subtle ones that would have better set it up. Rather, it feels kind of inconsistent from what was happening earlier on. Where things go after the twist though was pretty disappointing, in that the ending was incredibly weak and largely unsatisfying.

The art I wouldn't call great, but is solid enough. As a general comparison to the anime, it's nowhere near as confusing, but things making more sense doesn't make it that much better, and the ending of the two is actually really different with the ending to the anime actually being a lot better, so really, it's a wash on which of the two is better overall.

Big Order is a manga by the same author as Mirai Nikki, and it's very easy to see the resemblances not only in the art style, but in the characters and story as well. It's kind of like a combination of Mirai Nikki, Code Geass, and Devil Survivor 2. This review contains several references to those shows, but there are no spoilers for them either. Currently only 11 chapters are translated.

Story - 8/10

I found the plot to be a little confusing at times, but I can still explain it pretty well.

The world has many people called "Orders" who each have a different power based on whatever wish they initially made to a mysterious being called "Daisy." These orders started appearing many years ago, but the most famous and infamous of them all is the protagonist, Hoshimiya Eiji, who is known for the "Destruction of the world." Ten years ago, Eiji made a wish which led to the world beginning to kind of fall apart. Countless people lost their lives, and he has since become hated and feared worldwide. But all Eiji really wants to do is protect his step-sister, Sena.

For a while, Eiji was just acting like a normal high school boy who skipped class often. One day a new girl named Kurenai Rin transfers into Eiji's class. For the first time in his life, Eiji thinks he is falling in love with someone. But, if you've read Mirai Nikki, you know there's no way the female lead of this manga that resembles it so much could be normal. But don't think Rin is a complete clone of Gasai Yuno either, she's actually quite different. Anyway, later that day, Rin shows up outside of Eiji apartment saying that she just moved in above him, but she lost her key. When he lets his guard down, Rin tries to kill Eiji. It turns out ten years ago, Eiji's wish kill both of Rin's parents. She has been searching for him for years, has finally found him, and now wants to kill him.

Rin attempts to kill Eiji, but he escapes. In the process, he also finds out that Rin is an Order with a power that allows her to regenerate her body making her invincible. Rin goes to the hospital Eiji's sister, Sena, is at and kidnaps her in order to draw Eiji out. She also has troops and a helicopter with a machine gun waiting at the hospital to kill him. In order to save Sena, Eiji finally uses his Order power which he has not used in ten years.

That's the one thing I really love about this manga. Eiji's power is one the most creative and unique powers I have seen in a long time. He has a power that marks his territory anywhere he goes, and only other Orders like Rin can see it. Anyone or anything that is inside his territory can be controlled by him through this strange creature that appears every time he uses his power. By using his power, he forces Rin to do several things: Not kill him or Sena and to stay within his territory at all times. As much as Rin hates this, it has now become physically impossible for her to kill him.

After this, the organization that Rin works for called Dazaifu led by Hiiragi and nine other Orders are revealed. Their plan is to help Eiji gain world domination, which ties in with his wish that he made to Daisy ten years ago. But that doesn't mean the organization, and Hiiragi specfically, is really on his side.

Character - 7/10

Now it's time for a Big Order/Mirai Nikki comparison

- Hoshimiya Eiji = Amano Yukiteru + balls
- Kurenai Rin = Gasai Yuno - the love + revenge against protagonist
- Daisy = Murmur + Deus ex Machina (there's not much explained yet about her and some mysterious other person/being though)
- Dazaifu + Eiji + Rin = 12 diary holders
- Hiiragi (this may be a little bit of a stretch) = Akise Aru
- Heavy Rockstar = Uryuu Minene

The character designs, especially for Eiji and Rin, are fairly similar to those from Mirai Nikki as well. Eiji really has a bit of Lelouch Lamperouge mixed into him as well. His desire to save Sena resembles Lelouch's desire to save Nunally, but Eiji is far less flamboyant and charismatic. Rin, unlike Yuno to Yuki, does not love Eiji. She only goes along with him because she cannot kill him due to his power, but that does not stop her from trying. She only protects him so because she will not let anyone other than her kill Eiji. Hiiragi is really a bit of a mix between Akise Aru and Yamato from Devil Survivor 2. His motives are unclear for keeping Sena hostage and helping to preserve her life from her life-threatening disease. Eiji does not trust him, and I can't blame him. Daisy is the mysterious being who resembles a girl kind of like C.C. (another Code Geass reference). not much is known about her of the other being with her except that she goes around the world granting people's wishes and turning them into Orders with special powers.

Art - 7/10

Being by the same mangaka as Mirai Nikki, the art obviously is extremely similar. Some fighting scenes are a little hard to follow, but the emotions portrayed by the characters in this dark manga are wonderfully portrayed. Not much to really say, if you like Mirai Nikki's art style, you'll like this and vice verse if you don't.

Enjyoment - 7/10

The story is a little confusing at times and the large character cast of the Dazaifu is somewhat confusing. Only around 5 or 6 of the ten Dazaifu Orders have even been showed so far aside from just giving their name and showing them alongside everyone else.

Pros:
- Eiji's power is awesome and he's not a wimp (personally I like Yukiteru despite that fact, but just saying)
- Rin is not quite as good as Yuno so far, but is still a great female lead
- The art is good in darker scenes
- Character designs are good despite some not being that original

Cons:
- While it has elements of Mirai Nikki and Code Geass in the story, it has Devil Survivor 2's confusing plot elements mixed in
- Fighting scenes are sometimes confusing
- Large character cast for only 11 chapters that has not been fleshed out yet

If you like any of the three anime/manga that I have compared Big Order to, then I suggest reading this. It may be a little confusing, but hopefully that will change as the story progresses.