Ruisumaru6

Steel Ball Run...

Steel Ball Run is the peak of JoJo and the peak of Araki so far.
This manga is incredibly perfect and I can't imagine anything better than this.

The story
10/10

The story and the setting of SBR are clearly outstanding.
I don't want to tell anything about the plot above the main points.
This part takes place in an alternate universe. When you read it through you can see that it's inspired a lot by part 1-3.

The art
10/10

Araki did a wonderful job making this manga. The character designs, the background, the details, everything match and it's perfect.


The characters
10/10

Oh boy, the characters. Araki did his best in this part. Everybody is the best in this part.
Johnny is the best JoJo by far just like Valentine in the villain section. But the masterpiece in this manga is Diego Brando. He is the best character in all of JoJo. I could recommend this part even if it were the worst, just because of him.
I don't want to go into character analysis, you have to look up for it elsewhere.

Enjoyment
10/10

Every page feels natural like it has to be there. Every sentence, every battle is needed for the ending. You just can't not enjoy this if you like JoJo.


Overall
10/10

This manga is an experience you can't skip. Everything about this part is perfect. It's hard to explain, but it really is perfect. Once you read you'll know. But be ready, after you start you won't be able to stop.

There are so far only three English translations at the moment. I loved the story and wished there were more than 3 English translations :(. The main character's age is not told, but the male lead and the female lead are only two years apart so there really isn't a giant age gap. I have found Japanese versions and a free Vietnamese version of it too. The physical copy of the book does have 3 volumes and currently is being sold through Japanese translated sites like Book Walker. I can only assume that if you did buy the volumes through the Japanese book walker they will only give you the Japanese version of it because they didn't give me an option of languages. I hope my review and info helps someone <3

Imagine working on your manga idea for four years and this is what you come up with.

Android samurai hackers in space with epic gamer shut-in as a protagonist. No, this isn't a B movie idea, this is the basic plot of Samurai 8.

From start, this manga feels like the reader is missing a chunk of information, like it's a sequel or a spin-off set in a world we should already be familiar with. The story is chaotic, confusing, all over the place and doesn't really bother explaining itself much. Which is quite ironic, considering 75% of the manga is infodumping. This isn't an overstatement.

Awful plot devices are used to set things in motion and the power system is not explained beyond "reality is whatever you believe it is, yo", leaving all of the fights without any tension, as it's obvious from the writing style since the start that the protagonist will just bullshit themselves into victory every time, no matter how weak they start. Well, that and the fact that they can regenerate from almost everything. He gets literally sliced up during a training sequence and pulls himself back together like no big deal. Because that is the way of samurai, duh.

The manga is full of pseudo-deep quotes whose only job is to sound cool, intellectual and make it look like it's some complicated, well-thought dialogue. It isn't. It is even remarked by the main character few times that the explanations are needlessly confusing, though I doubt it's a meta humor directed at the manga itself.

The characters are your basic uninteresting shounen cast, most of them not being flashed out at all and just kind of existing there. The protagonist it your typical "my kokoro and spirit will make things work" and of course it's quickly discovered that while weak at the start, they actually had fox demon, wait, no, a samurai soul inside of them the whole time that makes them incredibly powerful. It also includes my pet peeve which is including a blind characters only for them to act like they have normal vision most of the time while the manga reminds you they are blind from time to time. Is there any reason for them to be blind at all beyond "look how amazingly they can find even though they are blind, so cool!"? No.

The romance of the main characters (if it even can be called such) is laughable and arranged marriage-tier. While their relationship might be explained by destiny, it is actually disguise for author's inability to write a believable romance. They just kinda like each other because uuh reasons.

The art is hard to read, especially in the first half of the manga. It's often hard to tell who's where and what is going on in the action scenes. Overall it looks like a spin-offish Naruto fancomic (I've actually tested this by sending pages of this to people who haven't read Samurai 8 and they thought it's either Naruto or Boruto). I have no idea why Kishimoto chose to just write the plot and leave all of the art to his assistant that never made his own manga before. At least hire someone competent if you can't be bothered to draw your own art. The space setting is wasted and it would make no difference if all of this happened on the same planet. Actually, it feels exactly like that - there is very little originality and variety.

But to say at least something positive, I expected the final chapter to be much worse, since the manga got axed. Yes, it was still unbelievable asspull bullshit, but taking the publishing situation into account, it was an okay way how to end this manga, albeit very rushed. But I feel we would get very similar finale even if Samurai 8 would go on for few hundred chapters more, so at least we don't have to waste more time on this series.

With Kishimoto's second manga serialization being an absolute trainwreck and his one-shots being not really great, I'm almost convinced that the success of Naruto was just a lucky fluke. I also believe that anyone who claims that this manga is "actually good" and "they kinda liked it" just refuses to believe that Kishimoto could have written something this bad.

Gakuen Tengoku is a hot, steaming, pile of mixed up stories and characters from (mostly) better manga.

First, we have the "childhood first love reunion" manga. (See: Love Hina) This is the best story line, and almost works, but keeps getting ruined by the others. It's the reason I stuck with it as long as I did.

Then, we add in some "controlling sister (in this case cousin) trying to keep women away from her man". (See: Oniichan Control). In the 33 chapters I read, this part of the story was never fully developed.

We add in a little "student starts relationship with teacher". (See: Sensei; Hirunaka no Ryuusei). If the relationship weren't so sexual, so quickly, this might have worked. As it is, it's just uncomfortable.

Finally, add in the ever popular "boy rescues girls on the verge of being raped, who then fall for him" (See: About a third of all Josei Smut manga out there) This part of the story seems to be supposedly comedic... cause rape is funny? I have no idea who thought this part of the story was a good idea.

And all of this is happening at the same time, and with the same guy. The result? A hot mess.

And too much of this mess is just uncomfortable to read. The main character ends up looking like a jerk for sleeping with (and/or fondling) a wide array of women (many of whom are underage)--despite the fact that he is supposedly head-over-heels for his first love with whom he has just reunited. Then there is an actual of alliance of male teachers, at this all female school, intent on raping their students. The "hero" thwarts them... but never turns them in, cause you know, it's not like teachers raping their students is a crime or a fire-able offense or anything?

Look, some of the characters are interesting, some of the plot-lines are interesting, and as Borderline-H material I've seen worse. But the end result here is far from a good manga.

VERY good manga with a main character that is not annoying while also acts like a normal human being. The ending was NOT the best. It came fast and hit hard, but the rest of the manga made it worth the ride.




If you are uncomfortable around the idea of sex, I would advise trying to skip around the bug drone arc because the villain that time uses others 'doing it' to get himself off.


MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THAT ARC AHEAD IN CASE OF WANTING TO SKIP







The device was created by another guy who had wanted to save his dying daughter, but failed. The bugs are drones and can transmit feelings to okitenemuru. Can't remember much but that's the gist of it.


MORE SPOILERS FOR END

The story from there is good until the last like 10 chapters where there was suddenly a nuke, another plane of existence, the mc has a brother, but he's not really the mc's brother, the big boobs girl on the other side that is the sister of the girl on the mc's side suddenly sacrifices herself (maybe? i can't remember all that well) and it's one of those typical 'and everything was made normal again and all right in the world' kind of endings.

Was a pretty enjoyable "Alternate Universe" spin off story, but not as compelling as the author's other works. Started to fall in love halfway through until the author decided to take a COMPLETE left turn and jump the shark in the last couple chapters.

I am not being hyperbolic when I say it completely ruined everything up to that point and kind of bothers me now knowing it is hinted as being a future into the Genshiken storyline.

Even if it isn't canon it leaves a bad taste in your mouth for sure. :/

I'm hoping this is just some bad bizzaro timeline and that Kio develops it more, though I doubt it'll make up for how much of a slap in the face that twist turned out to be.

Okay, to say this now, I'm not great at writing reviews, I know. Please bear with me as I write this review, because it won't be great, but at least I'm making one:
I would recommend this to anyone who wants a short but sweet read. I was happy with how the story was written, to me it was exactly as a one-shot should be, expressing a nice story while making it short and sweet. I like the situation that the story was based on, it was very cute and made me smile! To remark on the art: I like it! Well drawn, very cute, very enjoyable! The characters were very good, my favorite was the main guy (of course :P), I liked the side characters as well too. I enjoyed this short read, as a break from others things, I find that this light story is quite pleasing, and overall, I have to say it was very good for a small one-shot!
Thanks for reading my review, hopefully it helped! I don't think anyone will need prompting to read this anyhow, but I wrote a review just in case!

Phantom Seer is boring. That's the worst thing I can say about it, that's the best thing I can say about it, and I don't expect that to ever change.

This series is every supernatural shonen you've ever seen or read. It has no new ideas, and it exercises no creativity with its execution. It can be described as thus: Yusuke Urameshi becomes a shaman with Bakki as his Guardian Ghost, and joins the Magic Law Association where he battles Curses with the cast of Bleach. That is how uninspired this series is. It has nothing of its own, it just regurgitates stuff from other series.

I can't remember any of the characters' names, because none of them are memorable. They're "MC Boy", "Reluctant Girl", "Definitely Not a Villain", "Tengu Man", and probably a bunch of others I forgot completely. They each periodically get their big shonen "dramatic character-building moments", but it always falls flat since these characters just aren't as interesting as the series thinks they are.

The art is fine. It's the typical kind of thing you'd expect from a supernatural horror-themed shonen. Praising it for being creepy is kind of like praising water for being wet.

That's it. That's my review for Phantom Seer. It's boring, not much else to say. There's nothing to hate about it, but there isn't really anything to like about it either (unless you've never read a supernatural shonen before I guess). It's selling decently and getting reprints, but it never seems to rank higher than the bottom three spots, so it's not unreasonable to expect it to be another Agravity Boys.

Spoiler-free. The whole manga feels like a bad trip. It's just weird, chaotic and... well, bad. Weird elements really makes you think stuff like "I wouldn't want to be this mangaka's neighbor, god knows what's in their head", it may sound intriguing for some, but it's the creepy eery kind of weird with a good pinch of cringe. And about the 'shounen ai' tag... it's like, this manga tries to be josei, slice of life, comedy, shounen ai, all at once... but fails. 'Shounen ai' is what loosely stitches this bloody mess together... or, like I said, tries to.
Art is somewhat interesting in the first volume I think... closer to the end it becomes worse, interestingly enough.
Characters... *sighs* let's not go there (there is nowhere to go).
Enjoyment... after the final chapter you end up feeling guilty for the hate crime against yourself, does it sound enjoyable to anyone. Well sometiimes there is a funny moment, but usually it's a trash kinda fun which adds to the severity of the hate crime previously mentioned.
Anyways I wouldn't recommend wasting your time on this weird garbage.

i'll keep this as brief as possible.

first, i love this mangaka. as with most of her work, her plots ans heroines are refreshing takes on old cliches. that said, i was rather disappointed with this one. there was a lot of build up for a very anticlimactic ending.

the art is really pretty, the characters are interesting (albeit a bit underdeveloped), and the story is lacking. my verdict: a nice smutty romance that doesn't quite deliver.