PokestarFan2

When I learned about this manga, the tags and comments were "gore", "shock scenes" and things like that ...

I have not felt that way, it has rather reminded me of Monster and Mirai Nikki. It is a triller where we have a Yandere (Psycho) and a boy with whom she falls in love. There are quite a few very well-made secondary characters and they are being added little by little to have a great value in the plot without them being "type added characters" their introduction is credible.

The perhaps most important plot flaw is that the plot revolves around a certain blackmail during a good part that does not have much logic that is a shame for the victim. Otherwise the plot is quite solid (as in a chapter of Criminal Minds, or a movie of psychopaths) is even less fantasy than Monster.

The friendly / moe / cute style drawing .... is perfect. It is a very expressive drawing, with enough detail that has many chibi gags that perfectly convey the aptitude of the characters, a psychopath with a chibi face when remembering something unimportant while torturing another person gives you the same contrast that the victim has, that this before a monster that does not give importance to life without being dramatic. The eyes of terror in the victims are exceptional and sometimes a simple drawing expresses more than a complex one.

The plot is constantly sprinkled with sexual scenes that do not have fan service intentions, they are normal sexual scenes like in any movie. The relationships between the characters are realistic and even the protagonist's asocial treatment is adequate to be able to live in society and work.

I have some suggestions about the tags that are put to this manga and that I do not think are appropriate.
If you are thinking that you will see gore without sense perhaps better look at Pumpkin Night.
If you want scenes that shock you because of how twisted they are, maybe better Made in Abbys.
If you want Yanderes without much sense, perhaps better Higurashi no naku.

If you want to read a story about a psychopath who wants to make a boy fall in love with her and control him by tormenting all his relationships with a great affinity for torture, this is your manga.

This is my first review, so i'll try to make it quick.

Handyman Saitou is an isekai. That fact alone carry a lot of "clichès", bad expectatives (not for me, though, for I am a isekai fanatic). But this one have something especial about it: its Art.

The art is one of the most unique drawings i've found in manga. It drawn me to its content, and made me screenshot a lot of its pages to use as wallpaper.

The story isn't something fantastic, but it has its good points. That also can be said about its characters, they're generic but not generic at the same time, and they're given a lot of development, especially the Protagonis, even though the manga doesn't have a lot of pages each chapter.

Overall: I've really enjoyed this manga for its art, and that fact alone, for me, deserves a great 9, the characters weren't any bad, and the story was quite funny and cute.

“In the end, conspiracies or terrorism cannot reverse the flow of history. But they can make it stagnant.”
–Yang Wenli.


Mori Koji is known as a one hit wonder by writing and illustrating the famous Holyland. With just one work he crated a fan base for him self. With his usage of the general thematic of escepism, realism, humanism, and combined it with his way of presentation be it his somewhat unique art, his fluid way of using dialog, to his pacing and his famous info dumping that surprisingly worked. However I for my self as a fan of Holyland , doubted that he can deliver something of equivalent standards and as such stayed away from his work till this day. Well the day has come to convey my latest read from him and I hope it can pick up your interest not just in this manga but even his other works as well and with that lets jump in.


-Story-
The story of Destroy and Revolution starts with the same subtle way of conveying Moris thematic that where present in his previous work, however in D&R the scale have widened from one boys personal life to the so popular theme of turning Japans society upside down. In that since we have the usual, two individuals meeting that have different personalities, different values, different moral vision but they have one goal that being to change their country and in the process maybe even the world. Well this has been done quite a lot of times in manga form, be it the famous Sanctuary or Akumetsu, however D&R is entirely different. It is a story far grayer, far from the usual absolute evil that the government is presented as. The characters are aware that the government is not evil. They know that it’s just their hate being projected in that direction. However they can’t help them selves, they demand change, but they are aware how incapable they are to provide answers for such changes. In that sense they search of those capable of providing the answers, thought out their path of destruction. That is the basic plot line, but there is more far more to it than just that, but than again I don’t want to spoil the fun. Anyway let’s mention some negative aspects of D&R. The beginning of D&R is very weak, not because of its ideas, but rather in how to convey those. The problem can be divided in many little parts. One being bad pacing, enhanced by bad flow of dialogue, than we have the problem of how to explain the origin of the super powers, which I will further convey in the characters section. Than we have various plot wholes, the biggest one being on how the heck the characters still haven’t bean caught by the authorities of a whole country and that’s just one bit of its problems, however as the story moves on it regains everything it has lost trough its early stages. The pacing of the story becomes great, the dialogue between the characters becomes more natural, and the plot holes become less apparent, as Mori moves his focus more on the inner workings of Yuukis and Makotos terrorist group, more so as a metaphor on how their group has the same problems as the very thing they want to change. I guess I must mentioned that Mori doesn’t use to much fan service through out the series, however when he does it sticks out a lot.



-Characters-
The main focus is centered around Makoto and Yuuki. Let’s focus on both more individually.

When I first saw Makoto, he seemed some what like a cowardly character, but you can’t really put any character in a box in this show (beside female characters). He is a character that has far more depth to him and what’s more awesome about his and Yuukis characterization is that they genuinely feel human. He had a very problematic life, from his youth, to his loss of family to his loss of the only person who cared about him. He just wanted to escape from that very troubled life, and when he meets an old man in the hospitals he may or may not actually archived that. You know when I mentioned the powers and the problem in how to explain them? We will focus now on that a bit and how it further enhances Makotos character. Lets just say the old mans entity is rather obscure, in how he just gives him the power and vanishes. The gives away some what the usual realistic approach to Moris shows, but than again the very existence of the power takes that away anyway. Which I personally don’t really like, however I can’t be denied how important that very power is for moving the plot forward. The very power opens up Makoto eyes that equality exists, not only between humans but to everything in the universe. However even as he realizes that, his escape mechanisms turn into hatred. His being can’t fully accept such thing as equality when human beings have robed him from his happiness. However, thought out the series he realizes how shallow his hate was. It was just that he didn’t have more options at the moment. He just had one way to convey his emotions that is destruction. This leads to some really interesting character development.

On the other hand we have the total opposite of Makoto. Yuuki is by most characters seen as a charismatic, good looking and intelligent individual. But he is more than that. He has different values than most people, even far different than the very people he trusts. He is not portrayed as a evil genius like for example Light Yagami but he is just a normal human, who finds meaning by not falling into the melancholy we call normal life, but instead he decides to fight.
For a better tomorrow, even if he needs to shed blood for that goal. What is even more interesting is the way he interacts with Makoto. He doesn’t think of him as just a tool to be used, but instead thinks of him as an individual of equal grounds. Or is he? What I additionally find interesting about him is that I don’t fully believe in what he is saying. He has that mysterious aura around him that makes me question him quite a lot through out the series. Add to that
the way Mori uses monologs to indicate how important those characters are, however Yuuki never has such inner thoughts, even in situations where you would expect him thinking, he instead speaks his thoughts out loud. I especially want to see where his character will move through out the story.


-Art-

Mori Kojis art is more on the realistic side of the manga world. You know at first glance when you see a picture of his character designs, that it is him who illustrated it.
However I wouldn’t say that he is by all means as good as an artist as I thought he was when I first read Holy land, and it especially seems to be the case in D&R, as I guess he is more focusing on his other currently on going project. But let me explain my self. My biggest problem is that I can’t understand why he draws heads so big. The proportions just don’t match with the body and sometimes even the body isn’t exactly in proportion but the head is by all means the biggest problem. Or is it even a problem? I sometimes question Mori, on how many times he can miss the proportions, but it is, probably, more a stylistic decision. Other than that the background is drawn well, but a bit simplistic if you want. None the less the art is passable.





-Final Verdict and Enjoyment-

D&R is by no means a work you will like if you want just a fast read. If you do so, it will be just a shallow and distanced work for you. However, if you are ready to invest a bit of your brain mass into the story and the characters, than I guaranty you that it will at the very least be an entertaining read.

Higanjima is a horror/action manga about a bunch of people going to a island with a bunch vampires. I read almost half of the manga so my insight.

Let's first state the vampirism rules from this story: The vampires aren't killed by sunlight and only can be killed damaging their brains. To became a vampire, you must be infected by their blood. Vampires need blood so they can halt a mutation that can transform them into demons (A powerful creature, but without inteligence). They apparently have bad eyesight and good nose, but, besides the beginning of the manga, this never is brought up again. They also can make their hair go white if excited, but we never see this apart from the beginning. (Considerating all vampires also wear hats or are bald, this it's difficult to know by certain)

Despite the manga being labeled a seinen, the plot really like a generic shonen. I guess is just a seinen because of the violence and nudes.
It's pretty much, our main cast trying to defeat our main antagonists.

The art is nice. The gore stuff are very detailed and I love the design of the demons and vampires, despite being kind simple, it's creepy. I think very noticeable is that the mangaka has probably issues to draw the caracters differently. You can see this when the main cast spend 8 months in the island and apparently wear the same clothes or Rei and her CannotRemoveMakeUp wearing the same outfit even in flashbacks! (Kind funny seeing everyone wearing kimonos and she's there wearing a jacket and dress).
All background characters are just the same character draw over and over.
Also another issue is, because this a seinen you'll see a lot female nudes, but is it really necessary show, everytime a vampire bite someone, the person pissing themselves? I get the point in the first times, but this happen everytime! I think the mangaka has a piss fetiche.

The Main Cast is pretty much:
Akira, the main character, his job is to be Emiya Shirou and constantly cry because he want to save everyone, but he can't. Interesting thing: in the beginning of the manga is stated he's very smart and very perceptive, he can pick up stuff that no one can't (Like knowing if someone is lying or predict the vampire would escape the car)...this is never brought up again.
Kato, he's the brawl, but he never fight against the vampires so he's useless.
Nishyama, he's the brains, he's job his to give random informations for the reader.
Ken, he's the comic relief...
Yuki, she's the girl of the story. Her job is to be the Damsel in Distress.
Pon, he brought a gun and give character development to Akira.
Atsuhi, he's the badass brother. He's there to save everyone, because everyone is useless.
Miyabi, he's the antagonist...He's evil.

The character don't have much deepness, they are pretty much how I described them. No one actually has a character development or get strong, besides our main character.

Another issue I have with this manga is every chapter he does a recap of 1 or 2 pages about what happened in the previous chapter. It's very weird if you have the physical copy and you see the previous chapter on the right and the next chapter on the left. You can even notice he recycle some panels!

Sometimes I think the mangaka think the reader has amnesia. In some point of the plot, it's revealed a character became a vampire. Problem? We already knew about it, but the manga treat this like is some big revelation. Even the main cast treat like it was a big revelation despite they saw the character being infected!

Well, my overall until now is 4. If you like high violence and cool action scenes you will probably like more.
Despite this, I'll still try to read this. I mean, I have no hope the manga will get better, but I want to see how much the mangaka can stretch this story. It's 33 volumes, and this is just season 1! It also have a sequel with 16 volumes and another sequel with 14 volumes until today (2018)!

PS: This manga make me research if Katanas can cut metal. ProTip: They can't.

Alright so, Antimagia as a whole was a rather fun ride. Its the kind of manga where you'll only put it down because of reasons other than "because I don't like it".

Sure, it was fast-paced. The story also left some unanswered questions.
But like with most mangas, that "just don't make the grade", leaving some questions unanswered allows the readers to either A) depict for themselves what the answers are or B) get angry that there are no solid, concrete answers. (Maybe even C- where you combine both A and B. Who knows?)

But the story is promising because it weaves lots of different elements together. It has comedic, adventurous, and even thoughtful themes woven throughout. Towards the end, it gives you a question to answer (or not haha).
The art is absolutely terrific. It definitely lives up to attracting the (female) eye. 
The fantasy theme is played out extremely well, as it extends from setting to character.
The main character is also developed rather well; enough to make you understand (like most mangas with a hero that returns with a purpose) how far a situation can drive someone to do something, even if it means losing something precious. This is the price of vengeance (one of the revolving themes in the story).

Something that I sort of picked up on, during the story, was the strong infactuation between the two siblings. There was the feeling that a love stronger than just that of siblings, was going on, but really it's up to you to make that decision. *Just giving a heads up, for those of you not wanting to risk it.*

If you can't stand unanswered questions/ seemingly rushed manga, than you could look elsewhere.
But really, it shouldn't even be much of a bother (or even at all).
Enjoy the read!

Many stories about growing up handle a teenager or adolescent's story, this manga takes on the challenge of a much younger central character and pulls it off very well. It's hard for me to put my finger on what it was I enjoyed so much. The story is a narrative from the perspective of a young cat about his first year of grade school. Each chapter ends with him drawing the story he experienced in the drawing diary he was given at school. This is not however a narrative purely for children. The stories are simple but deeper, more adult themes shine through. The art was refreshing and although there wasn't much room to develop each character they all had unique appearances that hinted at their personalities. Overall the art reminded me of something from a children's book (in a good way) and made a perfect fit for the story. It's a quick red and I'd recommend it to anyone open to reding a feel good, but far from sappy, story about life and growing up from the perspective of the very young.

The positive things in this manga
+The art is pretty nice
+The man male character does not feel like a cardboard cutout like a lot of male man characters do in this sort of manga.
+The main character is powerful, but not some all mighty bad ass
+It is very enjoyable from start to finish

The Negatives in this manga
-The female characters are ones you have seen in other manga and anime before
-The ending is very obviously rushed and not well planned.
-The story itself is fairly boring and not anything new

Overall the story and characters are nothing to great, however I just found myself enjoying this as I was reading it. If you are generally a fan of manga and anime like this I would check it out. If not this will not be the one to change you into a fan of this sort of story.

Honestly, this is super cliche shoujo manga. Girl likes popular boy, boy doesn't like girl (at first), and so on. Anyways, this manga was bad in my opinion. The MC, Hanako, was annoying. She was super gullible, weak, and talked about herself in third person. Is that normal? And then we have the other MC, Kakeru. He would sexually harass Hanako. And both MCs were really immature. The story was basic and uninteresting. Honestly, the only thing I think was decent about this manga is the art. Unless you're REALLY bored and have nothing to read, I wouldn't recommend this manga.

tl;dr: A manga about professional wrestling that doesn’t really get professional wrestling at all, but that is otherwise decent.

This manga was off in that it’s about wrestling, and it serves as more than window dressing with it generally being the focus, but it didn’t really feel like it conveyed much about wrestling despite that. To start off for those that are not familiar, professional wrestling is mostly an act, with characters, plot lines, victories, etc. set up beforehand. That’s not a slight on wrestling, it would make as much sense to fault wrestling for this as it would to fault a play or movie for it. It’s just the way things are. Hence, I believe that there are two approaches to how to make something like a manga about this. One is that you can ignore that, and make a manga that’s actually about real wrestling but with the plot lines that are being acted out by wrestlers and basically having it be a sort of battle or combat sports manga. These are often really exaggerated and crazy with random twists and all sorts of shenanigans, and the manga could try to basically try to convey that atmosphere and tell a story kind of like that and make it seem real. The other is that it would take a step back and be about the actual wrestlers doing their part in acting and be more down to Earth, with it being more slice of life or something to that extent. This tried to take the middle path between both of these, wherein it kind of acknowledges that parts of it are fake and also for the most part has everything be real. For one thing, that doesn’t work, because trying to have extreme moments and then later reveal they’re predetermined just doesn’t make sense and really kind of seems contradictory at times. For another, I found it kind of annoying as well in that it then even goes to the point where it puts down things being pre-scripted, which I feel completely misses the point of professional wrestling completely. This combined with the fact that it didn’t really feel like the author knew much about wrestling in the first place, makes me kind of feel like the author wasn’t really much of a fan of professional wrestling in the first place, so I wonder why he’s making such a manga. Beyond that, there were some issues, but the plot overall was pretty solid. The characters are interesting enough and have reasonably fleshed out motivations and personalities. There was a major exception to that though, in that the final twist felt so incredibly forced and didn’t feel at all consistent with Ouka’s character or her relationship with Tadasuke at all. The comedy was pretty solid throughout and the action in and of itself was pretty cool. The art was also solid.

It’s always nice too see how artists grow and improve through their multiple series. Be it with better writing, characters, storylines or different turns in genre, that feeling of progression is a delight that goes beyond just the work at hand. However, the opposite is possible and regression can often be disappointing, which speaks true of Seishi Kishimoto’s Blazer Drive. Coming off from the flawed yet somewhat fun 666 Satan, you’d expect one to learn and build on their shortcomings. Sadly, this does not happen with Blazer Drive, a shallow series that forsakes exploration for flashy battles, development for cool poses and evokes the well-worn phrase "style over substance".

Set in some unexplained future Tokyo, we follow Daichi, our grade A idiot protagonist and the poster-boy of Blazer Drive’s vanity. Shouting forced lines like “I don’t understand the complicated bits but I’m going to kick your ass!” in an attempt to sound cool only serves to portray him as moron (fittingly) as nothing remotely complicated was even said prior. His quest is very familiar to battle shounen readers: people have special fighting powers, Daichi has the most incredible latent power of them all, and his enemy is a shady organization. Though not very interesting overall, the story is made worse by pisspoor handling. Events tend to happen prematurely, as if the series’ wanted to skip to the “good bits” instead of letting things develop naturally, making this 9-volume tale feel very condensed. Other times, the series relies on pure happenstance to advance the plot, but this strips the tale of believability and simply put, is bad writing. Further rupturing whatever smoothness the plot has are the numerous elements added to the story that end up being completely irrelevant. A good example here is Shirou, the main friend-rival character who’s built-up quite prominently only to totally disappear from the story soon after his introduction without a given reason. Worse off, his brief reappearance later on has him abruptly introducing a new seemingly important subplot only to disappear again (the subplot is never mentioned again either). It’s likely that these extraneous elements are references to the Blazer Drive video game which had a story parallel to that of the manga, but the jarring handling of them in the manga makes it feel as if we’re only getting half the story. Despite the relative simplicity of the story, Blazer Drive attempts a very complex finale, but it misfires. The new twists and backstories lack foreshadowing and feel too spontaneous, only making the story more dense and messy. There’s little breathing room for these new ideas so they just end up being preposterous, convoluted and seem more like an attempt to make the story more than it is.

Story problems aside, there is a serious lack of worldbuilding in Blazer Drive almost to the point where it is non-existent. By the end, we know very little about the setting as there was no intent to invest the reader by exploring it, raising many questions which are sadly not answered. That’s not to say there is no exploration whatsoever. Blazer Drive’s weapon of choice, the Mystickers, are heavily explored in ways that can genuinely interest the reader. However there’s a catch: the exploration is incredibly one-sided. We get to know a lot about how Mystickers are used in battles and the like, but regarding their origin and development, there is next to nothing. A sliver of information is offered: “they came from another dimension” but this vague tidbit only crops up even more questions. How does such an enigmatic technology get so widespread that it even appears in convenience stores? How are they even made or replicated? Why is it that no one knows? It doesn’t make any sense given how widely used it is in the series. Blazer Drive makes it pretty clear that it doesn’t care for the why and only for the battles. After all, explaining how they work here is apparently enough, as whatever can boost its cool factor will garner Blazer Drive’s full attention. It seems to be mostly in vain however, for Blazer Drive’s beloved battles are often pretty dull, perhaps due to derivative action and lack of investment the reader has in the characters or world. In addition, they don’t feel very believable as our protagonists tend to win most of their battles (even against veteran fighters) despite being relatively new to fighting.

As you may have inferred, I didn’t enjoy Daichi very much and the same can be said about the rest of the characters. Our cast is chock full of one-note personalities, which wouldn’t necessarily be all that bad if the notes weren’t so stale. Aside from that, the series seems to find it necessary to maintain a tiring charade of base humour, such as talking animals, loli angst, perverted animals, comical narcissism, and yes, farting animals, which gets less and less funnier each time. It’s a shame that Blazer Drive focuses its funny bone here instead of its lesser seen and more successful situational humour. There are some decent characters however, like Misora and Kuroki, who, while retaining the aforementioned flaws, are less irritating than the others and shine in their own ways. Of course Kishimoto finds a way to corrupt them, like when Misora is telling another character to respect women only for Kishimoto to later give us a panty shot during her big moment. Gotta love it. On the villain's side, they tend to have a repetitive style of characterization which utilizes instant tragic backstories to remind you that they’re flawed and human, but I don’t usually find this method of characterization effective. Surprisingly, the main antagonist doesn’t even seem that bad and has a pretty admirable end goal, though arguably boring. However, to make us dislike him, he is made unrealistically evil and chock full of cartoon villainy, which all feels completely needless, as if Kishimoto couldn’t find a more believable way to make him a villain. What’s more laughable is the protagonists themselves seemed more disappointed in his goal than shocked, as if achieving his goal would no longer allow them to be cool. I like to believe that’s why. It’s more amusing that way (I have to create my own amusement to enjoy Blazer Drive).

What was quite unexpected for me was just how much Kishimoto rips-off his previous work, 666 Satan, in Blazer Drive. Not only is the plot and characters identical but even the problems 666 had are front and center here. Both Daichi and Jio have some incredible latent powers, Mystickers are O-Parts, Blazers are OPTs, Qilin Realm is Zenom Syndicate et cetera et cetera. There’s a superficial coat of paint to mask the similarities but it will be very obvious to anyone who’s read 666 how few “original” ideas are here. At least in 666 Satan the length of the manga gave the ideas more room to breath unlike the claustrophobic mess that is Blazer Drive. A worse offence than copying the story is the characters. Reused designs and carbon copy personalities is not even the thick of it as entire characters are ripped straight from 666. Take Kuroki for example, who is a complete rip of 666’s Kirin, visually, mentally and in their character role. It’s important to note that both characters cover their face with their hair as this is where the real kicker comes in. In both series a reveal is uncovered involving the reason why they cover their face, resulting in a twist on their characters. In short, they share the exact same type of plot twist only possible by their specific character design (Of course, Kirin’s twist has much more weight to it). It’s quite alarming how many similarities like this crop up in Blazer Drive, although everything it takes from 666 Satan comes out worse. It’s like a bad photocopy. I thought the similarities between Brynhildr and Elfen Lied were ridiculous but wow Blazer Drive really takes the cake.

Blazer Drive felt like it was trying too hard to become the next big thing by focusing on being slick and cool while turning its attention away from the elements that would have bolstered its foundation. In addition, Kishimoto goes beyond rehashing and clearly plagiarises his own work which is just lame. With little exploration of both its characters and setting and a heap of problems found in its storytelling, Blazer Drive, seemingly ignorant of its issues, charges on in a vain quest to prove how awesome it can be, but all I see is one bland and soulless poser.