Big Order review

_cjessop19_15
Apr 11, 2021
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.
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Big Order
Big Order
Author Esuno, Sakae
Artist