Category: First Impressions

Mission: Yozakura Family is Literally All About the Waifu (First Impressions, Chapters 1-30)

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

Spy X Family is a manga about a spy who makes a fake family, and that’s all well and good. But they’re not the only ones on the block. Mission: Yozakura Family has a family made entirely of spies. It’s managed to last a year in Jump’s ruthless gauntlet, so that means it must be doing something right. 

In Mission: Yozakura Family, a shy boy named Taiyo Asano has been coping with the abrupt death of his parents and brother (which is not at all a cheap emotional hook). His only friend is this girl named Mutsumi Yozakura, the adorable school idol. When Taiyo is attacked by Mutsumi’s overprotective brother, Kyoichiro, he is introduced to the Yozakura family (of spies). Because he’s the ultimate husbando (and because he doesn’t want to get assassinated), he marries into the family and vows to protect Mutsumi with his life.

I don’t know of many manga attempting to combine gag shounen with battle shounen (apparently, Katekyo Hitman Reborn! is one example, but SOMEONE (*cough* Viz *cough*) doesn’t have the manga licensed), but Yozakura Family has been a real fun time. Of course, there really is no narrative to speak of. The death of Taiyo’s family is pretty much glossed over until it gets to the designated “It wasn’t really an accident” plot development (which, honestly, isn’t a spoiler because that pretty much always happens).

The sillies are what matter, though. Yozakura Family is loaded with bombastic, over-the-top comedy that completely disregards realism, including a literal spy magazine and social media group. I also have to post a trigger warning: there are cases of minors (and adults) carrying firearms to school, so if you have any memories tied to an actual school shooting, then this manga might not be for you. There haven’t BEEN any school shootings so far, but I doubt that’ll stop you from being triggered. Also, as of where I left off, the manga hasn’t gone straight-up full battle shounen, like many gag series do. 

Unfortunately, Yozakura Family fubars one of the most important aspects of shounen: training. They show some of Taiyo’s training early on, but it’s gone over super-fast. It’s so abrupt that he goes from wimp to Bruce Willis overnight. Since this is primarily a gag shounen, I’m not too butthurt about it, but I’m definitely the minority in that.

This manga has a great cast of characters (for once). Taiyo is kind of that generic guy, like always, but the series isn’t called Yozakura Family for nothing. While Mutsumi herself is that “waifu” type, her siblings are where the personality comes in. Kyoichiro might (read as: “will”) annoy some people, but I think his ludicrous devotion to Mutsumi, plus his overly lacking subtlety of how much he hates Taiyo is hilarious. Her other siblings have very distinctive character design and memorable personalities, but sadly, they don’t have too much screentime. In any case, the antagonists are all fun, even if a lot of them (so far) have been in the throwaway category. 

The art is great. It’s simple, but effective. The action scenes are swift and packed with line work, while the facial expressions are on point. It’s what you’d expect from a shounen manga.

~~~~~

Current Verdict: 9/10

Mission: Yozakura Family is starting off strong. I have no idea how popular it is, so I don’t know if it’s going to be ending soon, but I hope it has a solid run down the road. Of course, you can never truly know with a Jump manga.

Two Muscular, Magical Reviews in One Post!

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Light Novels, Manga, Other

I had every intention of reading Mashle: Magic and Muscles since its debut in Weekly Shounen Jump. But then, Seven Seas came out of nowhere and licensed a light novel with an extremely similar title: Muscles Are Better Than Magic! Since they seemed so identical, I decided to review them both in this post. Although Mashle came out in the U.S. before Muscles, the latter actually predates the former by three years. So naturally, I’ll go over it first!

Muscles Are Better Than Magic! Volume 1

In Muscles Are Better Than Magic!, a boy named Yuri lives in the forest alone. He has managed to train himself to the point where he’s super ripped, and can take on anything. When he finds an elven girl named Filia Windia, he decides to go on adventures with her, for no reason whatsoever.

If Muscles appears to be a run-of-the-mill, typical shounen fantasy light novel to you, that’s because it is! The whole darn thing is the two of them hanging out. A lot of the interactions are just him using his muscles and freaking people out. And like I said in the premise, there’s no purpose to anything that happens. They just go on adventures that are no different from your typical slice-of-life fantasy with no real spice beyond Yuri’s muscles.

The mostly boring cast doesn’t help either. While Yuri and Filia have some legitimately cute and funny interactions, they are surrounded by idiots. All the other characters are inconsequential NPCs who have no personality other than being shocked by Yuri’s muscles. That’s literally it! But even then, Yuri is also incredibly bland, with Filia being the only remotely likeable character.

The biggest issue is the writing. Muscles is one of those light novels that feels like a rough draft and not a publication. Although the action scenes are pretty good, descriptions of locations are as bare minimum as they typically are in these series. I get that writing is really hard but that doesn’t excuse when it’s bad in a published work!

Verdict: 5.75/10

Muscles Are Better Than Magic! is no better than your typical blazé fantasy. Similar to Buck Naked in Another World, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, and others, it uses some defining character design trait to pretend that it’s subversive. My chances of reading more are pretty low. But let’s see whether or not it’s the lesser of two evils when I review Mashle!

Mashle: Magic and Muscles First Impressions (Chapters 1-15)

In Mashle: Magic and Muscles, a boy named Mash Burnedead lives in the forest with an old wizard guy. He was born in a world of magic, but has no magic himself, making him an easy target of the police. When he bests the police with his bare hands, he is given a deal: enroll in Magic School and graduate at the top of his class or be pursued by the law forever. He accepts the deal, and attends the school with no magic power whatsoever.

I made a big deal about how Muscles and Mashle are the same, but… it turns out that Mashle resembles Black Clover more than anything else (oops). In any case, Mashle already shows greater personality than Muscles. Not only is the humor (and its delivery) much more substantial than in Muscles, but there’s also a purpose to the shenanigans that ensue.

So far, Mashle’s biggest issue is its simplicity. While I love a good, clear-cut Jump manga, a lot of [very vocal] people don’t. Because of this, there’s no rhyme or reason to the magic that gets used; they don’t even bother to explain the rules. And of course, let’s not forget the magic word, “unrealistic”, because of how impossibly strong Mash is for a teenager.

Mashle has a similar issue to Muscles: everyone other than the main character exists just to react to how swole said main character is. Furthermore, the lead girl is less remarkable than Filia, to the point where I already forgot her name. But unlike Yuri, Mash is a significantly more likeable character. In fact, he’s the bread and butter of this whole manga. While he’s completely devoid of personality, the author somehow makes that lack of personality into its own personality quirk. Also, his inane obsession with cream puffs makes him even more hilarious.

The art doesn’t look like much, but it’s more than enough. The panel composition expertly sells the humor, while also delivering the appropriate amount of punch to Mash’s attacks. If there are any issues, it’s that the black wizard robes make a lot of the foreshortening shots look kind of weird.

Current Verdict: 9.35/10

Muscles might be better than magic, but Mashle is far better than Muscles. It’s a risk investing in a new series when you don’t know whether or not it’ll get axed, but here’s hoping that Mashle stays for a couple of years at least. I recommend it to people who like battle shounen and fun (i.e. not cynical).

Jujutsu Kaisen is at least Better than Kimetsu no Yaiba (First Impressions, Chapters 1-75)

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

Weekly Shounen Jump has had some really great manga, and it’s had some not so great manga. While they have a system to weed out the latter, cases like Kimetsu no Yaiba show that it’s not perfect. A little manga called Jujutsu Kaisen (published in English by Viz) has risen to a pretty high level of popularity, without the need of a successful anime adaptation (even though the anime will no doubt make it quite popular overseas). Let’s see whether or not it deserves its popularity.

In Jujutsu Kaisen, a high-schooler named Yuji Itadori has a run-in with Megumi Fushiguro, a student from the curse-fighting Jujutsu Highschool, when he seeks a cursed object that Yuji’s classmates have come across. Yuji helps him fight back the curses that attack them, but things get hairy. Yuji ends up eating the cursed object- a severed finger- and becomes more than powerful enough to fight the curse, but is nearly possessed by the finger’s owner, Ryomen Sukuna. Due to Yuji’s strange ability to suppress its power, he’s recruited as a new student of Jujutsu Highschool in order to collect and consume the rest of the fingers… after which he will be executed. 

Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it; this is a First Impressions, after all. I had thought, based on Chainsaw Man, that Jump is trying to become more mature in order to recover from the slump it’s been in lately (a lot of series from 2019 onward have sold poorly), but alas, it seems that Chainsaw Man is an exception and not the rule. Despite how often it waxes poetic about life and death, Jujutsu Kaisen is a pretty typical shounen manga. 

As expected of most Jump manga, Jujutsu Kaisen starts by getting us acquainted with the main characters as they fight random enemies in self-contained mini-arcs, followed by a training arc. For the most part, the ideas of cursed energy and techniques are pretty generic, but the neatest aspect of the combat in Jujutsu Kaisen is the domain techniques. These are basically field effects that look really cool, and add a bit of spectacle to the fights.

The manga picks up after twenty-odd chapters, which is when the first major arc starts. It introduces the main antagonist (who will likely get replaced by someone less memorable if the manga ends up running for eight more years), and ups the ante by a lot. And I mean A LOT.

Typical shounen manga means a pretty one-dimensional cast. Yuji is a pretty generic, brash idiot, and the thing with Sukuna seems more like something to make him edgy than to give him a moral crisis. His classmates, Megumi, and the female lead, Nobara, aren’t that interesting either outside of their fighting abilities. Fortunately, Jujutsu Kaisen at least tries with some of its characters. Yuji’s teacher, Satoru Gojo, has got a pretty good sense of humor, for instance. There’s also some other students in other classes who are pretty wild, such as a literal panda bear, as well as some interesting folks from their rival school in Kyoto (such as mah boy Toto). 

The art of Jujutsu Kaisen is where it shines. It’s sketchy and dirty, but full of personality. The fight scenes are fast and spectacular, and really help the manga shine. The character design is also excellent, with a plethora of good-looking women.

~~~~~

Current Verdict: 8.75/10

Jujutsu Kaisen is indeed a very mainstream manga. However, with great art, and a number of admittedly creative ideas (such as a decrepit old geezer who fights with an electric guitar), it stands out from the rabble. I recommend it to any battle shounen fanatic.

Talentless Nana Will Teach You to Not Trust Your Resident Moe Blob (First Impressions, Chapters 1-41)

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

Crunchyroll has never had the most… comprehensive catalogue of manga included with the premium subscription. Sure… I’ll be able to at least finish Attack on Titan on the same day as Japan without getting into legal trouble, but that’ll be beside the point when Adobe Flash Player dies this December without them updating the actual reader (assuming that I can’t alternatively use the mobile app, but I heard it was as buggy as heck). So, why not read one of the bizarre exclusives, that has all of the chapters up, while I can? Ladies and gentlemen… let’s check out Talentless Nana.

In Talentless Nana, a bunch of kids who have talents (i.e. superpowers) are sent to an academy on a deserted island to train, in order to fight the enemies of humanity. Our main protagonist, Nanao Nakajima, becomes quick friends with a new student named Nana Hiiragi, who has the ability to read minds. With the power of their inevitably blooming love for each other, they’ll learn and grow until they fight the enemies of humanity once and for all!

“Hey, wait a second!” you point out. “If the manga’s called Talentless Nana, then how come the titular character can read-?” Yeah… you noticed that too, didn’t you? *sigh* Look, I’m not gonna BS you. In order to properly review this manga, I must spoil the ending of chapter 1, because it’s a crucial tone setter that could make or break the whole manga to you. I could write the review without spoiling it, but I’d be glossing over something crucial to helping you properly decide if you want to read it, and that goes against what I want to be as a blogger. So, starting the next paragraph, I will be spoiling the end of chapter 1. Skip to the end of the review if you want a basic gist of the manga’s quality.

In the ACTUAL premise of Talentless Nana, the titular Nana Hiiragi is sent to the island where the enemies of humanity, those with talents are kept under the guise of training to fight an ersatz enemy, without them knowing they are their own enemies. Her mission is to use her wits to kill all the talented students without them finding out, and Nanao Nakajima is her first victim.

See how divisive this makes Talentless Nana? In a brilliant troll move, the manga begins in Nanao’s perspective, and aims to get you attached to the super adorable and compassionate Nana in record time. And just when you’re writing your fanfic about the two, Nanao is murdered, destroying your brain as a result (since you, hypothetically, imagined yourself as Nanao so you can pretend that you’ll find a significant other in life). It’s a perfect crotch-kick that takes advantage of a waifu-driven market.

So, besides breaking your heart and force-feeding you the shards, what does Talentless Nana have in terms of entertainment value? Basically, the main focus of the manga is that Nana befriends each student one at a time, pretending to be a ditzy moe blob. With each new victim, the rest of the group becomes more and more suspicious, and it’s pretty engaging to see her try to avoid having that suspicion turned on her.

Unfortunately (at least for some), the manga lacks the one thing that psychological thrillers “absolutely must have”, and that’s realism. Due to the superpowers, a lot of things that happen don’t make any sense, more so when Nana somehow manages to talk her way out of incriminating scenarios, like when people catch wind of a psychic’s photograph of her killing people in the future. Between this and the polarizing plot twist, I can totally see this getting widespread criticism when the anime airs: the lack of realism will perturb analytical viewers, and the twist will do the same to casual viewers.

Additionally, the manga has a pretty bland cast of characters. The only ones even worth discussing are Nana, who is actually pretty entertaining for the most part (at least until she starts sympathizing for her classmates which becomes kind of annoying), and Kyoya Onodera. Kyoya is a transfer student who arrives alongside her, but he’s not a spy like her; he’s one of her enemies. However, he’s actually smart, and he actually tries to, you know, investigate his classmates’ deaths. If this was a YA novel, Kyoya and Nana would end up making out by the end (hopefully they don’t).

The art is kind of average. While it captures motion pretty well, the character designs are incredibly bland, with Nana being the only standout character thanks to her hair. While it’s decent at making some scary closeups, it’s not really much in comparison to other manga art.

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Current Verdict: 7.5/10

While it has a number of issues, Talentless Nana is a decent guilty pleasure. I don’t normally “command” viewers to consume certain media, but due to the inevitable controversy the anime will cause, along with the death of Flash Player, I highly recommend at least reading a bit of the manga in order to be hip. Oh, and also, the fact that it will not be possible to read for much longer.

No Guns Life First Impressions (Volumes 1-5)

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

An unspoken tradition in the world of anime and manga is to make things into guns. Swords are among the first weapons to become guns, for example. Even Western anime like RWBY honor the tradition by turning scythes, boots, and even suitcases into guns. Honestly, it’s surprising that it took until the manga No Guns Life, published in English by Viz, to turn an entire person into a gun.

In No Guns Life, people get all kinds of augments. The people with these augments are called Extended. Juzo Inui is so Extended… his freaking head is a gun! Although there is no war, things are not safe in the city, and he does all sorts of odd jobs to get by. But one fateful day, a dude hires him to protect a child named Tetsuro Arahabaki. Turns out that the dude was being remote controlled by Tetsuro due to a special ability called Harmony. Because of this, the megacorporation known as Beruhren tries to climb up Juzo’s ass. But that doesn’t matter; if the client pays, he’ll do the job.

At first, it seems that No Guns Life is a typical “cyberpunk starring a hard-hearted war veteran who was used as a tool, is outcast by society now that he’s obsolete, and is sucked into a massive government conspiracy while he comes to terms with his past and makes us wonder what makes us human”. And, well, that’s because it’s just that. Like Levius, there really isn’t anything particularly special about the manga in terms of ideas.

Fortunately, it does have a good sense of momentum. So far, No Guns Life has behaved similarly to Ghost in the Shell, where we observe Juzo take on various jobs, each of which tells us a little more about the world and the overarching story. The plot is engaging, and full of intrigue, even if it’s all stuff we saw in every piece of cyberpunk media ever published. 

Unfortunately, its cast is not too special. Juzo is the most likeable by far; he’s that nonchalant bad-ass type. There’s a number of parts where he gets livid just for someone messing with his favorite brand of cigarettes (as a small side note, there is a chance that the fact that it is implied that his smokes are essential for his Extended body to function could be interpreted as the manga endorsing substance abuse. But I’m the last person who wants to be “that guy” so I’ll leave it to your discretion). But other than him, we have some typical cyberpunk tropes. Tetsuro is basically a shounen protagonist disguised as a supporting character, and his personal engineer, Mary, is the sisterly figure who exists to tune him up while sometimes being a waifu.

The antagonists aren’t much better either. If you couldn’t tell from the rundown of the premise, Beruhren is the typical evil, monopolizing conglomerate that “symbolically represents Apple and Google and their massive conspiracy to take over all our personal data and allow the world to be controlled by Chinese censorship since they’re the biggest market in the world and all they care about is money” (side note: I’m being sarcastic and I personally don’t believe any of that). There’s also the organization, Spitzbergen, that is against the Extended (and guess what: they use Extended to kill other Extended which represents “the hypocrisy of the government and/or every organized religion”). And as far as individuals are concerned, at this point they’ve mainly been war veterans who got all cuckoo as a result of PTSD which “represents what Juzo could potentially have become which makes them morally ambiguous for some reason”.

At the very least, No Guns Life has great art. It has a rough style, with plenty of action. Even if the antagonists are lackluster, they at least have some legitimately creepy character designs. And speaking of character designs, Juzo definitely stands out as a protagonist given his unique head shape.

~~~~~

Current Verdict: 8.4/10

I hate saying this as a sci-fi fan, but cyberpunk has definitely lost its luster since the 1990s. At the time, sure, it was cool to be like “Whoa, what if we’re living in a simulation?” or, “Does pimping ourselves up with machinery make us no longer human?” But now, in this day and age, questions like that are about as cliche as a hentai protagonist being popular among cute girls. Despite how much the genre brings to the table, it’s deceptively restrictive. Personally, I believe that sheer entertainment value is all that cyberpunk has left in terms of appeal, and No Guns Life delivers (took me long enough to get to the topic at hand). I recommend it to any cyberpunk fans, as well as edgelords who think having a gun-head is cool.

A Witch’s Printing Office First Impressions (with an Important Announcement)

Featured by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga, Miscellaneous

As I come upon my first whole year of managing this blog (by myself, by the way), I have been battling against a lot of stress. I don’t just have this to manage, but a full-time job as well. Plus, there’s way too much media that comes out. Even when I pick and choose what I absolutely want to cover, there’s too much. I can also imagine that you get an aneurysm trying to keep up with my three posts a week.

Fortunately, there’s going to be some changes, effective today, August 4th, 2020. Posts will be back to how they were in the very beginning: every Tuesday and Saturday. As a result, there won’t be as many First Impressions of manga, not unless I’m certain my opinion will sway wildly once they’re complete. For example, I have a Jujutsu Kaisen First Impressions written already (I’m just waiting for the anime to air so I can mooch off of it). It’s a battle shounen; those are chaotic by nature and wildly inconsistent in quality at times. While I enjoyed what I read so far, that can change over the course of a single chapter.

Light novels are going to be handled differently. If you’ve read some of my light novel reviews, you’ll have seen my struggles to write something of substance in some of them. Even if I love them, a lot of them are pretty formulaic, such as Cautious Hero and Konosuba. I even did the stupid recap thing solely to extend the reviews. As such, I will now save most light novel posts for one long post at the end of a given month, where I’ll just put a small blurb for each. Exceptions will be for the first and final volumes of a given series (assuming I get far enough for the latter). For example, I plan to post a review of The Eminence in Shadow Volume 1 when that comes out. Since it’s brand new, that’ll be its own post, but all subsequent volumes will be in the monthly post, which I’ll name “Weeb Reads Monthly” or something similar. Another exception will be any series I’ve been doing arc-by-arc, which just applies to Monogatari and Sword Art Online.

So yeah, hopefully this’ll help both our sanity. Do you like the new schedule that I’m implementing? Hopefully you do, because I really didn’t like the old way at all. Anyway, I don’t want this post to just be a dumb announcement, so below is the post I was planning to have done normally…

A lot of critics complain about isekai for being the same thing over and over again. Even the new, slice-of-life variants that are the exact opposite of typical, action-driven-harem isekai are becoming common to the point of redundancy. Now it’s at the point where the subversive isekai need to subvert themselves, and a manga (not a light novel) by the name of A Witch’s Printing Office (published in English by Yen Press) is one such subversion.

In A Witch’s Printing Office, a girl named Mika Kamiya has been reincarnated into a fantasy world (as you do). The manga kindly skips all the formalities and goes well into her career at a book printing firm called Protagonist Press. But in addition to working at a printing press, she also runs Magiket: a popular magic-themed convention!

Immediately, this manga shows off its social commentaries, not on politics, but on real world conventions (and I mean event-conventions, not social protocol). The fact that the setting is called “Akivalhalla”, based on Akihabara in Japan, shows just how creative this manga is. It even opens when these Akivalhalla Knights defeat the Overnight Fiends: literal monsters that parody those who camp outside a venue before it opens. 

But a slice-of-life isekai is still a slice-of-life isekai. While Mika implies that she wants to go back to the real world, she seems perfectly at home in the fantasy world. Most of the story are self-contained narratives, which are based around managing the convention and printing books. There is continuity, like when they introduce another person from our world into the story, but it usually hard cuts to something completely different after the fact.

Fortunately, all the chapters have their own unique charm to them. When they are not running the printing press or the convention, Mika has all sorts of funny adventures. From taking a holy sword just to use as a paper cutter, to getting unwittingly possessed by an evil mage, this manga has a lot of variety to it; it’s not just “Praise me for how chill and low-stakes I am” like most other slice-of-life isekai. Plus, the humor is really on point.

I tend to dislike most slice-of-life isekais’ casts, and while this manga isn’t quite an exception, I at least enjoyed A Witch’s Printing Office’s cast marginally better than most others of the genre. Mika comes off as a ditzy moe blob, but she shows a bit of a greedy side that makes her more interesting than most ditzy moe blobs. Sadly, her two friends, Clair and Kiriko, seem to just serve as two pairs of large breasts (and I really hope they’re legal adults for no particular reason related to my perverse imagination). A lot of the minor characters end up being pretty likeable, but they’re called minor characters for a reason.

The art for A Witch’s Printing Office is so good, that I’m willing to believe it was done with Clip Studio assets. There is so much life, detail, and texture to every panel, yet it’s still easy to tell what’s going on. The landscapes are absolutely beautiful, and I’d hate to see a hypothetical anime adaptation undermine the whole thing. There is a lot of charm and personality poured into it that I could spend minutes gawking at any given page.

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Current Verdict: 8.95/10

Like many, many truly great franchises, A Witch’s Printing Office does not get the hype it deserves. It’s a fun and unique take on the isekai genre (that critics will probably find some way to pick apart but I digress). I recommend it to anyone who truly appreciates otaku culture at its finest.

Kakushigoto First Impressions (Volumes 1-4)

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

When reading ecchi or hentai manga, sometimes it makes you wonder, “What would the mangaka’s relatives think? Do they even have kids?” Well, that topic is explored quite thoroughly in the manga about a mangaka, Kakushigoto: My Dad’s Secret Ambition, published in English by Kodansha Comics.

In Kakushigoto, a dad by the name of Kakushi Goto (wow, title drop), is a famous mangaka… of hardcore ecchi. The problem is his little daughter, Hime. Will he be able to protect his secret? Or will his princess (literally, because that’s what the word “Hime” means) be scarred for life?

Surprisingly enough, Kakushigoto proved to be a much more confusing read than I thought. For starters, the opening pages of each volume show Hime already having discovered her father’s secret. It took me a while to realize that these are flashforwards, which shows that he’s going to be fighting an uphill battle throughout the manga. Another issue, which is moreso a nitpick, is that the chapters are really short. I’m not someone who understands manga serialization… but according to MyAnimeList, Kakushigoto runs in a monthly magazine, which sounds really counterproductive for something with such short chapters. The third and final quirk with it is that the chapters… weren’t compiled correctly (at least not in the North American release)? At certain points, the chapter count will randomly reset midvolume. The first time this happens is towards the end of volume two, where it says “Volume 2 Issue 1”. The entirety of volume three is still considered volume two which seriously bugged me.

But as far as content is concerned, Kakushigoto certainly has a wild sense of humor. Unlike father-daughter manga such as Yotsuba&!, this one goes a bit more out of left field. In the first volume alone, Kakushi goes bananas over one of his editors wearing a lewd shirt in front of Hime, and he also ends up getting hunted down by Hime and her friends because he saved some cat with a life preserver. 

However, Kakushi’s secret isn’t the only sitcom situation going on in the manga. Kakushi builds a harem of sorts without even realizing it. Because he has a terrible way with words, a number of women think he’s hitting on them. He has no idea that this is happening, and it’s funny to see how they interact with him and each other. 

The manga can also be strangely depressing. The content of this narrative is supposedly based on the author’s real life experiences. It portrays a number of things, like the feeling of not being popular, or the state of the industry itself. Kakushigoto makes fun of this stuff just as often as it’s brutally honest about it. The mangaka also has a lot of rants throughout the volumes as well that go deeper into their psyche.

The characters prove to be surprisingly enjoyable. Kakushi is just a single dad who wants all the best for his little (*cough* marketable *cough*) daughter, and he goes to crazy lengths to be the best dad he can. His co-workers also have lovable personalities. They’re all quirky enough to have substance, but not to the point where they’re not “unrealistic like those battle shounen trash protags”. 

The art may be off-putting to some. Kakishigoto is drawn in a minimalistic, vector-like style. The shading appears to be entirely through a preset tool in Clip Studio, and the proportions are definitely odd. However, the girls are uniquely cute looking (even if they have same-face syndrome), and the characters are surprisingly expressive.

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Current Verdict: 8.25/10

Kakishigoto: My Dad’s Secret Ambition is definitely a different slice-of-life. It’s a weird combination of wholesome and cynical that’s definitely not seen too often. I recommend it if you want a father-daughter slice-of-life that isn’t just “Hey look at my moe blob and buy my stuff!”

Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! First Impressions (Volumes 1 and 2)

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

The siren song of money is a powerful one. Additionally, said song can be applied to a specific site’s built-in currency that can help you SAVE money. I didn’t really want to read Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! (published in English by Seven Seas), but I couldn’t resist the 70% Coin Back on BookWalker! So, let’s see what the cost of my stupid decision was.

In Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out!, Shichirin Sakurai is a typical, introverted college student. However, he is constantly approached by his kouhai, Hana Uzaki. She launches an all-out verbal assault on him until he, well, hangs out with her. And thus, various shenanigans ensue.

This manga is dumb, that’s pretty much intentional. There is no intention to have a complex plot or drama. While the premise is reminiscent of Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, which- of all things- offended me on a personal level, the one distinction with Uzaki is that she’s forcing her way into Shichirin’s life because she’s stupid, instead of forcing him to date strange women just so that her preconceived image of him matches his actual image (seriously, why do people love Tomozaki so much?). 

Unfortunately, the humor comes off as pretty dry. The basic formula is to take everyday activities, and add boobs and a lot of yelling. Most of the time, Uzaki acts like an idiot, and Shichirin ends up in an ecchi-like situation. Other than a few clever blips (such as an epic speech about mint chocolate), there’s not much finesse in the execution whatsoever. The manga also tries to have something called “Poop Cat” appear, but it’s not funny nor clever. But hey, I’m a tough nut to crack.

The characters are perhaps the weakest aspect of all. I tend to have a soft spot for some one-dimensional characters, but the cast of Uzaki-chan is- I don’t know- zero-dimensional?! Uzaki is incredibly marketable, what with her immense assets, and that weird canine-tooth-shaped protrusion on her upper lip that makes her stand out from the 99,999 other girls that look exactly like her. She seems like the type of character who comes off as funny as an extension of her being an idiot. This works on a case-by-case basis, and this is NOT one of those cases. 

Meanwhile, Shichirin is a pretty typical dude. He definitely doesn’t hate Uzaki, but that doesn’t stop him from being the usual witty-comebacks-guy. Other than that, we have the audience surrogates; some friends who want Shichirin and Uzaki to be in bed together. HOW META AND RELATABLE. But in terms of personality, they were lacking by a large margin.

Speaking of lacking by a large margin… the art! The manga is very average and typical looking; that kind of super-simplistic style that’s so basic that the anime doesn’t look that much different by comparison. The panel flow is not taken advantage of for comedic effect. And furthermore, Uzaki-chan is somehow on par with Hunter X Hunter for the most amount of words on a single page.

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Current Verdict: 5.5/10

Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! is a cute, mindless manga, but there are way better of its kind out there! It feels like it follows the bare-bones basics of comedy and thinks it can use boobs to get away with it (which it seems to be succeeding at wildly, according to the anime episode discussion). Don’t bother reading this manga; if you want something better, read D-Frag or Grand Blue Dreaming instead.

Spy X Family First Impressions (Chapters 1-17)

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

It’s pretty typical for some niche manga to make MyAnimeList’s Top 100. But it’s wild that Spy x Family (published in English by Viz), placed around the halfway point of the manga list in less than a year after its launch. Time for me to board this hype train and see if it’s worth it!

In Spy x Family, a spy named Twilight is among the best in the business. But when his latest mission requires him to marry and have a child, he’s positively flummoxed. His solution is to establish a pretend family, with an orphaned telepathic girl named Anya, and an assassin named Yor Briar.

The thing about Spy x Family is that it’s not a rom-com with spies, but a sitcom with spies. Twilight and Yor don’t know of each other’s professions, nor do they know about Anya’s telepathy. However, Anya does know both of her “parents’” professions due to her mind-reading ability. Normally, I’d cringe at such a dynamic, but the fact that it’s done in a comedic way instead of a romantic way (like in Marissa Meyer’s Renegades) makes it more enjoyable.

And seriously, this manga is enjoyable. Spy x Family’s formula is simple, but it somehow works wonderfully. The comedy is done seriously well, with almost every page making me laugh out loud. But it’s not just a gag manga; there’s an actual overarching story as well.

The main goal of the series is for Twilight to get close to this really important politician named Donovan Desmond, whose son, Damian, is attending a prestigious school called Eden Academy. Twilight’s solution is to have his “daughter” enroll in the school and get close to Damian. But Anya’s kind of a ditz… and getting by in such an elite school is considerably easier said than done.

What makes Spy x Family so great is its cast. Twilight comes off as rugged, but slowly warms up to the fake family that he makes. Yor is, besides being gorgeous, someone who genuinely wants to be a good mom for Anya. She does NOT hesitate to use her skills in public to help her daughter. But the piece de resistance is Best Girl Anya. She looks like one of those typical moe blobs who exist just to be cute, but she’s got a real personality. Since she’s aware of her father’s mission, she actually tries to do a good job for his sake… but ends up getting carried away very often. When this happens, hilarity and genuine adorableness ensue.

There’s a curveball in Yor’s brother, Yuri Briar. He’s a secret service officer, whose mission is to find Twilight. He doesn’t know that his target is pretending to be married to his sister, nor does he know that she’s an assassin. Just more layers onto the cake of secrets.

The art in Spy x Family is very cute and appealing. The characters are very expressive, and their designs are quite memorable. The action scenes also look great for a slice-of-life manga. But most importantly, the panel flow is spot-on, which allows the comedy to fire on all cylinders.

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Current Verdict: 9.75/10

Spy x Family is already one of my favorite comedy manga of all time. In fact, it’s probably the funniest manga I’ve read, more than my previous favorite comedy, Grand Blue Dreaming. Grand Blue’s comedy relies entirely on super visceral, over-the-top facial expressions, but Spy x Family is much more clever than that. I’d recommend Spy x Family to pretty much anyone!

Levius/est First Impressions (Volumes 1-3)

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

PREFACE: This manga is a sequel series. As such, there will be unmarked spoilers of vanilla Levius in this review. Click this link to read my review of Levius if you are interested in this franchise.

The sci-fi boxing manga, Levius, proved to be a hidden gem. With its cyberpunk themes, and phenomenal art, I was hooked from start to finish. But the story’s only just getting started. In Levius/est (published in English by Viz), we get into the real meat and potatoes of Levius. 

Set a year after the titular character’s battle with A.J., both people are hospitalized. But that’s the least of their issues; the return of Amethyst has caused a huge change in the world at large. War is on the verge of breaking out, and as a result, steam technology is banned… except in the Mechanical Martial Arts Ring. As such, whoever wins the Grade 1 bracket that Levius is now in… gets to decide the fate of mankind.

Right off the bat, Levius/est gives us much more context for, well, everything than the original series ever did. In addition to starting off with a more detailed flashback of Levius’ tragic backstory, we also get an explanation of how the steam technology actually works, as well as more information about the war. It helps flesh out the world of Levius a lot, and it’s very appreciated.

But as far as boxing goes, the first couple volumes of Levius/est are in the designated “drama” segment that comes before a lot of the fighting. Fortunately, this gives us a big chance for some major character development on Levius’ part. But sadly, this doesn’t really help offset his trope-ish, “dark and disturbed” personality. 

Sadly, the other characters aren’t so great. Zack is still the same old drunkard. Meanwhile, A.J. ends up becoming a classic amnesiac (which, thankfully gets resolved pretty quickly). There are some new additions, one of which is arguably the worst character in the series: Natalia Cromwell. I don’t remember if they foreshadowed her, but she’s apparently Levius’ childhood friend, who gets taken in by Zack, and wants to become an M.M.A. fighter like Levius. If you couldn’t tell, she loves him, and gets friendzoned. While she’s cute as all heck, her personality adds a lot of out-of-placed humor to Levius/est, and also forms a rather annoying love triangle between herself, Levius, and A.J. 

Another new face is Oliver G. Kingsley, the current champion of the M.M.A. Since he’s the champ, he’s incredibly important in the overarching narrative of Levius as a whole. But as far as personality is concerned, he’s a pretty typical “boxing champion”, i.e. a jerk. The real clincher, however, is that we finally get to see A.J.’s brother in action. And as you can expect, this helps launch the story into high gear.

As to be expected, the art of Levius/est is fantastic. The fights are spectacular, and the closeups are wrought with sheer emotion. The panel flow makes it fun and engaging to read as always, despite the reverse order of the pages. 

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Current Verdict: 9/10

I sounded like I was complaining a lot, but honestly, in terms of sheer entertainment value, Levius/est is looking to be the best cyberpunk manga since Battle Angel Alita. Sure, it’s edgy, and has some bland characters, but the series as a whole oozes a unique personality that makes it stand out. I recommend it to any boxing and cyberpunk fans.