Tag: betrayal

Danganronpa Meets… Soccer?!: Blue Lock First Impressions (Volumes 1-3)

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

Most sports manga tend to be the same from beginning to end (even if Haikyuu!! was VERY different toward the end but that’s only like 15% of the story). It’s the usual thing: school is in the dumps, some special kids meet up at said school, bonds form, and in an inexplicable upset, said school is fighting the world champion team. But if you couldn’t tell from the fact that the cover of today’s manga, Blue Lock, shows characters with an eerie blood lust in their eyes, along with cuffs around their necks… this one’s a bit different across the board.

In Blue Lock, Japan’s soccer team has suffered a crippling loss at the 2018 World Cup. Since sports arbitrarily govern a nation’s entire dignity, we can’t have that crap anymore. So, in an act of desperation, an eccentric coach named Jinpachi Ego is hired to lead the final charge. But if you couldn’t tell from his name, Ego’s approach is pretty unconventional. He builds a brutal training facility, the titular Blue Lock, and hires three hundred promising strikers. In this facility, they don’t train together, but against each other, and only one of these kids can graduate from Blue Lock as supposedly the world’s greatest striker. Our main protagonist, Yoichi Isagi, is one such striker. And after experiencing a brutal loss because he chose to pass to a teammate at a critical moment, he kind of picks up what Ego is putting down.

Just one thing I need to get out there first: I love and hate this premise. I love the premise because, from a storytelling standpoint, it’s a pretty awesome idea. Soccer is the perfect sport to tackle this mindset of playing, since there really is no need for anyone but someone who can score points. The manga quotes real soccer players such as Pelé, who bizarrely enough, support this idea (unless this is an alternate universe where Pelé didn’t actually say that at all). On the flipside, I hate the premise because it’s cynical. I don’t need to read another review of Blue Lock because I know people enough to know what they’re gonna say: “This manga is so much better than other sports manga because it’s darker, which is more realistic, since there is never ever any happiness in real life.” Good thing I abandoned MyAnimeList when I did!

So far, Blue Lock does a great job at building anticipation, probably better than any sports manga I’ve read. This is done in Ego’s relatively quick exposition dump on how Blue Lock is set up. It’s divided into five wings, each of which have five groups of eleven kids who are on the same team. It seems that, over the course of the manga, these teams will compete with other teams within their wing, and eventually with the top teams from the other wings. And if my context clues are correct, this will eventually lead to some kind of knockout round between the team of eleven that comes out on top of that kerfuffle. By that point, those characters will have been fighting side-by-side the whole time, and now have to turn on each other. Of course, this is all speculation, since the manga’s barely even started.

So far, Blue Lock’s weakest aspect is its characters. Normally, sports mangas’ casts start off as pretty basic, but become super likeable down the road. However, due to the whole “ego” theme, I do not see the cast of Blue Lock being very likable in the typical sports manga fashion. Of course, with me being the lunatic that I am (what with loving narcissists like Senku), I see the possibility of Blue Lock having my favorite sports manga cast of all time. Yoichi, so far, is sadly the generic character who has the ability no one else has for no reason. The others also seem kind of generic, but time could easily mend that. I anticipate the fan-favorite to be Bachira. He’s the eccentric, mysterious character who takes a liking to the main protagonist (so, basically, he’s Nagito). I also like Coach Ego, for obvious reasons.

No sports manga is worth its salt without awesome art, and Blue Lock does not disappoint. Like the cover art, it’s full of insanity and bloodlust. As with any edgy, psychological series, there is no shortage of exaggerated, creepy faces. The action shots are spectacular, as expected from a manga like this.

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Current Verdict: 9/10

As cynical as it is, Blue Lock is shaping up to be a fantastic sports manga. In fact, I’d already consider it my favorite since Haikyuu!! And if it continues to grow at its current rate, I think it could surpass even that. I recommend it if you’re a critic of sports manga and like psychological stuff.

The Adventurers Guild Trilogy: Social Commentary for Kids!

by macksamson, posted in Children's Novels, Western Media

Sometimes, the title of a series is so generic and unremarkable that I almost feel like it’s a red herring. I ask myself, “It’s trying so hard to look boring, but does that mean it’s actually legitimately good?” That’s a gambit that I hoped would pay off when I read through The Adventurers Guild series, written by Zack Loran Clark and Nicolas Eliopulous.

A half-elf boy named Zed and a typical human named Brock are ready to join one of Freestone’s many Guilds. They are picked for the Mages and Merchants Guilds respectively; however, this series isn’t titled The Adventurers Guild for nothing. Alasabel Frond, the leader of the titular Guild, yoinks them right out of their respective Guilds and drafts them into the Adventurers Guild. Now they have to protect the world from monsters known as Dangers, and like true warriors, they get nothing for it!

The Adventurers Guild isn’t quite as generic as it looks (key words: “quite as”, but we’ll get to that later). They at least put some good effort into the magic system. Each element is tied to a specific spiritual plane (or something), and they all have a signature that Zed can detect. The writers also pull no punches when it comes to the Dangers’ designs; get used to tentacles coming out of faces and other areas. The prose is also all-around great, but V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic taught me that good writing and good storytelling are two completely different talents. 

A lot of things irked me about The Adventurers Guild. One is that—like every modern fantasy and its grandma—there’s social commentary on a lot of bad -isms in society (none of which are commercialism). In addition to my problem with how heavy-handed it gets, The Adventurers Guild makes it unrealistic. And while I normally don’t mind a lack of realism, this case isn’t merely “Ooooh, magic! What is physics again?”; it’s a clash with the human mind itself. 

You’d think that people’d get their sh** together to fight a one-dimensional evil alien threat to the whole species. And yet, the bad -isms are still in effect in the world of The Adventurers Guild! Every authority figure in Freestone tries to get Frond arrested because of sexism. And when a group of elves seeks refuge at the start of the second book, they’re treated with unconditional racism. It felt so arbitrary, that the bad -isms were only there for the sake of bad -isms. I’ll acknowledge that the hatred against Zed is justified to an extent. A half-elf warlock is what caused the Dangers in the first place, giving the whole race a bad rep. But that doesn’t excuse the cases of sexism or anything else, really. 

Alright, alright. For the sake of argument, let’s just take the bad -isms at face value: a conflict in the story that needs to be resolved. But what is there to talk about? The thing with The Adventurers Guild is that beyond the social commentaries, the main plot really isn’t that interesting. Dangers are out there, go kill ‘em. That’s really it. 

But it damn well tries to be different, that’s for sure. It succeeds to an extent in the two main characters, Zed and Brock. These two both have secrets that they keep from each other, and it’s all “Ooooooh” and stuff. Unfortunately, they have very plastic and flat personalities. The rest of the characters… are just as flat. They’re relatable, which—if you’re not anal about writing—would make them super-duper amazing and lovable. But besides the occasional dumb “kid-like” interactions they have with each during their down time, a lot of their dialgoue feels forced. For someone like me, who has grown to love narcissists like Senku from Dr. Stone, I couldn’t care less about the cast of The Adventurers Guild. I had to do ridiculous things like picturing a character as Lord Don’ator to not fall asleep! The third book does introduce a pretty witty new character, who exists for sarcastic comments, and shows up too late to offset everyone else. 

And speaking of the third book, let’s talk about it in the least spoilery way possible. Remember when I said “beyond the social commentaries, the main plot really isn’t that interesting”? Well, that shows. Night of Dangers completely does away with social undertones and becomes a tedious slog that’s just as cliché as anything else, despite how the trilogy desperately tried to avoid it. The only saving grace is the admittedly enjoyable climax, but saying that it offsets everything else is a stretch. One character even deflects from the main issue super intentionally and it’s never explained why. 

Speaking of intentionally, that word is everything wrong with The Adventurers Guild. Virtually none of it felt natural; each story beat was 110% deliberate. As much as having a plan for the narrative is good (in fact, it’s essential), you can’t plan literally everything. You need to have a stream of consciousness effect when writing, which allows some aspects of the story to tell themselves. And if you end up needing to pull something out of your ass, go back and edit earlier parts so that it has proper context. I can’t describe exactly why, but I just felt in my writer-brain that this whole series was… wrong.

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Final Verdict: 6/10

The Adventurers Guild tried a lot of things, and it all felt flat to me. In the end, I have no idea what the takeaway of this series is. Is it that racism is bad, or that you shouldn’t keep secrets? Whatever it is, there’s definitely something out there that’s conveyed it better. While this isn’t the worst series on the market, it is still just about as bland as its name implies.