Apr 16, 2022
Have you ever experienced something so shockingly bad that you have literally no solid recollection of what you just did or experienced afterwards? That is literally how I felt after I read Kunoichi no Ichi! I simply had a single thought in my mind when I finished reading it: “What the heck did I just read?”
Story: 4
The story is completely nothing like what you might expect after reading the synopsis of the manga. You will not get the slow, gradual progression that most school-themed manga usually follow. It is more of a rather incoherent plot which is so incredibly fast-paced that you really have no
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time to enjoy the setting of the manga itself, nor do you actually get to understand each character that well. One minute, you are getting yourself comfortable with the plot and characters and the next minute, you have completely no clue about what is going on because the individual “arcs” in the manga go by so quickly in a bad way and there are little to no transitions in between each of them. As for the writing itself, you are not getting what you came for. You are not getting to see Ichi, our main character, really develop into some kind of mutual relationship or even friendship with other students, nor do you see him using his own techniques to survive his time in the ninja academy. All the “techniques” you will see are just acts of kindness born from the power of friendship and not something brainstormed by Ichi himself. He mainly gets himself out of sticky situations via plot armor, the power of friendship, or by the other characters in the manga who actually have unique abilities of their own. You physically do not get to see Ichi himself develop in order to survive in this new, unknown world.
Characters: 4
For a “school-themed” manga, there is certainly a huge lack of characters. You have Ichi, the main character, the only 3 classmates that he has (or that are actually shown and written about), and you get the pretty much a singular faculty member and the villains. This is a “ninja academy.” Where are all the other students other than the same 3 of Ichi’s classmates? Where are the other faculty members? Literally the largest group of characters stem from the villains and they are basically throw-away characters for how insignificant most of them are. Also, with how quick the plot progresses, there is little to no character development at allーnot even with Ichi himself. You basically get to know Ichi and the situation that he is in, and for the rest of the characters, you basically are introduced to who they are and you get to know their quirks and traits. They basically receive no character development and as for Ichi’s classmates, the only development they get is slowly getting attracted to Ichi because this is a harem manga after all. So it’s really disappointing to see how little emphasis was put on the characters and their development over the course of the manga.
Art: 6
I’m not that against the art, but I wouldn’t say that I am a fan of it either. The art itself is pretty average and then the quality of it suddenly jumps up whenever there is a lewd, ecchi, or teasing scene which is something to expect from an ecchi manga I guess.
Overall: 5
I mostly enjoyed this manga. I wasn’t that put off by it until I actually finished it and was absolutely shell-shocked by what I had just read like I was practically in disarray about how bad the manga really was after going over it mentally. I certainly had no issues while reading it, but I had no strong feelings towards or against it either. While the serious parts of the story were pretty bland, the ecchi parts of it were not terribly designed. More or less, it was just funny to see Ichi get caught in an episode with one of his classmates and be totally oblivious to it while the other party is freaking out. I do wish that this manga conformed to the school-theme of it much more as there was a huge lack of actual characters (including background filler characters) and a huge lack of actual plot and character development. This seemed less of a school-themed manga and more of an excuse to write about a ninja trap surrounded by girls since even the girls were pretty much unfazed by the whole guy thing.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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