Dec 27, 2021
Firstly, the art for Dark Arts Master is brilliant. While the art is polished, with drawn lines being clean and crisp, the way details have been put in and the use of shadows add a 'sketchy' raw dimension into the mix. The use of black tones is heavy but never excessive, creating a dark atmosphere for the world it illustrates but never submitting to bleak nihilism. There is in fact, plenty of optimism within the story and in the art.
Sadly, my appreciation for Dark Arts Master is limited to its art. Though it suggests a bleaker, thematically complex narrative with the main character's tragic
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backstory and the manga's mature art style, Dark Arts Master plays out like a typical Shounen series (paced a tad poorly, however).
The worldbuilding is shallow, the story pace is off (they introduced an antagonist like so early in the story and had her start doing devious things off the bat. Not to mention the focus on action scenes over worldbuilding, atmosphere, and character depth made the manga's storytelling goals appear rather shallow), the character motivations are, for the most part, superficial and one-dimensional and at the moment, the narrative is heading toward uninteresting territory, focusing on the moment to moment scenes instead of properly developing its main characters (the attempt at developing the antagonist in chapter 7 is so transparent it's almost laughable).
The thing is that we already have a Dark Arts Master done well. Tongari Boushi no Atelier has a similar art style and a naive (and rather insufferable), main protagonist, too, but its world-building, characters, and themes are much more robust and complex with the main protagonist eventually outgrowing her near totalic optimism and naivety and growing into a much more complex and interesting character, still holding onto her optimism but conflicted by the shades of grey all about her. I would suggest checking that series out instead. All in all, Dark Arts Master has incredible art, but its content has more to be desired. Still, despite all of its issues, there is a nice storytelling clarity in the way that the author/artist has drawn action and important story beats that I feel it was a little bit of a shame that the manga turned out the way it did. A lot of potential here that sadly was not reached.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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