Apr 26, 2023
this manga has me a bit confused, because it is getting carried extremely hard by the awesome art, and that is something I thought I would never say about a manga made by One, who is known for amazing writing and mediocre art.
The weird thing about Versus is that it doesn't feel like it is written by One at all.
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1. bland characters.
Versus started of okay. The characters, the world and the concept felt cliche, but I assumed this was done on purpose and at the end of the first chapter it turned out I was kinda right. there is a twist that subverts expectations and
...
makes the concept and the world more interesting.
While reading chapter 2 I was expecting One to subvert expectations again by having some kind of second twist that would finally make the bland characters a bit more interesting. there is indeed a second twist, but it didn't impact the characters at all. Instead of flashing them out, One introduces a ton of new characters in the next chapter, all of them bland stereotypes, and this was when I started to get a bit confused. This is written by One, so why are the characters and the dialogue so boring?
the next 2 chapters focus on setting up the story, but zero time is spend on flashing out characters.
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2. setup and pacing.
(spoiler warning for the story up until chapter 5)
after having read 5 chapters I still don't really know what to expect from this manga.
13 worlds have fused together, all on the brink of human extinction at the hand of a different unstoppable ''natural enemy.'' (demons, robots, god, giants, a giant world-tree...) the humans have come together and plan to make the ''natural enemies'' fight each other because they are not strong enough to do it themselves.
The concept is really simple and doesn't need the amount of slow setup that it gets. 5 chapters in and we still don't know how the monsters are gonna fight each other and what role the humans have to play in this. what is the hook of the story? what is Versus actually gonna be about? The real (still unknown) hook of the story should have been revealed sooner. because of the slow setup the pacing suffers.
The slow setup combined with the boring characters makes this manga feel really of to me.
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Because I know One is a great writer I hope he is gonna hit us with a third plot twist were he kills of most of the humans and makes some of the monsters the main characters. something like ''Sike! I know these characters are boring. I did it on purpose, here is the actual main character, an interesting demon boy that has to fight in a tournament with the other monsters to decide who gets to kill the last humans and rule this world, while the first ''main character'' wants take revenge because the annoying fairy and his brother got killed, so he teams up with the god who turns out to be a goofy and likable character that makes fun of the ''main character.'' for being so boring.'
I hope something like this happens. It probably won't tho.
It is still early to really judge this manga, but my first impressions aren't the best and I'm a bit confused.
One, why did your writing style change so much?
6/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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