Itsuwaribito◆Utsuho◆
Itsuwaribito

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This is an absolute must-read manga. If you read Naruto, you will love this. The story is set in the early years of Japan stemming from a small mountain village. There we find the hero of the story, a teenage orphan named Utsuho Azako. He is a self proclaimed itsuwaribito (one who masters the art of theft) whose philosophy in life is that lying is the ultimate weapon and at the same time, the ultimate savior. Now this is one of his most likable traits. Not only does he use it so often, he lies about lying, and ... very often tricks people just for lols.

THIS MANGA IS FUNNY AS HELL BECAUSE OF HOW OFTEN HE LIES AND TRICKS PEOPLE.

As far as he's concerned, lying is the only way he knows how to help people. He's laid back, lazy (of course), but friggin ninja bad a**. Rockin' the bandana with his signature design, he moves like ninjas do, only cooler with more intricacy and finesse like you've never seen before. He has never lost his cool in a fight nor has he lost a fight at all; its as if the fight is always going his way and according to his plans (which in the first 3 friggn volumes...it does!)

So when he sets off on his inevitable adventures away from the orphanage to travel the world and lie to everyone he meets (to help them, of course) he inevitably meets up with people and gets a little group together. Pochi the cute Tanuki, Yakuma the truthful, trustworthy surgeon and Neya ("ne-chan" as Utsuho calls her cuz she's a girl) all have their own dreams and aspirations, but have similar interests in helping people in their own way. Yakuma heals people and tells truths, Neya helps people materially/physically (as spurred by her maternal instinct) and Utsuho just does whatever he likes however he likes, whenever he likes...just awesomer.

Did I mention that all of them conveniently have ninja skills? No? Well, they do. Yakuma has his knife. Utsuho has his bombs, potions, and tools. Neya has her kunai and shuriken and an occasional bow & arrow.

Overall, the art is drawn flawlessly with scene-appropriate chibis. Crisp, clean and fluent and appealing and unique. Utsuho kinda reminds me of Gin Ichimaru from BLEACH cuz of the white hair and eyes. Other than that, EVERYONE has an original look. Neya looks especially cute. i can see why Utsuho....er...um...*cough* spoiler *cough*


P.S. If anything, just remember that after reading volume 1, YOU WILL NOT WANT TO STOP.

This isn't a review this is just a guide. No just kidding it's a review.
This manga has multiple scenarios like this and each one is absolutely amazing. It plays with my mind and has battle scenes. Not the intense ones you would see in other mangas but you see psychological battles going inside the mind. It makes me really question what's a lie and what isn't. But enough of that. Let's get technical.

Story: 8
The story is about a liar who uses lies to help people. Which is odd. I'm sure we have ALL been through the experience of like, "My dog ate my homework" ... i'm sure almost none of you actually said that, but we all told a lie at one point. Also, It probably wasn't a "good" lie.

Liars lie but once it goes in you can't tell what's a lie and what's not. And this manga plays on that element. Follow the characters and see how almost every character lies in some way or another.

Art: 7
The art could be better but for the overall mood of the manga it works nicely. I'm not an artist so I can't really nag on this. The art was nice but there was no eye catching moment within it.

Character: 9
Character? Oh my this have character. The character's were well drawn out and you have these moments in the manga that only work with these characters each scene can't be done without the characters. I mean I loved every character even the villains. I could relate to many of the characters and it was all very interesting. It was just so...real. The characters were all possible inside our world. Except the battles, but all very doable.

Enjoyment: 10
I loved it, if i had the whole collection and if was all done. I could read the entire thing in about 2 days. And that's saying a lot. I am usually one to read a couple chapters and take a break but I actually read every chapter every piece of dialogue and I don't do that often. So yes It's a definite TEN

Overall: 9
It's a must read, and I'm sure that you'll like it or even LOVE it. Amazing and compelling I'm surprised that only about 250 people actually included it in their list. I just felt the need to write a review due to the lack of people. If I write a review more people would see it if more people saw it.. More people would read this, and support the author. I'm off to a bookstore now... I needa read more.

At first the series is somewhat episodic--the protagonist, Utsuho, going off on various journeys in which he recruits a few members in to his 'family', which lasts the first handful of volumes. Afterwards, the 'main story' begins, which is his quest for the mysterious Kokonotsu treasure. Now to reviews...

Story (8)
Oh, it's not terribly unique, granted, but it IS interesting. Utsuho is a clever and strong protagonist, and not just a good liar either. He's smart, able to think quickly and calculate good strategies. This helps the manga discard any of the 'I MUST GET STRONGER!' plot lines and focus on the arcs. Each is interesting, ... the manga has very few slow moments and it keeps a great pace. Utsuho will help various people out for a long while until he recruits the heroine, soon after he visits a village where an old friend lives and afterwards sets off for the Kokonotsu.

Art (8)
Yuuki Iinuma has a simple art style, but he's good at what he does and it fits the series quite well. His action is well done, his style is consistent, and for the most part his proportions are correct. No complaints there.

Characters (10)
Each character is very intriguing in their own way, so I'll park here a bit. All the characters are important, which is a good asset for this type of manga.
Utsuho is ambiguous at times, but he much more than just a liar and that's his strongest point besides his wit. A likable protagonist. The doctor, Yakuma, and the heroine, Neya, form the 'main three' of sorts, and are the closest to Utsuho, after the tanuki, Pochi. Besides them, Hikae, the mischievous former guardian of one of the Kokonotsu treasures, joins the group, and they constantly bump into the antagonists Choza and Uzume, who have their own backstory concerning Kuroha, a villain that appears often. Another woman also joins the group after a while, and I understand that in later volumes Utsuho's family is a force to be reckoned with.

Enjoyment (9)
Itsuwaribito Utsuho can handle both serious and comedic moments together quite well, causing the overall enjoyment to be high. It has interesting arcs, a good pace, good characters, and high re-read value.

Overall (9)
It isn't that there aren't things to complain about, but all things considered, it is well done and, for a historical action that has both wit and some drama, is a great title well worth reading.

This manga was pretty dang good if memory serves me correctly. While there were definitely pacing issues in the early parts of the story (We meet quite a few characters over the span of the first two volumes) it evened itself out over time and eventually managed to hit a decent stride.

Story: 7
The plot is serviceable. The lead character, Utsuho Azako, is a young orphan living with a monk. He loves to lie, trick, and play pranks. After tragedy strikes, he becomes an Itsuwaribito, a criminal who utilizes lying as their primary tool. However, unlike traditional itsuwaribito, he decides to use his lies for good ... and to save over a hundred people. On his journey he meets allies and enemies while sticking to his creed of constantly lying. The overall plot is far less relevant than each individual story arc and the characters that fill them. Still, the story is not bad at all.

Art: 7
The art was pretty good. The character designs were amazing; each one is unique and stand out among the rest. The action scenes were well choreographed. The only issue is that comedic scenes and moments tend to have the characters go all chibi and it messes a bit with the tone of scenes prior.

Character: 9
The characters make this manga. Each one is full of personality, and almost none of them come off as grating to watch. The way the characters synergize, interact, and bounce off one-another is always a delight. The only gripe is that the early-story enemies are pretty one-note and shallow. However, as stated before, the author fixes that issue later on with much more compelling foes.

Enjoyment: 9
I absolutely LOVED this story when it was first coming out. I made it a point to read each volume as it came out in my Local Library and at my Book Store a town over. I wish I bought every volume instead of just most of them, because it's much harder to look back on this adventure.

Overall: 8
I loved this franchise back when it was coming out, but that was a few years ago. Still, I think it's worth at least an 8 considering how much time I sunk into this manga, as well as the memories I have.

Itsuwaribito
I first came across the manga in the library, and I was bored enough to read a whole new series since I had caught up with the whole One piece manga. My eye crossed Itsuwaribito a few times, but never caught my eye until one day I visited the library again and decided to try it. So far, I haven't regretted it.

7/10 Story: The plot isn't that original since I've seen a lot of olden days ninja themed mangas and animes. The characters are original, but the plot could be better to me.

6/10 Art: The author's art was definitely new to me, and the ... art had a lot of curves and good inking especially on the hair. One thing I noticed was that the characters seemed off, especially the mouth and eyes. The eyes weren't outstanding, only Minamo's eyes seemed nice. Another complaint I have is the hands, which don't really look like hands. It seemed awkward and I understand that hands are difficult to draw, but compared to other artwork, it's acceptable.

8/10 Characters: The characters are pretty well done though the character 'development' is low. Utsuho, the main character is a lier, but a lier for good. The story continues with him opening up to many others, and adding more people into his group.

8/10 Enjoyment: I had a lot of fun reading this story and even read it twice!

7/10 Overall: If you are big fan of Naruto, wou will enjoy this.

tl;dr: A manga about lies and trickery that’s terrible with lies and trickery but is pretty good dumb fun anyway.

An Itsuwaribito is a master of trickery, capable of using stealth, lies, and force in order to enact their plans. This manga focuses on one named Utsuho who decided to use his skills to help people. At least at first. As the manga progresses, it becomes about a treasure hunt for nine treasures known as the Kokonotsu that various individuals including Utsuho and his friends are searching for. Regardless of whether the focus is on helping people or searching for the Kokonotsu, the manga remains pretty ... episodic throughout with the only things really carrying over from arc to arc being the main cast. That’s probably the core of the weaknesses of this manga, though also one of its strengths.

The biggest problem in this manga is that it’s very haphazard and inconsistent with everything. It really felt like there was no overarching plan with regards to anything, whether it be character arcs or plot. The main cast grows to a group of ten characters eventually. But of those, only the first four felt like they were properly written. With everyone else, it felt like they were never planned to be so important when they were first introduced, but the mangaka decided to do so anyway, and then had to write around their original portrayal in order to make them characters that would fit. At times this was decent, in that this shift was done through a proper character arc. Other times there was just really forced writing trying to make their previous actions somehow be different from what they appeared to be.

It also felt like the group holistically had really bad chemistry and just in general felt kind of off and not like a proper group. The plot sometimes taps into this lack of unity at times, but even when it’s supposed to show them as united it doesn’t land all that well. Furthermore, the writing also didn’t really handle characters backgrounds and motivations all that well, just kind of throwing them in there randomly at times and in ways that doesn’t help flesh them out at all. And a lot of the cast was also just in general useless or lacking in presence for long stretches. The same applies to side characters that it tries to give depth, as the writing surrounding them often ends up running around itself trying to fit as much into their character as it can but it just feels really forced. All in all, it made it pretty hard to get invested in or like any of the characters outside of Utsuho and his Tanuki friend Pochi. I suppose the ending wasn’t bad, but it was a pretty generic ending and due to lack of investment in the cast not all that satisfying either, and thus not that great either.

The plot was also really random. The overarching plot is simple enough, with the cast going around helping people and looking for treasures. There was some foreshadowing of what it’s all building up to at times, though it doesn’t really matter as it essentially gets overwritten. But overall, every arc has very little connection to any other arc. However, there’s a lot of variation in terms of what that actually goes on from arc to arc. This results in every arc feeling messy in new ways. One would expect a manga where the protagonist is a master of lies and trickery fights others to have a psychologic aspect to it. In certain arcs, it certainly tried to do so. However, for the most part it glosses over things entirely. It involves a lot of characters being able to predict tricks with no explanation for why they were able to see what was going to happen, or characters being able to trick others with it not really making sense why the trick worked. It’s all incredibly simplistic and not something that you’re really supposed to think about much.

The plot beyond that felt similarly mishandled. Each arc very much felt like the type of story where the plot wasn’t really planned out much in advance so twists and turns were thrown around on the fly even if they led to plot holes and inconsistencies. I suppose that that’s pretty standard for a shounen action manga, but the problem here is that the fights here are still portrayed like they should be battles of wit and skill, so them playing out like battles of strength feels really weird. It also results in action that isn’t all that interesting because it’s trying too hard to stay grounded, though that too is pretty random from arc to arc. At first the manga felt pretty grounded, other than the talking Tanuki, with the general stance being that anything supernatural was just a trick. However, it dropped that completely with all sorts of crazy things thrown in over time, ranging from self-moving combat dolls to abilities vastly superior to what humans are capable of. The problem though is that none of these really stuck, with them pretty much always being constrained to a single arc. The writing also tries to somehow explain a lot of these as rooted in science, which was fine for some things, but with others completely ridiculous.

With all that said, that does make the manga kind of fun in a sense. Since the mangaka wasn’t all that concerned about keeping things consistent, having an overarching narrative, or making sense in general, he went crazy with the story. It moves fast and goes in all sorts of directions, making it unpredictable and despite all the messiness, pretty interesting. It helps that there’s a large focus on humor with it being throws out in spades and most of it being pretty good. It’s not the type of manga you really get pulled into, but more so the type you just turn off your brain and flip through, and in terms of that it’s pretty solid. I do wish it had better art though. The quality is decent, but the character designs and style in general felt kind of dull.