Ranked #9820

9th Sleep (Manga)

While browsing the local manga rack this one caught my eye. First off, the art is beautiful. What you see on the cover will not deceive you, the inside art is equally beautiful (which I guess shouldn't be surprising considering the mangaka).

Unfortunately, that is by far the strongest point of this piece. Not to say that the manga is bad, but it does have its faults.

I would like to point out here that THIS IS NOT YAOI! Now, I bought the "June" edition of this that had a huge "Yaoi Manga" written on the cover (which admittedly got me to buy it in the first place). Well, it is not :S:S It's not even shounen-ai as it says on this page. Essentially, there is nothing wrong with that, but they are marketing it as both Yaoi and Shounen-ai manga, which it is not, and if you´re expecting that, you will be disappointed (at least I was, I mean, not even a kiss?). Actually, if anything, this is a completely straight manga with a slashable (at best) couple. Oh well...

For those still interested in it, these are my thoughts on it:

The story itself is solid. Not the most original but interesting idea. Characters are quite stereotypical (which I didn't mind too much actually) but they are very underdeveloped. Luke, the main character, is goodness incarnate and does develop slightly in that sense, but Malchus, his brother and the antagonist, for whom I had a lot of hope in the beginning, basically just keeps repeating one thing over and over again, until he finally "realises" what is important. I wished to see a bit more development in his personality, in stead of a sudden jump.

But the thing I mind the most, this manga isn't long, but it is repetitive as hell. We have 3 cycles of Luke reincarnating and pretty much the same outcome and storyline in 2 of them. I could easily say that the second incarnation is completely obsolete since we don't even get to know the characters better, they just act the same as in the first chapter.

Not to spoil the ending but I will say that, even though I was disappointed with the lack of any BL material, it was a nice ending, or at least, i liked it.

All in all, my mark does float between 6 and 7 since this is pretty much an average, unremarkable manga, but in the sea of very bad stuff that goes around, this one is at least enjoyable, and should be credited with that. And, ofc, the art *_*! read more