Absolute Duo

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tl;dr: A battle academy manga that’s pretty generic but has a cast that’s pretty enjoyable to read about anyway.

This manga is about a group of students attending a school called Koryo Academy where, Exceeds, high school students known who are able to summon weapons known as Blazes, are trained as fighters. As such it’s a battle academy and due to its character composition, it’s also one with a harem subtext as battle academies often seem to be. So, it is definitely generic in a lot of ways, but I think the implementation is solid.

Plot wise, this encompasses essentially the same amount of content as the ... anime, four light novel volumes, though it rushes and skips parts considerably compared to the anime, which already was skipping a lot of what was in the light novels, so there is a lot simply left out. Despite that, I found the pacing solid enough and didn’t find the story hard to follow though that may just have been because I had already seen the anime and was familiar with the story and characters already. Ultimately, the story as far as the manga goes is basically just an introduction arc where the characters and world are introduced. There are hints regarding their background and motivations and where their character arcs will go, but there isn’t really any progress yet. Similarly, there are hints about what the overarching plot beyond just being academy students will be, but as of the end of the manga there is absolutely no progress in that regard. As such, the plot is mostly just a training arc where the cast is put into various situations and fights for the purposes of training without any long-term high stakes. So while I don’t think the plot is much of an issue, it’s not something that really holds up the manga much in and of itself.

What does hold up the manga is the characters. The protagonist Tor is someone trying to become stronger for the sake of revenge, though is still a pretty kind person. He’s the type of protagonist that has something special about them that makes them seem weak, in this case in that while most Blazes are short range attack focused weapons like swords or spears his Blaze is a shield, but he makes up for by also being good at martial arts and is thus actually really strong overall. The main heroine Julie is an airheaded kuudere. Other characters include the strict on herself and others yamato-nadeshiko Tomoe, the gentle and meek but hardworking girl Miyabi, the dere-dere spoiled ojou-sama Lilith, and the sociable genki girl Imari. The author also made sure to include a tsundere, but made him a guy, and Tor’s only male friend, which I found pretty funny. As is evident, the cast is composed entirely of tropes and is pretty generic. However, I think it does a really good job at implementing all of these tropes wherein each character is likable in their own right and with lots of good chemistry between them leading to a lot of amusing small moments, and thus it’s pretty easy to get invested in them and enjoyable to just watch them do what they do even when the plot surrounding them isn’t that great.

Another thing I liked about this manga is the tone. Most battle academy stories just have the concept of their being a battle academy where they train soldiers as perfectly normal. This one actually acknowledges that the whole concept is kind of screwed up. Ultimately, the impact on that isn’t anything more than just adding a layer of edge on to the standard events that occur in battle academies, but I felt it was enough to make things more interesting and differentiate it from other similar manga. It also made the action seem cooler and made it more exciting, though ultimately beyond some strategy to things at times there isn’t all that much depth. The art was also really great, especially in the last volume where it felt like the artist was going all out.