Oct 9, 2012
One line summary:
Yowaito Nikki is a shounen one-shot that would be better as a two or more volume manga to help with the characterization.
What is this about?
In this world, there are swords with spirits dwelling in them. Hisui bears such a sword which has two downsides:
1) It makes him drunk
2) He cannot kill anyone with it.
It doesn’t help that people are after his life and he doesn’t know why…yet.
...
Protagonists who do not want to kill, have super special weapons, and are being chased by unknown forces is not new in manga or anime. But a sword that makes you drunk? That’s a new one (at least to me).
Who is in it?
There are only three main characters in the story: Hisui, the hero, Shirei, his reason for being, and Sakaki, the bad guy.
Hisui is our cheerful, naïve drunk samurai. Hisui’s motivation in life is to protect his childhood friend Shirei. Why? Because she is his childhood friend! And she made him promise!
Shirei is sweet girl who take cares of Hisui’s wounds but she seems to be hiding something.
Sakaki has his own spirit sword and is after Hisui’s spirit sword.
These are typical one-dimensional shounen characters. There isn’t much to these characters and with an interesting story idea such as this, it would be better if there was MORE to these characters other than “Hisui is loyal” or “Sakaki doesn’t care about anything but getting that sword.”
Is it pretty?
The transitions of the panels are good and the fighting scenes are crisp and clean. I can actually tell what is going on unlike a few shounen mangas where the fighting is sloppy and confusing. The character designs aren’t the most original and nothing stands out about them.
Would you recommend it?
If the story were allowed two or more volumes, if the characters’ pasts were expanded, and if their motivations for being were a little more deeper, this would be a great manga. How it stands now, it is only a good manga. It has so much potential. Give it a shot and let’s hope Takayanagi makes more out of this.
I'm always looking to improve my writing so constructive criticism is welcome~
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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