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Calling Huvahh a manga (or even a one-shot) doesn't really do it service. It's pretty much just a showcase of some character designs and environment motifs for Shadows of the Damned. For the five minutes or so it takes to read it and really observe the art, if you're a fan of Q Hayashida (Dorohedoro) or Shadows of the Damned, it's totally worth reading.

There is barely any plot, dialogue is all mumbling nonsense, and there barely even a through line between pages, but the art is really all you're coming to the book for, so none of that really matters. If you've played Shadows ... of the Damned, you can see some familiar designs and motifs floating around. It's definitely a great companion piece to the game, especially considering how long it is. If you're reading this review right now, you've probably spent more time reading about Huvahh than you would reading Huvahh.

I only give it a 7 because I would have preferred a few more pages and some of the art could use a little more polish, but that grimy sort of crust punk garage album cover art aesthetic is what Hayashida is so well known for.

TL;DR: I'd call it a hidden gem in card game manga. It's made for people who enjoy card games already. It's short enough that it's worth a shot even if you don't play card games. I really recommend it.

Wizard's Soul is a card game manga for card game players. A lot of the terminology and play is probably going to fly above the head of most people who don't play card games. Having experience in card games takes this manga from okay to very good almost immediately. It's hard to talk deck types without going into spoiler territory but the kind of deck the ... main character uses is a deck that's really fun to win with.

The card game, being one that doesn't have a real-life card game (like a lot of other card game manga), is based off of a minor mix of some other card games. It's mostly based on Magic: the Gathering, but has some elements of Yu-Gi-Oh thrown in there. The numbers may be misleading at first but it's just MTG values x500.

No manga is without its faults and one of my complaints would be that the beginning kinda waffles around a bit in terms of whether it wants to focus on the drama between the characters or whether it wants to focus on the mind games between characters and the matches themselves. Another would be the plotline around the external antagonists is very not fleshed out, but the focus is really on the card game and the love of the game in the face of bad experiences. That isn't to say that there isn't drama between the characters, though. It's just that it isn't as important as people may like.

The art is fine, it's nothing to write home about but it doesn't need to be. There's nothing I would call bad in the way of art. It does what it needs to do to get the manga going and the card art is about what you would expect.

Overall, Wizard's Soul is a very good manga that was written by a card game player, for card game players. The art is passable, the plot is a little light but not the focus, and the characters are interesting but not quite fleshed out enough for my liking. Honestly though, for as short as this manga is, a slight tweak like maybe fleshing out every opponent more than they did would have made the entire manga about them, instead of our main character.