Back to chaseisbestop's Profile chaseisbestop's Profile

This is a great manga for music nerds, especially those into classical, as the author uses the narrative to focus on the surreal nature music can possess and a musician's relationship to their craft. The brunt of the story is pretty much every character overcoming some sort of mental hurdle through musical exploration and these tales are executed fairly well. This is thanks to some great art that brings out the very best of the story's emotional moments. The characters aren't super deep, and can be quite cartoony, but honestly I think this makes PPPPPP a more comfy and pleasant experience despite going to some ... dark places like parental abuse.

This manga's aesthetic is so damn gorgeous every time there's a music sequence it's a new potential wallpaper. The art style is refreshing and just capital 'P' pretty, though it's probably not for everyone, at least we can respect MAPOLLO 3's originality. The surreal aspects of the art are actually used quite strategically so as not to lose their impact, so the art of the lower key scenes does most of the heavy lifting. This is generally ok, thanks to neat designs, cute characters and frequent changes in setting making for more diverse surroundings, however dialogue exchanges can be a little stiff as the style doesn't seem to allow for many subtleties in facial expressions, so you get a lot of shots that can blend together. A problem I've heard from others, and one I agree with just to a lesser extent, is that the paneling is not great, and truth be told it can get quite monotonous on long reading sessions.

Long and short of it is, it's a delight to the eyes when it's at it's best, and classical nerds will most definitely enjoy it, and despite a somewhat basic overarching plot and character journeys that aren't the most original in the world, I think this manga is PPPPPPleasant and strongly pulls off it's emotional peaks. It probably shouldn't be binge-read as the majority of the story between the surreal music sequences can look quite bland and dull. You should at least read it to cop the outfits (I want those piano-key earrings bad).

This manga is waste of your time, and if you're looking to get your zombie-fix, you might want to try "I am a hero", or "Fort of Apocalypse" (though if you like your zombie manga you probably have already). To put it simply, this series is just below-average manga:

The art is unimpressive, with characters having mostly bland designs (with 2 highlights being the scientist secondary character, and the main character's design toward the manga's end), but the worst part is just how stiff they look most of the time. I will say though that the artist does make a decent explosion. The story is ... not all that engaging, though it has it's moments, mostly in relation to the main character's inner thought process and struggles with hiding his immorality from his sister, but you can find series that do that far better and without a bland story stapled to them. The gimmick is that the main character has the power to control zombies, which is not a terrible idea, but not explored interestingly enough. The character's themselves are boring, and speak with dialogue that comes off really unnatural. The main character has some layers to him, and there's the scientist character with an enjoyably morbid personality, and a over-the-top, axe-wielding "zombie-hunter" who's extreme behaviour can be quite funny. Non of that really matters as the biggest harp against the story is that the title was clearly canceled before it was finished, having a full "and then a couple months later" to skip over journeying to the destination of the climax and ending moments before the final confrontation.

Alright so tirade aside, you won't die if you read this, but it's got nothing really to offer, not in art, characters, story, or even as fun zombie pulp, it's best quality is the idea of "what if a character controlled zombies in a zombie apocalypse", which is a good writing prompt, but apart from that....it's preeeeetty boring.

(There's a TL:DR version at the bottom of this review)
So Huvahh is a bit of weird one: It's a very short one-shot, almost completely devoid of dialogue (apart from gibberish), and a heavy focus on being creepy and grotesque. That last detail should not be a surprise to those familiar with Q Hayashida's work (Dorohedoro, Dai Dark), and this seems to be an experiment for the author to tell a story almost entirely through visuals, and creating a feeling of witnessing something really alien.

The enjoyment factor for me personally comes from challenging yourself to discern the narrative, by following the art, the paneling, and ... identifying certain tropes and messages. Another part comes from the creepy and violent art, which as an unapologetic Q Hayashida fanboy I thought was pretty cool, but not all that unique for the artist. The one-shot, despite it's shortness, still has a couple Hayashida-isms that are cool to identify if you're a fan (e.g. a character with many eyes stacked on their face).

I think back to how "Gon" tells it's story entirely through visuals and then look at Huvahh and feel that, while I think it's an amicable attempt, the visual storytelling is not as affective as it can be, I think, in part due to the one-shots incredibly short length. Another problem is one that is a result of the nature of such an experiment: After you piece it together, you might find the story is not all that interesting, because it can't really be all that complex, instead touching on a few familiar beats. That's not to say a simple story is inherently inferior to a complex one, it's just something that you might find disappointing after I just talked up how fun it is to figure out the narrative yourself.

TLDR: At the end of the day, Huvahh makes for a really neat little novelty, and fun bite-size experiment in purely-visual storytelling, especially if you are, like myself, a fan of Q Hayashida's work, but nothing all that special. Still, for it's short length, I say go give it a try if you like horror.

Possibly one of the most bizarre things to come out of jojo's bizarre adventure, as it feels like reading a fever dream, in that it makes very little sense. There's a good reason for that though, as this manga serves as an advertisement for gucci, so aesthetics is the name of the game, and the story is just a vehicle for that. Considering the fact that Araki loves his fashion, that can be an endorsement for manga's artwork, and it definitely is gorgeous in parts, but the more incidental panels to show progression of a scene can be a little vague and confusing. It is ... a rare occasion though where a jojo manga was made in full colour from its inception.

In short, read this if you've read up to the first few chapters of the 6th part of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (Stone Ocean) to get the most out of this, but it isn't necessary as none of it is cannon or makes any sense in the story anyway. Don't go in to this with expecting a story, because that's really not with this is about, rather its enjoyment, at least for me personally, comes from just how weird it is and its artwork. This is an ad, not a fully-fledged spin-off like "Thus Spoke Rohan Kishibe".