Apr 15, 2023
I am feeling very conflicted about this manga because while, the premise, world-building, characters, and nuances present in the storytelling - be it dialogue, or panelling are above average and have the potential to be developed further into a strong fantasy story, past the 15th chapter or so, it becomes very clear that this story has no intentions of heading into more intriguing narrative territories. Instead, it seems to want to descend further into the superficial.
Rather than elaborating on Lou, the manga's somewhat intriguing main character's back story and diving into his psychology - as an individual with such extreme talent and prowess to
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the point that he shuns his peers, as well as his strange and rather absurd personality where he seemingly treats all women like princesses, the story seems adamant as thrusting us into a harems tale. Where the main character's encounters with the women around him, as well as the female students he teaches (yes... but you should expect this from the less serious Japanese media by now) develops in such a poorly paced manner, piling up like pancakes to develop into an incredibly insincere harem narrative. Literally! Each female conquest in the story eventually professes their love for him and they get added to a list of brides! Though the lore explains it all away with a medieval 'guys can have more than one wife' world-building lore, the way these romantic narratives develop, are paced, and to add, the main character's nonchalant attitude toward 'loving' them and becoming their husband, it just makes the whole idea of love and romance look like a joke.
Not to mention the treatment of the main character's unique background and powers lean and topple into power fantasy. Lou steamrolls through all the conflict he is thrust into with a couple of waves with his hand and the recital of some words. Occasionally, they can be charming and interesting, with Lou doing interesting things with his magic to resolve situations but most of the time he just jumps on board to quickly resolve the situation by force of convenient magic like 'confess' or something, and claim the girl at the heart of this conflict as his new wife. The really interesting thing about Lou is that he judges and resolves a lot of these moral situations himself and with force. He plays the role of judge, jury and executor, destroying the people he deems as evil. Yet the manga never really addresses this dilemma of what gives him this authority to determine if these so-called immoral people have no capacity for redemption. The thing is... if these villains are written to have no ability to be moral in the first place, it opens up the question of why these people even exist and asks us to think about the inherent morality of humans. The manga opens up these questions, but it's not really answered. They aren't even addressed really despite the manga adopting the Abrahamic theme of fallen angels and God.
All in all, while the first few chapters truly had some potential to develop into an entertaining fantasy tale, the poor harem developments in the later section pushes this story into an escapist story that may entertain with the absurd antics of piling women up as if they were Pokemon (the whole manga presents a rather misogynist ideology too with women being written so simplistically to the point where they literally pile up to love the main character) but ultimately, I think it brings diminishing returns.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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