Candy & Cigarettes
Candy and Cigarettes

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Candy & Cigarettes is a manga I picked up half as a joke, initially expecting a trashy loli comedy along the lines of "Kill Me Baby", with some crime elements sprinkled in.

However, I was very pleasantly surprised at the high quality of the art, story and characters, as well as the general lack of fanservice.
Instead, C&C serves a quick-witted, fast-paced and fun crime action story, with just the right amount of comedy occasionally popping up here and there. The author's love for film noir and classic American crime stories shines through every page, with the story and artstyle both emitting a strong vibe of western ... influence.

As is the nature of spy/assassin stories, C&C follows an episodic style of the main duo getting a "job" and them executing it. However, a simple yet clever backstory is spun around the main characters, that ends up connecting quite nicely to a story divided into several arcs. Overall, the pacing is very honest, giving us action and cool fights when we want them, as well as calm dialogue scenes as breaks in-between, giving us time to breathe and avoiding the action becoming too loud and unejoyable.

Unfortunately, C&C does suffer from a few classic problems/tropes for this type of story. There, again, we see the inspiration by American works of the like, reminding also of the early James Bond movies at times. Namingly:
1. There are apparently no other spies/assassins who could fight against evil conspiracies in the entire world. For some wild reason, the main duo has to do everything by themselves.
2. As a direct result, the kill:death ratio is absolutely insane, with our protagonists basically committing genocide, if you add it all up.
3. As a direct result, the story ends up being laughably predictable.

But I am willing to accept those for the sake of a fun read. The author clearly intended for it to be this way, aiming to achieve exactly that type of story. And I will concede that he does make occasional attempts at justifying these points. Aside from this, C&C does suffer from a handful of plain logical errors in the writing, that are difficult to overlook. And one more unfortunate thing I will point out and don't think can be excused, is the sudden surge of clearly fanservice shots of our underage main girl from volume 2 onwards. It's a very stark contrast between volume 1 and 2, so I personally suspect that the publisher asked the author to spice it up a bit to make the series more attractive, or something like that. That wouldn't be the first time I see that.
These shots don't take away anything, but they certainly don't add anything either. It just feels unnecessary.

So, in conclusion, 7/10. Fun, action, good pacing, hits the mark for the genre. If you want deep, complex plot and character development, probably not. This isn't an outstanding work nowadays, simply due to the fact that the main inspiriation seems to be material that is itself pretty outdated. But Candy & Cigarettes is very good at what it does, so if you are into this type of story, 100% recommend.

Candy and Cigarettes perfectly nails my personal love for the stereotype of little girl+old man combo and the wit and dialogue that comes off the two of them all to the backdrop of an amazing crime action story about politics and secret societies. The story is about an ex-cop becoming an assassin with a schoolgirl who has known nothing but murder her entire life and how their differnet lives up until now influence who they are as well as their opinions on their new partnership in this world of kill or be killed. The Characters overall are solidly written with plenty of likable characters and ... an equal amount of hatable villains with barely any of either of them going too far and feeling cartoonishly evil or good etc.

The Story itself I felt was very well paced and all the arcs and twists and turns along the way combined with the solid pannelling, story flow and overall progression made it feel like a classic crime film from the 80s and I mean that in the highest praise possible sort of way. However, I do agree the final 4~ chapters or so do feel somewhat rushed and forced but in the way of it feels like they could have lasted another 2 or 3 chapters. The actual writing during these chapters I thought was almost perfectly fine not counting a few smaller details I felt like should have been expanded on further. No, the final volume of chapters felt rushed in how it felt like we were supposed to get an entire new volume still to develop this entire finale that was builtup for the last 15 chapters or so but the ending itself was still good, just lacking in its execution.

Overall, I loved this series for its great characters, dialogue, pleasent art style and wonderful story about shadow organizations trying to control the world from the shadows and its commentary on how we view conflict today.

(since this is an early review, my ratings will be lower than usual)

Candy & Cigarettes is a new manga about an old man trying to earn money for his grandchild's medication but soon found himself into a high paying job where he helped a 11 yr old girl and an organization to assassinate high profile people whom were involved a secret criminal organization that operates and corrupt Japan behind the scene.

So far the manga had shown some very nice action scenes and ok character development. However, this premise is not something really eye opening as it had done a millions times before not just in ... manga, but also in movies, tv shows, and literature. Unless the stakes are getting higher and higher, this manga might get very autopilot

Story 6/10

The artwork in Candy & Cigarettes is the best part of this manga. Influence by Cartoon artwork and OG anime art, every page of this manga is very nice looking and different.

Art 9/10

The characters in Candy & Cigarettes aren't really much different than many similar assassination manga. But they are likable, and likable characters are great.

Characters 6/10

For the most part Candy & Cigarettes isn't a manga that will break high grounds, however if done properly, it can evolve into a great joyride of shootouts. And oh please make this happen.

Enjoyment 7/10

Overall, Candy & Cigarettes has potential to be really enjoyable or meh.

Overall 6/10

Recommend? Not really, but if you want, why not?

Good anime material? may...be...