Parallel Paradise

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From the author of Elfen Lied and various other manga, Parallel Paradise is a story about the delicate subject of gender differences, sexuality and society as a whole. All of these topics are handled in a delicate yet hard-hitting way that really glorify the best parts of female empowerment and feminism.

The story portrays an utopia run entirely by strong independent young women. They live in a world where there haven't been male humans in over 3000 years until a day when an unlikely male hero is transported there from our world. Now I know what you might be thinking: "This is an Isekai manga? ... Must be crap then." This is a bias I advise you toss aside for now, since unlike most isekai this isn't a typical story about a character going through an average RPG storyline of gaining some mystical power, acquiring his own harem and going on a quest to defeat some for of evil deity. While this story might feature those elements at some parts, this is a much sophisticated story that really breaks new ground in the possible potentials of isekai manga. The male protagonist in this story is merely a driving force to show you a magnificent land ruled by capable female societies. In no way does this character end up becoming a mary sue who manages all the issues of the world by himself. On his quest the MC bonds with many female warriors with whose help he manages to overcome many hurdles. The gender differences do come into play a bit but in no way does it focus on either male or female superiority in this story. The author is clearly a feminist at heart and has a lot of knowledge on this subject.

There is a lot of great things in this manga which I do not wish to give away with this review. I urge you to read this manga if you are interested in gender equality and female empowerment. An absolute masterpiece.

So, this manga was enjoyable for a short while, I thought it had potential and might be good for some laughs, but nope. I first read 15 chapters because at the time that was all that was out, the story seemed interesting at first: Dude finds himself in a new world, finds out a god cursed everyone and his only options of saving them is to either plow them all or kill that god.

Story: What I said just about sums it up thus far, the sex scenes were if i remember correctly far less forced in during the first 15 chapters, but after ... putting the series on hold for a good while and reading up to chapter 23 everything the story had going for it that I found interesting has been tossed out just about because the past several chapters focused *heavily* on sex scenes that didn't really further the plot in any way and only occasionally did stuff that furthered the plot. I feel this should be the other way around, this is essentially hentai currently because there is pretty much no plot to be had and constant sex scenes for the sake of having them.

Art: The art is the best part of this, it isn't awful. It is in my opinion slightly above average, so I gave it a 7. It's not particularly beautiful or anything, but it is high enough quality that I don't have to worry about eye injuries.

Characters: I gave the characters a 5 to be nice, if I were a professional critic they would probably be rated much lower closer to a 3 or a 2 to be honest. There is hardly any personality to the characters, the character with the most personality is the main character Youta and his can be summed up with "Shounen protag".

Enjoyment: It was enjoyable for a while, but now not so much. I am going to continue to read it for now in the hopes that it begins to focus on the plot more, but chapter 23 ends in a way that makes me think ch 24 is gonna be another sex filled chapter and maybe at the end some plot development. So, I gave this a 6 because while I am disappointed with it at the moment I did have some fun before and I am hoping it will focus on the story more once the mangaka (to put it politely) cools his jets.

Overall: I gave this series a 6 because as I said I did get some enjoyment out of it and the premise seems like it could've been better if he took another route with it, perhaps rather than specify they need to be plowed to be saved from the curse, it just skips to him trying to help them kill that god. But, the mangaka clearly wanted to make something with a lot of sex in it, so naturally he went the route that he did. I have hopes that the mangaka of Elfen Lied can redeem this series to some degree, but I'm not going to hold my breath for it at this point.

Why, Okamoto Lynn? Why? Why are you hurting your fans that much?

Okamoto Lynn is well-known for his most famous manga, Elfen Lied, but I started loving him when I read his true masterpiece, Brynhildr in the darkness. I wasn't hoping a new masterpiece when I started to read this, but I believe he would have done something interesting. Obviously, I was completely wrong.

The begin of the story wasn't bad at all. We've got Youta, an average highschool student who's in love with his beautiful classmate. But one they, we was send to another world (an isekai, you know) by a mysterious creepy girl. A ... world with only girls, monsters, dragons and Kalls, strange living beings who has some similarities with men. The problem came when our MC-kun discovered he can save girls mating them. Really, Okamoto? Really?

This is an example of "we're going to have some good ideas and make them become into a only-sex manga, chapter by chapter".

Probably we have yet a lot of story to read, but what we have now is... awful.