Grashros

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Grashros was that kind of manga that fooled everyone by the book cover of the five volumes.

The story begins with the premise of having happened 30,000 years in the past and follows the story of the character Akuu, the cursed child, born during the night of a blood moon, said to bring calamity upon all, and his attempt to fight destiny.

I ask myself this question before I start reading a new story of manga: - What is the purpose of reading; of the story itself?

In general, the characters work and the reader grows along with them, namely the children. With this, the story grows at ... an incredible rate to a point where it seems that for the manga not to be cancelled, the artist drew in a rush to finish this particular work (in much the same way that happened to Tite Kubo when he needed to finish Bleach at the end of vol.74), so I don't need to say more.

The biggest problem with this five-volume series is that everything Akuu does has happened in other stories, which means there is no originality. I don't understand why non-renowned artists in the industry use a form of writing that doesn't work for them, being independent (where 90% of readers outside Japan don't know them).

The story had a lot of potentials but time was tight to draw 50 chapters of an original story. I repeat, original. The Japanese manga publishing market is not ready to leave the comfort zone and this is one of the thousands of examples where the market is damaged, artists leave with a bad reputation and everything turns into a snowball. When the protagonist's purpose is revenge, then the artists must show that feeling.
Of course, not everything is bad since I became a big fan of the art of artist Akeji Fujimura. I will probably read more of his works.

Story: 7 | Art: 8 | Character: 7 | Enjoyment: 7
Score: 7/10

I'm gonna try to refrain from using the "so much potential and it's all ruined" point that I see used in here a lot. So instead let's look on the bright side... this is very stupid but it's kinda fun too.

I have made a whole video about this so if you are interested in something beyond a paper review you can check out my stuff from my profile.

Let us start:

Story - 3
A bit of a downer to start but damn this is some bad stuff. The only good element is the setting and since the manga is short we don't see too much of ... that anyway (primal cities, tree villages, or any cool concept that could be there is not... or if it is it's just for the backdrop). Soo the whole B.C. setting feels more like a skin to the manga than anything... still pretty cool tho. To go a bit into the bad the pacing really sucks stuff happens too fast etc. there are some good sides to that (watch the vid) but for the most part, it's not great. Oh, and the manga goes full-on stupid after some point... like "how is this ever real" levels of dumbness.

Art - 9
OOhh baby this carryed the whole experience for me... it's amazing at times and at others, it's just very good. Not the greatest thing ever but sometimes it's pretty close.

Characters - 4
Yeah since the thing moves very fast the characters just kinda blend together into "ppl that fight the MC" "ppl that are killed by the MC" and "ppl that have passionate love with the MC". There is kinda nothing beyond that... there was the potential for more of course but I am going to stop myself before I start going on "what could have been".

Enjoyment - 7
It was exciting, it was fun, and then it was a little too stupid. Not that I'm above the low-level humor I laughed really hard at some of the jokes but at the end, they leave the bad feeling that the manga kinda put on the clown makeup for to reason and started degrading itself... funny but kinda sad. Frankly, that is the only thing I found not enjoyable everything else felt good.

Overall - 5
Long story short I had a good time but that doesn't change the fact that the manga is very mediocre at the end of the day.

It's only 47 short chapters aka it's around the length of a small movie so it's definitely worth the read if you have a boring afternoon.

//This review contains spoilers//


I finished this in a single day, because I don't think I would have been able to get back to it if I had left it for later. This was yet another manga I started due to good art, which it turns out is the only good thing to come out of it. As a child, the protagonist, Akuu, saw his own tribe get wiped out by a huge mammoth known as Grash, and decided to exact revenge on it when he becomes stronger. Shortly after, he finds two other kids - siblings called Shurava and Shuri (this will be relevant later, ... somewhat) and travels with them to another tribe where the people were crazy and tried to kill them. Akuu went bat-shit insane and murdered all of them, his "curse" giving him strange powers or whatever. In the frenzy, he had also hit Shuri, as a result of which she became mute (lol) and Shurava deciding to take revenge on Akuu, who fled to the jungle. Time skip! The protagonist is now an absolute stud who doesn't care about anyone else, is very strong, kills gigantic beasts in a matter of seconds, has lots of sex with girls after each kill, and is only 17 years old. How epic. Character development is non-existent, blood-thirsty enemies become life-saving friends on a whim (like Shurava), there is no real drive behind the actions of literally anyone. The last 20 chapters or so were so fucking stupid that I had to skim through the pages without reading any of the dialogue, because frankly, I doubt they had any substance at all. Akuu eventually does what he set out to do and then decides that he loves Shuri (with whom he had absolutely no interaction with for like, the past 6 or 7 years), has sex with her, she miraculously gets her voice back, gets pregnant and everything is all good and happy again with a new family and tribe, until at the very last panel, the offspring of the Grash is shown with the text "History is cursed to repeat itself." Okay, fuck you too bitch.

I am angry and I am sad. Angry because this is such a shitty manga, and sad because the talent of the artist has been misused to such an extent. This is more of a rant than a review, I suppose, but fuck it. I'm not much of a writer, and this is my first review, which I wrote out of sheer anger and disappointment so forgive me if it feels flimsy or dull.