Feb 6, 2023
tl;dr: An adaptation of a story with a premise that may have some potential despite not being all that original, but that is being told pretty badly and doesn’t really get all that far into telling it either.
This manga is a short adaptation of a light novel series. I say it’s a short adaptation because the manga is only two volumes long and as far as I can tell it adapts only the first volume and part of the second volume of the light novel, though the light novel is only five volumes long so it’s not like the amount it adapts is negligible as
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is sometimes the case with such adaptions. The manga sets up a lot but only manages to touch on everything it set up. Though honestly, I’d be pretty surprised if the five volumes of the light novel series manage to deal with everything properly either considering there was quite a lot.
The basic concept isn’t all that original, a battle royal between people with special powers and supernatural partners for some major reward. In this case, it’s eleven descendants of King Arthur competing to become his successor, each of whom have a blade with an aspect of Excalibur and the ability to summon a knight from the Knight of the Round Table. The successor to King Arthur then gets the right to take over the world, with the requirement that they then save the world from an impending apocalypse. It also brings in other elements of Irish and English mythology, though the core is very much rooted in Arthurian legend, which I don’t think is an overdone setting for such manga but also not a particularly fresh one.
Something that is somewhat original in this case is that the protagonist, Rintaro, isn’t actually a descendant of King Arthur or an official participant in his succession, he’s just a really strong guy that just kind of threw himself into supporting the weakest candidate because he thought it would be interesting. Said weakest candidate is Luna, an energetic but kind of stupid girl that starts the series having sold off her Excalibur when she was short on money, but despite being pretty useless still acts high and mighty with everyone. The two have somewhat of an interesting dynamic, in that Rintaro is supposed to be an edge lord and Luna is supposed to be an airhead, though it rarely came through all that well. It wasn’t very good at portraying either of the two’s thought processes and their interactions in general kind of lacked any sort of chemistry. There are lighter school-oriented slice of life portions that I think were supposed to push this aspect, but they were rushed through and thus didn’t have much of an impact. As for the rest of the cast, they were all incredibly flat and weren’t really fleshed out at all. Thus, in essence the manga isn’t particularly strong in terms of it’s cast either.
The action was pretty weak too. There is some attempt at focusing on powers and giving combat some depth, but it was largely too simplistic for how slow it was paced. Rintaro is also supposed to be overpowered, but that disappears pretty much immediately, so it’s kind of bizarre how much effort it put into emphasizing how overpowered he is if they were just going to throw that out all of a sudden.
I should note that it feels like the manga has an original ending because it rushes through a bunch of major things really quickly. I also haven’t read the novel, but it feels like it in general was much more explicit about things that were just supposed to be hints, or at least should have been. Thus, the plot overall feels like it’s not really flowing properly or being conveyed all that carefully. As such, it may well be better to skip reading the manga so as to avoid spoiling things that would be better revealed while reading the light novel. In terms of the art, the character designs were solid, but the art style itself wasn’t all that great and the art quality was pretty weak too.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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