Itsuwaribito◆Utsuho◆
Itsuwaribito

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This manga was pretty dang good if memory serves me correctly. While there were definitely pacing issues in the early parts of the story (We meet quite a few characters over the span of the first two volumes) it evened itself out over time and eventually managed to hit a decent stride.

Story: 7
The plot is serviceable. The lead character, Utsuho Azako, is a young orphan living with a monk. He loves to lie, trick, and play pranks. After tragedy strikes, he becomes an Itsuwaribito, a criminal who utilizes lying as their primary tool. However, unlike traditional itsuwaribito, he decides to use his lies for good ... and to save over a hundred people. On his journey he meets allies and enemies while sticking to his creed of constantly lying. The overall plot is far less relevant than each individual story arc and the characters that fill them. Still, the story is not bad at all.

Art: 7
The art was pretty good. The character designs were amazing; each one is unique and stand out among the rest. The action scenes were well choreographed. The only issue is that comedic scenes and moments tend to have the characters go all chibi and it messes a bit with the tone of scenes prior.

Character: 9
The characters make this manga. Each one is full of personality, and almost none of them come off as grating to watch. The way the characters synergize, interact, and bounce off one-another is always a delight. The only gripe is that the early-story enemies are pretty one-note and shallow. However, as stated before, the author fixes that issue later on with much more compelling foes.

Enjoyment: 9
I absolutely LOVED this story when it was first coming out. I made it a point to read each volume as it came out in my Local Library and at my Book Store a town over. I wish I bought every volume instead of just most of them, because it's much harder to look back on this adventure.

Overall: 8
I loved this franchise back when it was coming out, but that was a few years ago. Still, I think it's worth at least an 8 considering how much time I sunk into this manga, as well as the memories I have.

Itsuwaribito
I first came across the manga in the library, and I was bored enough to read a whole new series since I had caught up with the whole One piece manga. My eye crossed Itsuwaribito a few times, but never caught my eye until one day I visited the library again and decided to try it. So far, I haven't regretted it.

7/10 Story: The plot isn't that original since I've seen a lot of olden days ninja themed mangas and animes. The characters are original, but the plot could be better to me.

6/10 Art: The author's art was definitely new to me, and the ... art had a lot of curves and good inking especially on the hair. One thing I noticed was that the characters seemed off, especially the mouth and eyes. The eyes weren't outstanding, only Minamo's eyes seemed nice. Another complaint I have is the hands, which don't really look like hands. It seemed awkward and I understand that hands are difficult to draw, but compared to other artwork, it's acceptable.

8/10 Characters: The characters are pretty well done though the character 'development' is low. Utsuho, the main character is a lier, but a lier for good. The story continues with him opening up to many others, and adding more people into his group.

8/10 Enjoyment: I had a lot of fun reading this story and even read it twice!

7/10 Overall: If you are big fan of Naruto, wou will enjoy this.

tl;dr: A manga about lies and trickery that’s terrible with lies and trickery but is pretty good dumb fun anyway.

An Itsuwaribito is a master of trickery, capable of using stealth, lies, and force in order to enact their plans. This manga focuses on one named Utsuho who decided to use his skills to help people. At least at first. As the manga progresses, it becomes about a treasure hunt for nine treasures known as the Kokonotsu that various individuals including Utsuho and his friends are searching for. Regardless of whether the focus is on helping people or searching for the Kokonotsu, the manga remains pretty ... episodic throughout with the only things really carrying over from arc to arc being the main cast. That’s probably the core of the weaknesses of this manga, though also one of its strengths.

The biggest problem in this manga is that it’s very haphazard and inconsistent with everything. It really felt like there was no overarching plan with regards to anything, whether it be character arcs or plot. The main cast grows to a group of ten characters eventually. But of those, only the first four felt like they were properly written. With everyone else, it felt like they were never planned to be so important when they were first introduced, but the mangaka decided to do so anyway, and then had to write around their original portrayal in order to make them characters that would fit. At times this was decent, in that this shift was done through a proper character arc. Other times there was just really forced writing trying to make their previous actions somehow be different from what they appeared to be.

It also felt like the group holistically had really bad chemistry and just in general felt kind of off and not like a proper group. The plot sometimes taps into this lack of unity at times, but even when it’s supposed to show them as united it doesn’t land all that well. Furthermore, the writing also didn’t really handle characters backgrounds and motivations all that well, just kind of throwing them in there randomly at times and in ways that doesn’t help flesh them out at all. And a lot of the cast was also just in general useless or lacking in presence for long stretches. The same applies to side characters that it tries to give depth, as the writing surrounding them often ends up running around itself trying to fit as much into their character as it can but it just feels really forced. All in all, it made it pretty hard to get invested in or like any of the characters outside of Utsuho and his Tanuki friend Pochi. I suppose the ending wasn’t bad, but it was a pretty generic ending and due to lack of investment in the cast not all that satisfying either, and thus not that great either.

The plot was also really random. The overarching plot is simple enough, with the cast going around helping people and looking for treasures. There was some foreshadowing of what it’s all building up to at times, though it doesn’t really matter as it essentially gets overwritten. But overall, every arc has very little connection to any other arc. However, there’s a lot of variation in terms of what that actually goes on from arc to arc. This results in every arc feeling messy in new ways. One would expect a manga where the protagonist is a master of lies and trickery fights others to have a psychologic aspect to it. In certain arcs, it certainly tried to do so. However, for the most part it glosses over things entirely. It involves a lot of characters being able to predict tricks with no explanation for why they were able to see what was going to happen, or characters being able to trick others with it not really making sense why the trick worked. It’s all incredibly simplistic and not something that you’re really supposed to think about much.

The plot beyond that felt similarly mishandled. Each arc very much felt like the type of story where the plot wasn’t really planned out much in advance so twists and turns were thrown around on the fly even if they led to plot holes and inconsistencies. I suppose that that’s pretty standard for a shounen action manga, but the problem here is that the fights here are still portrayed like they should be battles of wit and skill, so them playing out like battles of strength feels really weird. It also results in action that isn’t all that interesting because it’s trying too hard to stay grounded, though that too is pretty random from arc to arc. At first the manga felt pretty grounded, other than the talking Tanuki, with the general stance being that anything supernatural was just a trick. However, it dropped that completely with all sorts of crazy things thrown in over time, ranging from self-moving combat dolls to abilities vastly superior to what humans are capable of. The problem though is that none of these really stuck, with them pretty much always being constrained to a single arc. The writing also tries to somehow explain a lot of these as rooted in science, which was fine for some things, but with others completely ridiculous.

With all that said, that does make the manga kind of fun in a sense. Since the mangaka wasn’t all that concerned about keeping things consistent, having an overarching narrative, or making sense in general, he went crazy with the story. It moves fast and goes in all sorts of directions, making it unpredictable and despite all the messiness, pretty interesting. It helps that there’s a large focus on humor with it being throws out in spades and most of it being pretty good. It’s not the type of manga you really get pulled into, but more so the type you just turn off your brain and flip through, and in terms of that it’s pretty solid. I do wish it had better art though. The quality is decent, but the character designs and style in general felt kind of dull.