Taboo Tattoo

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This manga is ok, but nothing special. I don't regret buying it, but I will be selling it now, as don't feel I need to hold on to it, I won't be re-reading it.

I would tag this with:
- Action
- Dark
- Super Powers

Story: 6/10
To be honest, I liked the story up the point where the anime ended (same story as in the anime, the anime covered about half the manga), and slightly afterwards too. It was interesting, there are some real setbacks, and I like when some of the main characters don't have plot armor. The ending however, was just so bad in my opinion... ... The main character suddenly becomes capable of doing something super complex after being depicted as your average guy (specifically not being super smart) for the whole manga. Not only that, all his friends all allies decide to bet on that too. I don't want to spoil too much, so I will remain vague, but that was a weird ending... And it wasn't satisfying for me.

Art: 7/10
The art is consistent and good, not great. The backgrounds aren't always very detailed. I honestly don't have much else to say about the art. It doesn't stand out, but it's not bad.

Characters: 7/10
There are a few likeable characters, most notably the female main character and one of her friends, as well as the muscle guy. The main character is cool in that is your typical dumb protagonist, but he doesn't fit the stereotype you expect either. He knows he's not the smartest, nor the greatest, he doesn't have the "never give up and yell about it" attitude and feels very real. I had a positive impression of the characters overall. Some of the villains also had interesting personalities.

Enjoyment: 6/10
I really liked it up to slightly after the anime ends (slightly past halfway through the manga). I like a few of the characters, even felt kind of empathic for some of the villains. The final arc and ending really ruined it for me though.

tl;dr: A manga with some potential to the action and some good comedy but that fails at everything surrounding that.

This manga gets better as it goes on, but it’s still kind of a mess. The first third or so of the manga is simply complete nonsense where it feels like it has no clue what it wants to be or what it wants to do with characters being incredibly inconsistent, the tone shifting randomly in very jarring ways, and the pacing being awful. After that it seems to settle into what it wants to be, which is a fairly standard battle series with characters with ... extreme powers. It’s not all that great there either though, as most of the characters are pretty awful, with the majority being flat and the ones that are fleshed out not being all that great either. The action has potential at times, but it never feels like it really lives up to that due to the characters and plot not feeling like they’re that worth getting invested in.

The plot is also straightforward to the point of not being interesting. The villain with a tragic past wants to destroy humanity and needs to get a bunch of things in order to do so. The heroes want to stop that. Anything beyond that feels tangential and doesn’t really add to the narrative. The plot, especially the ending, is the kind that thinks it’s being deep, but is actually really boring in how standard it is at this point. In terms of themes it deals with pretty standard ones such as human nature being evil or how to stop violence, but it doesn’t do a really go into them properly and it just feels kind of braindead and superficial. This is especially annoying as it seems like it’s constantly going into exposition about random things for no reason. This manga is also really edgy. I have a very high tolerance for cheesy dumb edginess, even of the disgusting or vulgar kind, but this series had me constantly groaning over how stupid it was.

The comedy I think was kind of good, but it was kind of strange in that it was pretty constant throughout, even randomly in the middle of serious sequences. So it felt like the manga was the type that shouldn’t be taking itself seriously, but it also felt like was taking itself overtly seriously, so tonally it was off. I will note though, that a lot of the manga has to do with America, and the comedy relating to that from the point of view of an American was surprisingly relevant to current American society, though I don’t know if that was added in the translation or the original work.

The art I think had a good sense of style with a lot of really unique and good looking character designs. Thus it did manage to look good at times, especially with the covers and simple color pages. However, beyond that overall it felt pretty low quality and amateurish, especially when it came to the more detailed portions that just looked overtly busy most of the time.