Black Joke

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Despite the only other reviews being negative and calling it mediocre, i quite enjoyed it. The art is solid but nothing to write home about, and the story is nonexistent. But this mangas greatest strength is a actually legitimately mature tone. Most manga with this level of violence take themselves too seriously and go into edgy territory. It is actually quite hard to explain the tone, but its genuinely funny, a bit of a black joke if you will.

The characters act genuinely human and are quite likable and unique. Even stereotypes like the big dumb brute on the cover actually has a fuckton of ... personality to him that isint derivative. The situations and fight scenes are also full of creativity and give it a lot of flavor.

To sum it up, if your looking for an interesting story, you have come to the wrong place. If your looking for genuinely likable characters and a fun yet mature mood and setting, then this is as good as it gets in my opinion.

In short, it's like Black Lagoon, but more gratuitous in terms of violence and sexuality. It's also notably worse in just about every way other than art, which is up to personal taste (I'll get into that later).

It's very edgy, following a set of immoral, unsavory characters on their short, episodic adventures of hyper violence. I'm four volumes in, and there has been almost no real continuity from one short arc (up to 3 chapters each) to the next, with the only carryover being one character's developing attraction to another. Just about every arc is just them getting in some predicament with various organized criminal ... groups that you'll never see again, and killing them. The main characters are all superpowered and you never really feel that they're in any danger. I also found them rather unlikeable. There's also this running "gag" where they attempt top subvert your expectations by setting up a showdown with a big bad at the end of an arc, only to have said big bad be defeated in a single panel. Gets real tired real fast. Writing: shallow and disposable, just like the random goons in the manga.

The way characters are drawn is very stylized and with extremely exaggerated proportions at times (like characters hands hanging below their knees). The continuity of character art is also poor, with characters seemingly going from 6.5 to 9 feet tall from one panel to the next. The objective quality such as linework and shading is good, and the backgrounds are consistently nice.

If this sounds somewhat interesting, check out a couple of chapters. Pretty much nothing changes and it doesn't get any better as it goes on, so you'll figure out pretty quickly whether or not it's for you.

Like, seriously, this is not only bad, it's one of the worst mangas in any genre I've read. I love gritty mangas and I don't mind graphical violence — as long as there actually is plot behind it. This one does not have anything like that, it's page after page with completely brainless unreflective violence and lame characters designed to appeal to 10-15 year old kids who believe they are reading a manga meant for much older people. I really tried to find anything meaningful, thought provoking, or even some kind of irony, humour or sarcasm. Nothing! In a way that makes it a much ... more disturbing manga than any of the infamously violent mangas with plot — that's not a good thing.