Seikon no Qwaser
The Qwaser of Stigmata

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Seikon no Qwaser is my favorite manga series. In my opinion it is one of the best battle shounen series there is (other battle shounen do execute things as well as Seikon no Qwaser, maybe even slightly better, but SnQ is still the one who speaks to me the most).

Thought I should start with the art since I don’t have much to say about it besides the fact that seeing it evolve over the run of the manga is very interesting and later on the high contrast art, where a lot of things are either completely black or white without much grey, looks very appealing.

Moving ... on to the fights, a crucial aspect of a battle shounen, the most important thing about them are the qwaser powers, which allow their users to control one specific element of the periodic table and are fueled by soma, a substance that is not technically breastmilk (at least in the manga) but serves as a stand in for it in terms of fanservice scenes involving it.

The information above regarding qwaser powers is what you can find everywhere, what you won’t find anywhere, unless you read the manga, is how well developed the concept of these powers is without ever needing to give us an exposition dump. We learn the details of how these powers work, such as the 5 levels of control over it and their wave like behavior, slowly as we go through the story.

The best thing about qwaser powers is how almost all qwaser have around the same “power level”, with the only ones who seem stronger or weaker than the rest being mentioned as such. Due to having to manipulate chemical elements fights come down to how much of that element can be found in the surrounding area, whether or not the fighters know each other’s elements and fighting styles and how does each qwaser make use of their element instead of coming down to who has the higgest “power level”.

As I mentioned previously, in SnQ we receive information regarding qwaser powers slowly rather than in a big exposition scene, this is something that doesn’t just apply to said powers, we rarely ever get big exposition scenes in the series that aren’t relating to real world events since those are the only ones that are harder to integrate organically into the story. One of the strengths of this series is how we receive new information naturally as it progresses and how well set up and foreshadowed things are.

The characters are also interesting and the main cast gets a lot of development and growth over the course of the series, which is easy to notice due to the way that certain scenes parallel each other in this manga, letting us see how the character has changed by responding differently to two similar situations.

Finally, it should be mentioned that SnQ brings up some philosophical themes, mostly regarding utilitarianism, deontology, free will and determinism as the story goes on but explaining those would require spoilers so all I can do is mention them in hopes that it will peak your curiosity.

For a more in-depth analysis of the series (containing spoilers) check my blog on MAL.

tl;dr: A manga that has a surprisingly well thought out and unique world and mechanics as well as great art, but leaves a lot to be desired in terms of plot and characters.

Seikon no Qwaser is a strange manga. The series is probably best for how it involves battles where the combatants abilities are powered by sucking boobs and it takes the whole things completely seriously. More specifically, it involves Qwasers, who each have the power to control an element, sucking something known as Soma, which is what powers their abilities, from their partnered Marias. This may just seem like it’s using fancy words and ... wording to try to obfuscate what’s really happening to make it sound more elegant and deeper than it really is, and that probably is true to an extent. However, in terms of it’s systems and world building this manga had much more thought put into it than a simply synopsis may lead you to believe.

The term Qwaser is just a random astronomy term used because it sounds cool as far as I know so there’s not much to discuss there. However, the actual abilities involving elements were generally really well done. Characters having the ability to control classical elements like water or fire is pretty normal and easy to work with. Controlling the elements off of the period table on the other hand is much more rare and much more complex. Despite that, I felt that the writing did a good job of actually using each element and not just using the terms as window dressing. Early on in the manga it’s surprisingly grounded in how elements are used, with characters essentially just having the ability to bend them.

As the manga progresses things get less grounded due to the presence of what are called crests and magical circuits that allow for much more extreme abilities, though even then for the most part it felt like it was trying to keep the real properties of elements as the foundation. It’s not as logical at that point with major errors in how things work at times. Still, the manga isn’t supposed to be realistic, so just the thematic use is enough to feel like it’s giving weight to the abilities and if it’s necessary to deviate from reality in order to add more depth to things that’s a worthwhile tradeoff. As a result, I found the action and general usage of abilities pretty interesting throughout most of the manga.

The term Soma is probably referring to a drink referred to in various Hindu scriptures as a drink that cleanses it’s drinkers of past sins. This has obvious thematic significance, though it’s a bit strange to have for one of the core terms as the vast majority of the lore in the manga is rooted in Christianity. And it goes surprisingly deep in that, way more than Evangelion for example, with most of the overarching plot involving very specific aspects of the Orthodox Church. This is interesting because manga and anime that does pull in elements from Christianity usually does it from the Catholic or Protestant side of things with a focus on things like angels and demons. Here however the focus is on things that are more unique to the Orthodox side, such as icons, panagia, and various concepts pulled in from Stoicism such as pneuma. This gives it an incredibly different feel and tone that resulted in things feeling pretty novel and thus much more interesting.

And as the last point in the mangas favor, the art is great. It knows what it’s trying to do and doesn’t shy away from it, being extreme in both the action and ecchi aspects. The result is pretty edgy, but still in general pretty nice to look at. That it’s also willing to just have fun with things and throw in random slice of life chapters results in the pacing and flow being pretty good with the art having a decent amount of variety. The end result is that its pretty enjoyable to flip through for the art alone and thus the art and how it’s used is enough to hold up the manga pretty well.

The biggest problem with the manga was it’s lack of a sense of direction or commitment to overarching plot lines. The plot certainly has interesting twists and turns, but for the most part they’re just pretty random and often pretty forced. There are a lot of interesting and likable characters with wild personalities. But the writing in general had a hard time focusing on any of them properly and how it was constantly jumping around with things resulted in it feeling like they were constantly stealing each other’s thunder. On top of that, there’s a serious lack of proper character or relationship development. There are some attempts at character development, especially with the protagonist Sasha, but they’re written pretty badly and don’t land very well. There’s also minor attempts at romance in this manga, but they’re so minor that it’s actually kind of bizarre how little romance there is and how it never goes anywhere. As a result, the only relationship development in this manga that works is sorta secondary protagonist Katja’s mind breaking, though I certainly wouldn’t call it romantic.

These failings culminate in the last arc which felt incredibly rushed. The action in general was lacking. The plot went off the rails and pushed through too many things too fast resulting in everything feeling incredibly anti-climactic. And then the manga just suddenly ends without a proper epilogue resulting in it overall lacking any sense of closure. I feel that if it had handled the ending and epilogue well enough then considering the type of manga it is I’d be able to forgive how messy all the rest of the plot was, but with those being completely unsatisfying the manga as a whole felt like it left a lot to be desires.

I started to read this manga because I thought that combination of seinen genre and Orthodox Christian theme should be a very interesting mixture. Unfortunately, Usagi was right, when she said that thinking isn't going to get us anywhere. It sure didn't — neither me, nor the author.

My main points are:

1. The manga is not really a seinen. Not for me at least.
2. Author's knowledge of a source material is zero to none. 
3. The plot was being constructed on the go all the way through, minimum planing involved.
4. Characters are bland and, what's even worse, inconsistent.
5. The plot is erratic and is composed ... of all the cliches you can possibly pile up in one place.

Now I would like to elaborate a little.

1. Alleged demographics of the manga is off. While its definitely mature in nudity, gore and sometimes even with respect to the themes it employs (rape, terrorism), in thoughts and emotions it's incredibly juvenile. Plot structure, storytelling, dialogs, motivations, conflicts, character development - all these things are just good for early teens to be impressed. In its core, manga is your typical shonen, with grueling fights, lewd bath times and confused and reflective friendships (lots and lots of those). To illustrate my point, imagine you are watching Sesame Street and every 20 minutes some dude is beheaded out of the blue on the main scene - and then the show just resumes its counting lesson of the day. You definitely can't allow your kids to watch it now, but does it make it good 18+ entertainment? No, it doesn't. So, this manga is seinen by raiting, not by essence. Moving on.

2. The author uses particular themes to build up his setting. Those themes are: Christianity in general, Orthodox (Eastern) Christianity, Russian characters and culture. As I have already mentioned, it sounded very interesting beforehand. There are defenetly authors out there who can create strongly immersive and even educational experience using a well-crafted setting and unconventional themes. I mean, they for sure can provide you with hundreds sumo terms and thousands ramen terms if they feel like it. You just have to do your research, of course, don't you? So, how well did the author do his research? The answer is: he practically didn't.

First of all, he really doesn't know Christianity any more than contemporary culture allows him to. He knows, that Jesus is involved somehow and even remembers an outdated flick about Da Vinci's Code, but not more than that. His knowledge of orthodoxy is laughable. Sometimes he recreates garments in their likelihood (mixing Orthodox and Catholic elements heavily, though) and shows us vague church backgrounds a couple of times (redrawn photos really), but in general he just tries to fantasize himself out of the obscurity. He doesn't know church ranks, institutions or sects; instead, he creates his own generic animefest of a lore. He doesn't know creeds, relics, customs, routines of the religion he tries to reference, even basic stuff. Just think about it: not a single orthodox character in the manga crosses himself once and not one icon can be spotted in the living quarters. A way to put a samurai into the Victorian chair! Even in such miniscule things he can't afford himself to be diligent. All he knows about Russian history - slander of common school routine and headlines of tourist pamphlets, like Faberge eggs - that's the level for you. All his Russian characters, white haired and blue eyed, behave like japanese character tropes: nothing really indicates that they belong to another culture. I mean, Sasha eats borsch sometimes (the only Russian meal that the author knows, evidently). That's a pity though that he eats it on breakfast. 

Now, there is some Russian language that's been flashed out on the pages from time to time. Couple of words on that topic. First of all, Sasha's full name, Alexander Nikolaevich Hell, is ridiculous in its surname part. Hell is not a real name or surname or anything that is present in Russian language, it's just an English word which means what it means. It's like if it was written "John Bathtub" in a random American passport, but Bathtub was in Chinese. You got the point. Second, there are numerous childish lexical and grammatical mistakes. For example, sometimes cold-hearted Sasha exclaims "УТЮГ!", which is supposed to mean "AN IRON". Now, that part is tricky. In English "iron" can mean either a chemical element or a known household appliance. But in Russian there are two different words for that: "железо" which means "iron as an element" and "утюг" which means "iron as a household appliance". Not only does that show that Sasha expresses his feelings with the help of a common item name, but also that the author searched the translation in English-Russian dictionary, probably entrusting the task to his lazy assistant anyway. All and all, Russian phrases in the manga are dead vignettes among many other similar sad things.    

So, there is the question present: why even bother to venture into a world of another culture if you can't do that even remotely decently? Knowing the overall chaotic nature of this manga, my theory is this. It is probably started with some small but vivid idea like a blonde and alienated emo boy in a regular japanese school. Then the author thought that it would be good if the protagonist was Russian, because it's cool and fresh. Then cruel force of random associations from watching too many movies concocted religious background. Then the author kinda googled some images. Then he pitched the idea which he consequently developed without putting in the process a bit of heart, soul and conscience. Maybe it's supposed to be that way most of the times: after all every manga should have a gimmick and every cartoonist should have a living. But those who think that this Sunday afternoon chronicles provide them with an actual knowledge of russian religion, culture or everyday life, are victims of a hoax and therefore delusional.

3, 4, 5.  Anticlimatic as it is, not much to say here. If you watched some soap opera juggernauts like Santa Barbara, you can imagine the overall flow of the manga: focus of interest, events, arcs are jerking and changing constantly without much of a buildup, development or, what's most irritating, actual connection. It's like heaps of neverending fillers without fundamental design and guiding thought. I can almost hear the author asking himself constantly: "What's next?", even from one chapter to another, even mid chapter. And over and over he is forced to resort to another unbelievable plot twist, kindergarten exaggeration or inclusion of a papery character. All the body of the narrative is constructed out of manifold of pieces indecently glued together. There are a lot of loose ends, unexplained facts and plain roughness sticking out through the unpolished surface of the story. Plot points are shifting, guidelines are changing, even characters are altering. When first introduced, Phanagia is an omnipotent circuit wielder with sexually liberated, laid-back personality, but by the end, she is your typical sacrificial hentai cow. Speaking of which, the author probably has in his contract to draw 5 to something pornographic pages in each chapter, and, let me tell you, for THAT he has necessary dedication, that's for sure! Two most annoying points of the manga - redundant boob-grabbing and angelic flashbacks.

So, what we have here is a below average shonen with mandatory inclusion of lube and guts that make it even more cringy and tedious. I would recommend this manga for people of the particular taste or age.