ES: Eternal Sabbath

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Whenever I find a manga that qualifies as a masterpiece in my book, I feel the need to write a review. It is a silly compulsion, purely because I have little to say save "It's perfect".
The story and its development are smooth and natural, the characters are complex and lifelike. The ones which are not-so-human manage to capture the essence and ambiguity of what it means to be a human being. Eternal Sabbath is complex and simple at the same time, and it poses an eternal moral dilemma - is anybody born good or bad?
I loved everything in this manga. The sensitivity of ... the characters, their nature which is at the same time humane and animal-like. The action scenes packed with supernatural quality are mind blowing, and the analysis of the inner workings of the human brain is dumbfounding.
It's a must read.

(spoiler-free section)
ES doesn't come anywhere close to a masterpiece, mainly due to flaws in the plot (plot holes, plot armor) and in the characters, notably their lack of depth.

In terms of plot, ES falls short due to its premise. Shuro's power is non-interactive: he goes into your mind and can kill you or brainwash you. This is nothing short of being OP, and if he enters someone's mind, there's no real telling what's going on until the narrative fills us in. So where could this manga get interesting?

In the characters! That's because now the question is, how will he use his powers and how will ... humanity respond? Unfortunately, the characters are simple and one dimensional, and especially serve the inconsistent plot before serving themselves. Shuro initially stands out as curious, nonchalant, not emotionally invested in anything, and does some good deeds when he feels like it. However, as the story goes on, he loses a lot of complexity and gets a side role. His emotions get simplified and he very quickly becomes a sensitive person.

Psychology is oversimplified and most of the characters' intentions are induced as originating from some traumatism, notably lack of parental love. This is similar to Freud's psychology, which is so outdated and pretentious hand-waving that it's not even taught in standard university psyc textbooks anymore. [As a minor note, characters are also overly polite (but maybe this manga is juste more Japanese-like than others). When Mine accuses a woman of beating her child, that same woman, regardless of her anger against Mine, still lets Mine into her house on several occasions... There are other instances of a character hating another, yet acting way too friendly, even more than you would act towards a typical friend. ]

Finally, to seal the deal on this 5/10 rating, ES has your dose of poorly written plot. Characters experience plot armor all the time and there are significant plot holes (specifications below).

**(SPOILERS section)**

Plot armor happens for both Mine and Izaak. When Mine is surrounded by brainwashed police officers, Shuro comes to the rescue (although he was not initially with her). When Izaak is about to get shot, Mine gets emotional and purposely misses his head. Then as he retaliates, Shuro yet again appears from nowhere to save her.

When the author realizes his story is spinning in circles, the story-writing suddenly gets incredibly rushed. Izaak turns out to lack antibodies against aging, so he's suddenly grown/aged to 70 years old. The problem? Shuro is 15 years old and has grown to the human equivalent of 20-30 years old, looking like a "handsome college student". We thus understand that ES age around twice as faster as humans. So why would Izaak, who is the human equivalent of 10 years old, grow much faster than Shuro and age more abruptly? Over ~2 weeks he suddenly gets white hair and his skin gets wrinkly. I'm pretty sure aging is a spectrum; if he were lacking the antibodies at birth, then he would have gotten wrinkly and gray hair progressively.

The young girl (Yuri) somehow becomes vulnerable to Izaak's power and gets killed off, even though she's supposed to be some kind of "race" with immunity to ES powers. The author could argue her 'inner will' was weakened after her mother died, but are we really going to say that this 4th grader, when not in turmoil, has a stronger 'inner will' than all those adults that have died from ES, from delinquents to researchers? If so, then the author did a poor job at showing us that those who could die from ES were weak-willed humans.

Finally, the final battle. As I said at the start of this review, these battles mean nothing to us and the author even took advantage of that by deceiving us over who won. Then we got the dumb magical ending where Shuro's powers transfer to Mine and that she surpasses his ability by killing Izaku...

Really interesting premise but I think it could have been executed a lot better. Lots of problems I have with the manga. I find it interesting that some other reviewers claim this is a masterpiece despite its blatant flaws.

STORY - [5.5/10]
You follow the journey of 2 individuals developed in a special lab. They were developed to have psychic powers and one of them was taught morality, while the other one was not. By psychic powers, I mean that they can read minds, control people, and even harm others (through doing mind stuff). With this in mind, you follow both of them and how they interact ... with the environment around them. For the entirety of the series, it seems like it wanted to take a philosophical approach to what it was trying to accomplish, and I honestly do not think it delivered on it. It just never really went in-depth on anything it presented and in all honesty, it probably couldn't. Every topic introduced regarding this part of the story was kinda simple. Maybe it's because I binge that kind of stuff, but the ideas and questions brought up just weren't complicated enough and also boring. At some points, the two individuals begin to question the meaning of their existence, but the story doesn't go in-depth on it as it could have. It comes out simplified too. Some of the drama, especially toward the beginning, wasn't very interesting as well. It does somewhat pick up but I think the first 20 chapters or so are a bit hard to get through.

Although sometimes, the story was just plain stupid. A very convenient and also very disappointing weakness for the antagonist is introduced which just comes out as incredibly lazy. There are multiple times where the antagonist could and should have died, but didn't because the series wasn't long enough I guess. plot holes. It had its share of general problems.

ART - [6/10]
I have very mixed feelings about the art.

On one hand, I think this author draws scenery and background details very well. The background of the panels always looked very nice. On the other hand, I think the people were drawn quite bad. This doesn't apply to every character, but if you look around at some of them... its like the mangaka has a base template she uses to draw facial structures and makes a slight change to it each time. I just don't like how some of the faces were drawn, and they sometimes have alarmingly similar qualities. But scenery and objects came out quite nicely.

CHARACTERS [5/10]
None of these characters were very memorable in my opinion. As mentioned before, it revolves around 2 individuals created in a lab with different mindsets. It focuses on the development of these 2 characters as they get out into the "real world" as much as possible. The development is predictable and since everything is somewhat simplified in this manga, also boring. It's a bit wholesome to see the main lab experiment, Shuro, get in touch with humanity as the story continues but... Izaku's was boring. Predictable increasingly destructive behavior.

A romantic development is introduced for seemingly no reason other then to arsenal the impact of the ending, if I had to guess. Side characters were not that interesting either. Really not much else to say.

OVERALL ENJOYMENT - [5/10]
I don't think I can recommend this series to be honest. It actually reminded me of Kiseijuu a lot, and I'd recommend you read that instead if you haven't. It has worrying issues in each of its departments, and as a result, I sincerely think you could just use your time reading something better.