Nejimaki Kagyuu

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Not many people know about this gem of a series, in fact, I knew nothing about the series before i went on a backpacking trip to Japan. In any book/manga shop the fantastic cover art always drew me to it and when i came home I was disappointed to find that the series was not scanlated.

But lucky for me and you it has just begun scanlation and with it the intense and comical world of Nejimaki Kagyuu has been opened of us. As i said in my off the topic introduction, the art is what brought me to the series, in the stores were I ... mean 1000s of series are on display it is no coincidence that the art stood out so much.

In the series the art is slick, polished and while lacking in the details of some more artistic series (especially in the backgrounds) the style of the art is what gets it for me. To me the style is the mix of seinen art and shonen art in a middle ground style which a lot of modern seinen series have seemed to sprung up recently using it.

The series is a comedy aimed at poking fun at the shonen harem style of manga. The main heroine of the series, Kagyuu is both a scary, powerful fighter while being a love struck, innocent girl. The comedy that the manga-ka gets from switching between the two extreme in situations always gets a chuckle from me. While drawing this seinen harem, the manga-ka focuses more on comedy and the "fighting" of this fighting harem allows for the reader to sit back and enjoy the series and not be turned off at the incombatability of the different themes. There is only a heavy dose of comedy with a plot based around the girls fighting over the main, male character.

For some draw backs to the series there is a fair amnount of ecchi-(ness) while i do believe that it is done better then most series. With the style of fighting that Kagyuu uses, involves ripping and destroy of clothes of the user and victim as it deals damage, it never feels put in there for "rating". You know its happening in a chapter and when, its not like the horrible "looking up" views on female characters or the lets have every girl character support a pair of hefty lumps of flesh that the harem guy happens to get sucked into their gravity fields every 5mins in series that claim o be more plot driven.

Also talking about story plot, here is another low part of the series but this is a factor of most comedy based series suffer from, its about the jokes and the situations not about the who, what, where and why of how this is happening.

I fully recommend this series for its entertainment values and its stunning/fun art style. Its a series that leaves me wanting more as i laugh my way through each and every chapter.

For starters Nejimaki Kagyuu is a very underrated manga that i think deserves more attention. This story is about a teacher named Negizawa Kamo who grew up protecting his close childhood friends and made a pact that he would protect the weak and one day become a teacher that would die for his students... yes a very deep MC. Kagyu Jubei the childhood friend falls for him and would do anything to become his wife. These two face alot of jealousy and hate from numerous people even the heads of the school. This story caught my eye because of its amazing art work ... and action scenes with great romance that gives off a good balance not to mention steady character development through out the chapters. I recommend this story to anyone who likes awesome fighting scenes and deep romance from the 2 main characters that make you enjoy watching their journey as it unfolds.

So far, there's only limited amount of translated chapters.
I was able to read the rest of the chapter because I know how to read korean.
I finished the whole thing.

1) Art: 8

I thought the art was pretty unique. All the characters are kind of weird, but it stands out really well. Fighting and everything is pretty cool.

2) Enjoyment: 6

I would want to give a higher rating if I only read through the half of the series. Fight scenes and everything is pretty cool, so I was able to enjoy it, but eventually, the whole thing went south. And the story part... I'll explain it ... later, but it turned me off so I didn't enjoy it as much.

3) Character: 6

Characters were pretty unique. The main dude, the main girl, friends, and the chairman. They were pretty interesting at the beginning. You know that when you are going through it, these people are kinda crazy. Well, as the story progresses, they kind of become even crazier. Except for the main girl and the friends, I really don't like any of the characters anymore. The chairman and main dude, especially.
I won't spoil anything. The chairman, we know he is crazy. Later on, it'll become apparent that he's not just crazy. You just don't understand this guy. He's like that one guy who pisses people off and doesn't do anything good, just because that's how he is. The story explains his motive, but honestly, it's not really something to my liking, and regardless of happy ending or not, I just didn't care about this guy at all.
Main guy. He's kind of generic to me. In the beginning, he's like this guy who wants to help everyone. That's cool and admirable I guess. But you kind of get that he's more of a guy that watches how people are doing, and gives that inspirational speech at the end. I can't say much about what happens without spoiling, but later on, something happens, and I just didn't care about this guy anymore. It's like his whole reasoning for change is ridiculous. And his choices are just ridiculous.
For other characters, I thought they were alright, but I never really liked any of them in the end.
It's like story kind of throws everyone out the window at the end, I think.

4) Story: 6

I think I'm being generous when I give 6 for the story. I'll say this. Currently, the english scan is only up to like less than half. I think about 3.5/5 through the story, it's pretty decent, and I would actually give it about 7.5 or 8. But the last 1.5/5 is just kind of stupid, and it really brought the whole score down for me. The progression of the story and what being revealed made me not happy. It sucks that I can't spoil anything because I don't want to ruin people's experience, but to me, at least, it was just not a great ending. It's confusing, how things led up to that moment, the message about love and all that. It just doesn't make sense.
I got confused by the ending, so I looked around to see what other people were saying, and it seems that most people are just outright confused too. I like happy endings, sad endings, and mostly endings that make me feel something and think of something. This ending didn't do that.
Overall, I felt that the author kind of dragged the story in the end, and just kind of finished it without really considering how a right message would be conveyed for the audience.
I really wished that it would've ended better than what I read at least, but it is what it is.

5) Overall: 6

If you come across this, when everything is translated, I guess I would tell you to go for it.
I'm not really recommending it, but at least it'll give you better understanding of where I'm coming from. Or maybe not.

If you are starting this, when it's still being translated, I think it's better to just read something else.
I finished the story because I hate not knowing how things go to the end, but this wasn't satisfying for me when I read that last page.


That ending, man... The whole story. THE WHOLE STORYYYY.

WHYYYY.