Crows

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TL;DR: It's a simple story with simple characters, nice art style, setting , comedy, it knows what it wants to be and the author put a lot of soul into it, as it can be seen from his notes at the end of the early chapters. For some, the fact that the story isn't too deep and doesn't seriously tackle the themes relating to what it means to be a man/delinquent can affect his enjoyment, but I would still recommend it for the humane and down to earth characters and world that builds around them.

In a world where quite a few of the most developed ... countries in the world are in a war against masculinity, reading Crows (and Worst, it's sequel. the most important ones to read to understand the plot) is a breath of fresh air, since this manga and it's sequel (which are very similar in terms of the way it feels, it's character dynamics, story, comedy and themes, so I recommend reading both of them, maybe Worst a bit more) are all about masculinity and how one should act, both of the stories lacking any sign of a woman in it's area, the stories focusing on the relationships between the schools that are built,but also changed by the passing time, all of which are connected by the fights, friendships and rivalries that form between each other.

Setting
The story takes place in a not named (as far as I can remember) japanese town where the only people living in it seem to be highschoolers (only male, HS, in fact), maybe some middleschoolers and young adults by which they get employed and "the police" of which we only hear of in some cases when it relates to a big conflict between schools, lacking any sign of adults, except maybe the occasional appearance of a teacher that gets made fun of, so it's kind of a dream like town where the delinquents rule it and have complete freedom (as far as it can go to teenagers), not having to deal with learning, homework, parents and even rules. While the setting is borderline on the fantasy spectrum, it still feels humane, due to them still living by some rules, such as their human body limits, injuries and the fact that they still have to graduate highschool and find a job in order to make a living, which, while not something that is dramatized, it's still looked over in a mildly serious but also funny manner, depending on the characters. All in all, the town feels alive due to the continous change that it goes through at the level of the relationships between schools, as every alliance and rival school constantly change because the students are coming and going with the passing of time, not everything being able to last forever and it's definitely a strong point of the series.

Art style
No complaints here, there are plenty of backgrounds, instead of white spaces, it is highly detailed, especially the close ups on the characters, which also are drawn in a realistic style usually, contributing to the characters attitude, personality, fighting style but also the emotional moments, although there are also plenty of goofy unrealistic faces made for the sake of the comedy in this manga which nicely enhances those. The art style also gradually evolves, even in in the sequel, where it's most noticable so it's nice to know that the author tries to polish himself and it can't be easy drawing hundreds of characters and still try to make them look original, the author succeding quite nicely in that department. If I were to nitpick, Rindaman's (Hayashida Megumi) hairstyle is pretty hard to understand and it looks amateurish, and maybe it's a me problem, but there were plenty of times where I couldn't connect the character's name to it's face, it being even harder when they advance in years and change their hairstyles and trying to remember who is who (when it comes to the side characters most of the times). It's still a nice art style though, fitting for the roughness with which a highschool delinquent manga comes.

Comedy
It is, of course, subjective, but if you come into this manga having a little background on delinquent behavior or simply know that everything in this manga focuses on the delinquents, that you should probably expect the kind of humour present here. I, for one, really enjoyed it and laughed or was amused by many of the jokes, from those involving hitting someone (which is probably the most problematic one out of all of them since some people may interpret it as bullying and find it in poor taste), to those about their capabilities of getting a girlfriend and those involving stealing (burrowing) someone else's goods, to name a few recurring types of jokes. I certainly thought that in some cases, the bullying was exagerated, but was overall amused by the scenarious that created this moments and I still have no problem with them (I believe they were handled waaay better than those in other anime/manga such as Maison Ikkoku, maybe Detroid Metal City and Nagatoro, to name a few). So if you enjoy the culture around delinquents, you will probably enjoy this type of comedy.

Story
It revolves around Suzuran highschool, known as the delinquent school because that's where the worst of them are supposed to gather, where, while not entirely true, it is still the best school in town in regards to which school would win in a fist fight. The story focuses on the students of Suzuran, with Harumichi as the protagonist of the story, but he and Suzuran also take a back seat from time to time in order to focus on the developments and relationships between the other schools in town, such as alliances that are formed or wars that are started. That's pretty much all that is to the story, Crows spans from Harumichi's transfer in the first year of highschool to his graduation, so for 3 years, durring which old and new characters, relationships, wars and alliances are left behind or formed, all of which enhancing the passing of time and the romanticised highschool days when the characters could just fool around, talk about woman, get into fights, develop new friends, enemies and rivalries, and have a genuinly great time.

Fights
There are three types of fights: the equal, one on one fist fights, usually between the best of each school, but also their close subordinates, the group fist fights, in which the schools fight like in a war, but only with their fists, creating mayhem around them, and then there are the ambushes where the opposing members of a school assault a single or a few members of an opposing school with members, being easily defeated. The ambushes are usually the start of the conflict, one school trying to hunt either random members of a school or well-known ones and starting a conflict between their schools to assert their power. The group fist fights are shown as hype, cool moments where each school can fight to his heart content until he can't fight anymore, preparing the scene for the real, one on one fights.This one is seen as the most respectable and tensioned one, seeing as the reputation of the schools kind of rides on the succes or loss of each of them, although even that can be quite questionable, seeing as the story doesn't seem to concentrate too much on the consequences of these fights on the schools or their individuals, that being one of the true critiques I have of this manga. the group fist fights, they are shown as hype, cool moments where each school can fight to his heart content until he can't fight anymore, preparing the scene for the real, one on one fights. The fights between schools usually follows the structure above, with the mention that instead of ambushes, some conflicts start with low level delinquents getting into a fight with another low level delinquent, building up to the involvment of the school leaders and a complete war between the schools, which makes sense, seeing as they are prideful and want to protect the school's reputation, but also the low members that were hurt in the fight.

Themes
As I mentioned in the beginning, this story heavily focuses on male delinquency, which, of course, leads to all kinds of recurring themes that are more or less talked about, but mostly shown, what unites them all being true masculinity. Respect learned through fighting is one of the easier one to recognise, seeing as the relationships of friendship and rivalry, especially between the heads of the different schools (Harumichi, Ryuushin, Bitou, Bulldog, which are the most important ones of the story), are formed through a shared respect for each other's fighting abilities and spirit. This is the best part about this kind of fighting manga, that fighting is not portrayed as something to be avoided, that it's something dangerous and that only bad people fight. While these are true to some extent, in here, they are shown to be a way to learn about somebody's characters, to see how far they would go for themselves and to protect others, and it's shown, overall, as a means of spending time and having fun, besides those times where white weapons are used, such as baseball bats or iron pipes, which still aren't used to kill someone, just to put them out of commision in order to win a war between schools. As such, learning respect through physical and mental strenght is made out to be something respectable and possitive, a way to learn about someone in a real life way, through behavior, instead of using only words, it's a nice way of showing masculinity, dominance, assertivness and courage, many of which are demonized in some areas of the world, but still highly shown in this manga in a positive light and work well as less obvious themes, but still relating to masculinity.
Equality in fights is also shown in a possitive light, demonizing the ambushes made by other schools or finishing off the head of a school once he beat fair and square the leader of another school. Using weapons, targeting students that you know are helpless and can't fight are all seen as low blows and as scummy behaviors that are preferred to be avoided. Such behaviors can easily be connected to other real life contexts, like not preying on the weak and helpless, such as kids, homeless people and woman, instead holding equal fights (either physically or mentally) with people that are your equal, attacking people that you know are inferior to you in those areas could easily turn into bullying.
Pride is also an important facet of the story and it's characters, because they, as delinquents and especially the leaders of the school have a reputation to maintain, both for themselves and the school (which ties nicely into the respect aspect of the story). This is a driving force of the story, seeing as the leaders of the schools and even their underlings aren't backing down from a fight, the exceptions being when they are made to send the message that a war is coming, every one of them keeping the tough guy act in order to show dominance and the pride of the school, but also his individual pride and respect. It is an honorable and admirable way of living, facing the challenges and taking responsabilities that you have although you may feel that you will lose or do something pointless that only hurts you, and still facing them head on, without making any excuses, is a great show of character and manhood (although, of course, there are also times when you should eat your pride and hold on for you or others).

Characters
There ain't too much to them (except their huuuge numbers), they are at most two dimensional, representing different archetypes of delinquents, from those that lack power who still hang out with the strong, to the pervy ones, goofy and stupid ones (the butt of plenty of jokes) to serious, stoic and angry delinquents, the series covers pretty much all of them. They both are and aren't the best part of the manga. While they aren't too developed and mostly don't develop, except maybe a few minor exceptions which aren't all that significant anyway, they really feel human due to the dialogue and emotions that they express in different conversations, the jokes they make and even the reactions to other's jokes. What I appreciate about them and the reason why I can't fully hate and degrade the character writing is because the manga in general tries to depict the highschool life of these delinquents which rarely and hardly develop and don't necessarily need to do it since their character (what I talked about in the themes section) is already pretty developed. The reason why I choose not to talk about any character in particular is exactly because of this, they are all combinations of each other that mix well, the only thing that separates them is their physical power, seeing as the more important and relevant characters of the story (the leaders of 4 or 5 of the schools), are being focused on for this exact reason.

Negatives
While the simplicity of the manga and the delinquent's lives is it's strongest point, it is also it's weakest one from a more objective perspective (not like simplicity is bad, in itself, but for something to truly be a 10/10 it needs more complexity, emotion, high stakes to name a few, especially when the delinquent genre is full of potential in regards to these). Three years of the character's lives and 8 or 9 years irl and hardly seeing any development in them is quite a waste of time where the characters could have met different physical, psychological and philosophical challenges and doubts in order to build more complexity for them and enhance the themes and the portrayal of delinquents. The fact that this manga was published in a shonen magazine may have affected the end result, but I still believe it is waste potential that a delinquent manga can have, as proven by Bakuon Rettou, which is also a delinquent manga (although from the motorcycle riding night life), but it focuses a great deal of time on the protagonists struggle with his home life, personal life, his future and life choices (and of course, I highly recommend it, this truly got me into the delinquent genre and I still have to see how these 2 mangas compare to other delinquent manga's, since I'm new in this). So yea, simplicity of character = good and bad.
Another problem is the lack of consequences. You would expect that in a manga about street fighting there would be more people that suffer permanent or long term damage to their bodies that can't be fixed by a simple stay in a hospital until the end of the arc, or not even that. Too bad that this is what always happens, even when they suffer quite hard damage from the aforementioned bats, iron pipes and ambushes. To be fair though, the only anime/manga that comes to mind that really tackles the physical and psychological aspects of disabilities (and also in a masterful way) is Real (one of my favorite manga, by Takehito Inoue) and it's quite a sensitive and hard subject to discuss in a manga made for teenagers. But this lack of consequences still are a big no for this manga, even simply not allowing them to fight anymore or make them transfer to another school in a different city would have been better than nothing.
The themes are executed alright and it's nice to see them highlighted from time to time, but they still aren't challenged and there isn't much done with them, it's just some cool aspects of the characters that are used to hype the already cool and hype moments. It's cool that there are some stories that highlight these aspects of man and delinquents, but again, this genre and such themes could work extremely well in the right hands, but also in a more mature setting (and publication magazine).
I'm sure that plenty of people thing I'm petty, an elitist, some hater or who knows what else, and that's quite fair, can't blame anyone for thinking that after critiquing a teenage manga for something that it clearly doesn't want to be. And that's fine, seeing as it still promotes good values and positive views on a type of people that are often misunderstood is highly respectable and I can't take it from the mangaka. But making a complex manga, with well executed themes and characters that nicely complement them and shows the grittiness of these kind of people and how they try to live or change? I think this takes a deep emotional connection and understanding of these types of people and struggles and also skills as a mangaka to succesfully put this ideas on paper and make them flow naturally. It's clear that the mangaka did plenty of good things with his manga, hence the positive reception that it has, but I value and strongly believe that the maturity of an author and him being able to seriously tackle some hard subjects is the one thing that I can easily point towards and call it a masterpiece and give it a 10/10 wholeheartedly.

Conclusion
All in all, I still recommend this manga. While I find myself at a point where shonens with crazy abilities such a JJK, Demon Slayer, MHA or anything with special powers and pretty animation don't do it for me, seeing manly fist fights is really refreshing for me and it's more easily to connect with the characters due to the down to earth fights and characters. The dynamics and comedy moments between the characters are also great and I never got tired of seeing them interact with each other. And what's one of the most aspects of this manga that probably attracted it's readers is the soul that the author put in it, as can be deduced by reading his notes at the end the early chapters. It was very wholesome to read about his struggles, but also enthusiasm and effort he put into creating and serializing this manga, that clearly wasn't driven by money (don't know about the following years/side stories/sequels, maybe the author only wished to develop this living world that he worked on for so many years).

crows is an exceptional manga, my first time reading it, it was just about highschool delinquents fighting, after reading it i felt empty, surprisingly though, it's still just a highschool deliquent fighting manga. why is it exceptional then?

the story is pretty simple throughout the whole story, but it manages to keep you hooked, crows is the type of manga that isn't about the story as much as it is about fights, characters and surprising moments that are able to make you reflect about pretty much anything.

about the art, while i do feel that the art improves as the manga advances, it's great since the ... beggining, characters looked ugly in the beggining, maybe even simple, but the fights never failed to make you feel the weight behind each punch, motion is expressed greatly in this manga, and as the story advances, you get to see more detailed/appealing drawings.

the characters are one of the strongest point of crows, all characters are different one from each other, each character is appealing and likeable (at least for me, there is certainly a case to be made against some characters but most of them have redeeming qualities or have moments in which they reflect and become better characters). characters also evolve and develop as the story advances, by the end you feel as if most of the characters had their fitting end to their story, and some of these ends really make you think and reflect.

crows has become one of my favorite series, it has once again taught me things i had forgotten, simple stories aren't bad stories, people don't need complicated/deep reasons to change, life isn't a straightfoward path, and that it can take a mere second or just a little hunch to decide what you will do with your life. I totally plan on reading it's sequels and spin-offs and i can't wait to introduce my friends to this manga

TL:DR
Bad fights, repetitive plot, boring characters. Don't bother with this manga. At least there's good art

Story: 4/10
The manga has the same basic structure that it repeats endlessly:
enemy introduced > defeats previous enemies (now allies) to prove how strong they are > main character destroys them > they are now allies
This is basically covers the entire manga. They do this for nearly every single antagonist that Harumichi faces. Sometimes they focus a little more in the allies but ultimately it's the same every time.

The fights are extremely formulaic too. Harumichi starts out clearly losing, barely getting a hit in. Then, no matter how injured he is, ... he just suddenly decides he wants to win now and then does so effortlessly. Any fights not involving Harumichi are abridged with the author often just skipping to who wins with no view as to how they won or how the fight actually went. Funnily enough, Harumichi's boring battles seem to be the only ones that are shown in full and even that's not a guarantee. This is an insane decision for a manga based around fighting. There's this one fight were the manga just skips the fight and then just refuses to tell us who the winner was (let alone show us!). Why include this stuff if you think it's so unimportant? There are so many fights between characters that are just skipped, fights that could actually be interesting. This manga is a constant disappointment where it brushes past any combat that would be interesting or build up the rest of the cast in favour of giving us yet another scene of our Mary Sue protagonist Harumichi effortlessly dominating his opponent in the least fun way possible.

Our protagonist begins the manga as the strongest guy and ends it the same way. He loses a fair fight exactly once, and rarely loses a wildly unfair fight anyway. He's boring. Why should I care about anything when Harumichi ex Machina will come in and beat the bad guy effortlessly.

This leads to an obvious issue: how strong are any of the characters? They all lose the exact same to the next weeks villains and that guy all loses to the same to Harumichi. The strength of the characters are completely arbitrary, however much they need to be restart the cycle. It's not like anyone actually changes in strength in the manga, everyone ends it just as they started so nothing actually matters. Harumichi is always stronger than his opponent. Sometimes he wins effortlessly, sometimes he wins with a little difficulty but he always wins. He never has difficulty with anything, he never has to struggle, he never tries to improve, he never has to overcome anything. Why is he even here? Why Should I care about anything he does?

There are a lot of interesting concepts like gang alliance politics but nothing is done with it. Even in fights there are never any consequences. Every character goes down the same, gets the stuffing kicked out of them and then returns in a chapter or two like nothing happens. The most someone suffers is in a bloody car crash that comes out of nowhere and is unrelated to anything happening in the plot, what little of it there is. Now, I'm not saying someone needs to be crippled or anything so grim but there needs to be something or all fights are just pointless. Maybe someone gets depressed when they fail, maybe someone needs to train, to think about their flaws and what they need to overcome. But there's none of this, they just fight seemingly for the fun of it and never grow, forgetting it the second the fights over.

Which leads nicely into my next point, I have no idea why anyone does anything in this manga. Motivations are rarely given for why these fights are happening. These guys aren't committing crimes, they're not making money. The ‘gangs’ of this manga are essentially just groups of friends. Why the hell are they fighting so much? What do they gain from this? Again, I'm not saying that it needs to be something grand, “Holyland” (a manga with a similar premise but much more serious) has purely personal motivations and it's fantastic. Crows provides no reason to care about anything happening, why should I care about wins or losses when the most that's at risk is children's egos being bruised?

The manga never seriously interrogates what it means to be in a gang, what the consequences may be, what the mentality of a young gangster is. The characters are big fish delinquents in the small pond of school with no academic abilities and no real futures that they're working towards. they're in gangs that are basically school clubs and they fight constantly with no real purpose. There are no themes for the reader to grapple with. Things just sort of happen without rhymes nor reason.

In short: nothing of consequence happens, nothing interesting happens and anything that gets close is skipped over.

However there one thing that I will compliment the manga for, the manga gives time for the characters to think about what they're going to do after school, after they leave their gangs and enter adulthood. It's an interesting angle to end a delinquent manga on what the characters do to stop being delinquents.

Character: 3/10
Our main character, Harumuchi, is badly written. He is at his peak in the beginning of the manga and only gets greater with out ever earning it. He has no flaws he needs to overcome. He never has to change and so he doesn't. He has no goals to work towards. He's not really funny and he's not fun to read about because he's mostly just an asshole and not in a fun way.. He's a complete void of charisma. It's clear the author understood this seeing as he barely gets screen time or dialogue outside of finishing a fight. In the latter half, he's pushed to the side in favour of other characters who are frankly much more interesting.

The side cast is somewhat better. There are some interesting characters and they're fun to read when the author deigns to give them time to shine which is unfortunately not often enough. There is a large cast of reoccurring characters and the screen time is split between them and the one-off characters. This means the cast is never given enough time to be developed. Honestly, many of the side cast would be much more interesting protagonists than what we got with Harumichi if the author tried to develop their characters.

Art
The only thing I will compliment in the manga is the art. It's fantastic, fights are explosive, hits carry real weight. Panelling is excellent and it's effortless to follow the action.

The characters are well designed and distinct. For the most part anyway, a few of the minor characters are hard to distinguish but it doesn't negatively affect the reading experience. The characters are bad ass or goofy as needed and it's easy to see how strong a character is just at a glance.

No complaints on this front.

Overall: 3/10
“Crows” was worse than a boring read, it feels like the author is actively trying to disappoint me. Whenever something threatens to be interesting, it's skipped over and/or Harumichi just comes and does all the work with out having to overcome any real challenges. There is never any motivation to do anything so the events of the manga don't hold any weight.

The characters are 2-dimensional archetypes and never change. They are mostly just boring.

The worst sin of all: the fights are bad. This is killer for a delinquent manga.

Don't read this manga.