Dec 16, 2020
tl;dr: A manga that has some interesting aspects but is pretty terribly paced and feels really random most of the time.
This manga has a multitude of issues that result in most every aspect being just a little too weak for the manga to be good. The immediate issue from the beginning is that it feels like the plot and world weren’t thought through that well or if they were, they ultimately had to be changed so much it certainly doesn’t feel like it. The beginning of the manga starts off with things going in a certain direction, but not long after things change tremendously and
...
it goes in a completely different direction. To some degree this shift could be considered as the first part being an extensive prologue, but the way it was written it really didn’t feel that way and ultimately just left everything feeling kind of muddled in terms of character relationships and world mechanics and lore.
It never really manages to recover from that and things remain muddled throughout, in part due to how it doesn’t really feel like most characters are fleshed out all that well. Many get backgrounds sure, but in terms of character's personalities and driving motivations they feel very arbitrary. This could in part be due to the whole mechanics revolving around corpse princesses which are also pretty arbitrary and have a major effect on the characters, but regardless it just make it kind of hard to get a grasp of their characters. As a result, though bonds between corpse princesses and their contractors are one of the core relationships in the book, they feel fuzzy and ultimately don’t feel well developed. The other relationships outside of that were even less developed however, with many just popping up suddenly and others just disappearing just as suddenly. And just as much of an issue is that characters themselves pop in and out way too much. Many side characters seem likable but due to the pacing of the story and them dropping in and out of focus it becomes hard to really get invested in them.
In terms of the plot after it hits the main story, it has two main arcs. Both arcs have the issue of dragging on to be way too long. The manga is heavily focused around battle. However, these battles just in general aren’t that satisfying. The action in terms of how well its drawn can be quite interesting, but mechanically most of them are really random just not very good at building up tension. The exceptions are the final fights of each arc, which have more going on. However, having just one good fight per arc just makes things drag on way too long. Especially as outside of that, the protagonist and his side are continuously losing. While it is true that it’s more important to win the war than win battles, structuring like that is really unsatisfying and just makes it feel really badly paced. The second arc was further marred by issues with what felt like too much info dumping surrounding mechanics that were pretty much just arbitrary and the lore and world in general getting really repetitive. Pretty much everything in the world revolves around Buddhism, and since I don’t know that much about Buddhist lore I can’t make comments in general, but here it felt like there wasn’t enough to support the story. There were some elements added related to Christianity, which I was hopeful would add more to the story, but ultimately they had a pretty minimal impact on the plot.
The tone also felt pretty random, feeling quite dark and even horror like at times, especially during the beginning but pretty much shifting to standard battle manga as it goes on, which makes it hard to get invested in certain aspects. The ending I also really wasn’t a fan of at all, as what happens really didn’t feel necessary or justified at all thematically, and the epilogue while being pretty long for such a manga just didn’t really hit any of the notes I wanted it to, and thus I wasn’t satisfied with it at all. The art starts off decent and gets a bit better as it goes on, though the larger problem is that it starts off pretty dull stylistically, and though in terms of framing and such it gets a decent amount better by the end it still isn’t that great. Character designs too were pretty dull, though there were occasionally exceptions that were decent.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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