Smokin' Parade

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From the creators of Deadman Wonderland comes Edgy Gory Avengers Against FNAF Characters with Added BL. In other words, Smokin' Parade. And maybe Suicide Squad.

First of all, this is nothing like Deadman Wonderland. It is completely different aside from the art style. If you've read a summary, it's about a boy who joins an organization against these things called "Spiders."

As of now the manga has six chapters and the plot is basically: "Let's go around doing missions and killing Spiders." with some black comedy and every chance to add gore scenes and uncomfortable, crazed faces to make the reader uncomfortable. Heck, the first chapter ... is basically shock value 101.

Artwork is great if you're a fan of this mangaka. I don't particularly enjoy how the panels are and how everyone always makes inhuman poses when they are fighting, etc and half of the time I don't know what is actualy happening. Why they take every chance a character appears to make an outlandish, edgy face while showing off how cool and fucked up they are, who knows, but coming from Deadman Wonderland I expected this. Like I said, Suicide Squad.

The characters are outlandish and unrealistic. Very little backstory is given of them. The protagonist is stale, a goody-two-shoes and seemingly weak right now but will turn awesome some day. I don't have to read any more chapters to know this. Go Ganta 0.2

You're probably wondering why I mentioned BL, well there seems to be some strange relationship between the leader of the organization and the MC, and there's a member who is obsessed with the leader and jealous of the MC for getting so much attention from his boss(crush). Also look at those covers, need I say more?

There's also some strange steam punk going on even if its set in Modern Japan. And the scientific aspect of everything that is even supposed to be happening on what the Spiders are but that dwells into spoilers.

I don't believe Smokin' Parade will get better, as of now it just stands as a typical, gory action packed manga with no sense of direction in the plot and a lot of scenes of blood and limbs used for shock value. Also fan service, can't forget that.

If you enjoy manga with a cast of characters in an organization of morally ambiguous heroes who are wacky and fucked up and seeing the development of a boring MC who is typical of this type of genre this is the manga for you.

In spirit, Smokin' Parade almost transmits us the same gore vibe than Deadman, which is still great, but it fails in putting the reader inside the ambient, i would say because there is just too simple character development in each chapter.
It follows a story of a group that kills "spiders" and in each chapter you have a new enemy with a new simple motivation and low deepening but with considerable reasons to do what they do. Considering it's a manga about a group of people killing and joking around, the character development is really shallow and don't trasmit enough empathy in any way. ... The best example of character development is the boy in the first chapter and his backstory, but it's like he had just vanished from being a singular character since he entered the group. They act as if they were completely neutral about their lives and don't show any back motives whatsoever.
Aside of this, the story goes well and at least i could apreciate each chapter so far.

The art is great, the character models aren't too much abstract and keeps the badass vibe. The problem is that in the fight scenes, sometimes you have too much going on and can't understand it properly. But still enjoyable. There is a richness of details in this that i like very much.

Until now, it was made of a simple story telling purely based on intense action and some comic relief which in every episode you have a new situation but with a bigger plot running in the background. It turns out to be just a story about the group living it's daylife killing 'spiders' and joking about it. It's not bad, but it's a simplistic way to tell a simple story which remembers me a lot of DG Killer Killer.

tl;dr: A mess of a manga that has a shock and awe of blood and gore but nothing else.

Smokin’ Parade is a manga about a group of fighters known as the Jackalopes who have been installed with mechanical combat implants in order to fight monsters known as Spiders, which seem to randomly emerge as a result of a reaction between some people and organ transplants from a certain megacorp. As far as the good points of this manga go, it has quite a lot of blood, guts, gore, and body horror and it’s drawn pretty horrifically. If that’s all you want from this manga this’ll ... be a really solid read. If you want anything more at all from this manga, then you’ll be left wanting.

The most obvious issue is that there’s no sense of direction to things whatsoever. The overarching plot is complete nonsense and the world building makes no sense. The smaller level stories are character focused, but characters are also terrible written with character arcs and development that is incredibly abrupt and really forced. The protagonist, Youkou, especially makes very little sense and the attempt at trying to show character growth in him was laughable. The main cast have pretty bizarre and extreme personalities, so that makes them somewhat interesting for a bit, but as a group they have no chemistry and the interactions and bonds between them aren’t all that strong. On top of that they’re just not all that likable. Thus, it’s really hard to get invested in their struggles and the attempts at trying to hit emotional beats pretty much always fall flat. Thus, the story just overall isn’t very good.

Just as big of an issue is that this manga just doesn’t seem that cool. The mangakas’ earlier work, Deadman Wonderland, also had a lot of issues regarding plot and characters, but it was really strong in sticking to it’s edgy rule of cool, and that was enough to hold it up. This manga just doesn’t manage to do that. The themes it touches on, such as human desires or family, are so weak that it’s not even fair to call them superficial, they’re barely even window dressing. The use of motifs and allegories is pretty weak. There’s a bit of psychological horror here and there but it really doesn’t feel like the manga is trying that hard at it, giving much more of an emphasis to an endless stream of violence that loses its impact pretty quickly. The general sense of style is a mish mash of cyberpunk, steampunk, and biopunk that feels haphazard. The action just isn’t as awesome, with no real progression to abilities, powers that aren’t eye catching, and just in general lackluster fights that are never really all that exciting.

The art I feel is actually worse than Deadman Wonderland, or at the minimum the design work is definitely worse. Deadman Wonderland was also full of extreme violence but could look genuinely beautiful at times. Smokin’ Parade never does, and as a result the art just feels dull.