Hibiki: Shousetsuka ni Naru Houhou

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This manga is cool and interresting but it feels like a ripoff ok Akagi from akagi shigeru.
I wanted to write because I know people who read this kind of manga are not those who would read Akagi.
Maybe that's not such a bad thing. Tokuchi toua from one outs was also a rip off from Akagi.
But when you got this in mind everything the main charachter become extremmely predictable.
And the only thing interresting and innovative in this manga (the way the main charachter feels and act) feels like a ripoff.
Even when the mangaka goes on and on about a story about a charachter that dies ... on his own accord and inspire people it makes me thinks of akagi.
This manga it's akagi turned female and becoming a writer.
All those talk about athenticity, it's the last arc of Ten the follow up manga of Akagi.
Well I don't know maybe i'm reading to much into it. I have never seen a charachter like that anywhere else and I've read my share of manga.
Maybe it's more common to think that way in Japan.

This manga is an interesting one. It’s one of the very few mangas that makes me think and re-think really hard about the values and the author’s inner works. This kind of manga usually makes people raise their standard high before even re-reading it. That people including me. Yes, it’s a manga that is so good that can make people go like this.

But as i raised my bar higher and being honestly critical like what the MC in this manga did, then i would say, using Hibiki’s words, this manga is totally half-lame. Exatcly 50 out 100. Im talking about the inner values though, ... not overall score.

First, if we talk about technical qualities as a manga, this manga might got a little more than average grade. The art isn’t bad, but it is not something of a diamond either. In the story aspect, the premise might be normal but the start was very smooth and very natural. As the story progressed, however, it lost the natural feels and the smoothness that it had.
And my last view about the story is.... using Hibiki words again, it is as if the writer has lost everything that she/he want to write. In short, this manga has become a story from a vanished author. Well, one more harsh words, everything that Hibiki said as a lame novel to many characters in this manga, can be applied to this manga itself.

Despite my harsh words towards this manga, i love this manga and i admit from my heart that this manga is really something else. This manga shines the most in the aspect of characters and their characterization. It’s not like each character has good chemistry or good vide, no, not at all – but it’s unique and consistent. Their consistency, which is a sweeter way to say “stubborn”, trait make the characters clash as they are. In a sense, that’s pretty natural thing.

One more great thing about this manga that this manga is a form of rampage from the author’s inner-self. When we go deep in this manga, it feels like we can touch what the author really want to write. His/her screams, ideology, point of view etc, things that i personally call those as the inner-values, can be really felt. This manga isn’t talking about in what way a manga has to be written, but what kind of a manga i want to write.

As an ending, i want to say that...i feel this manga is kind of the opposite of Gintama. Both of them has strong inner-values and can make us think about our own values twice. But one thing that i notice that they are at opposite is the center of ego. Gintoki really cares about others and Hibiki doesn’t care about others, but both of them are totally, bluntly honest with their ownselves, their own values and their own lives. I wish i could see Gintoki and Hibiki had a dialogue about life......

Emulating the gratuitously pompous and cheeky style of the eponymous main character, I'll go right out and say that this manga is lame as fuck.

Continuing with said style, to add some vague and vapid criticism so that people will believe I actually have something of value to say and am not just throwing a trite analysis around to sound smart, the main problem with this manga is that it abuses our suspension of disbelief to a point it becomes not only annoying but borderline ludicrous. It's like reading an impression of the literary establishment through the lens of a complete outsider, who never before set ... foot on the endeavour of writing a novel. And, considering this manga commits about every mistake a novel should avoid, that is not surprising.

Its problems start right with its main character. Mind you, she's not only a very capable writer who can very well face up to some of the best of her generation, no: she's this kind of unbelievable, unearthly talent who's incapable of committing a mistake and leaves anyone who reads her words utterly flabbergasted. At the beginning, the editor did point out that her style was rough, but that little fact was just ignored through the story to universal appraisal. Never mind that even the greatest novels of all time all have flaws and are not continuously great, and some didn't even impress critics when they were first published and only found acclaim years later: this 14yo girl has just produced a flawless work. Really, how hard is it to tone down your character to a believable level, especially when writing an artist of a field the author clearly has no experience with?

The manga claims that Hibiki's novel "views on life and death" (whatever that means) and hazy nostalgic feelings are what makes it special, however we are never given any kind of reason to believe there's anything remotely special about the way Hibiki thinks or see the world or about herself, because all she ever does is act like a complete asshole and an overaggressive nutcase who should probably be put into a restraining jacket. It's like the author's impression of how a "true" author should act like came to him while watching a wrestling match. She also claims to read a novel a day like that's supposed to be impressive, which makes me think the author completely missed the point of reading.

The thing is, she's boring. It's no wonder the only reason people around her find her interesting is the same reason they would amuse themselves by watching car crashes videos on the internet. She's basically an on/off switch character with no relevant personality; only the off part is slightly broken since she's either wreaking havoc or being less but not totally not an ass all the time.

The problem with a lot of manga that features artistic talents is that they deem enough to tell rather than show. In this manga, we are constantly told how amazing Hibiki is, but we are never shown any reason to really buy any of that, especially since we are not ever given a word of what she actually wrote (because that certainly would be the final blow to our suspension of disbelief). If anything, all we are shown is that she's unstable and should seek professional help.

The rest of the cast doesn't help either. Rika is the only character who's anything close to interesting or can convince us she's a decent writer, and even then she's just reaching mediocrity. Her novel idea is actually pretty evocative, rather than the dumb and vague "life and death" that we get about Hibiki's. Only the two of them plus the editor have any relevance at all in the story. There's another guy whose whole deal is being a massive creep, but it has been 37 chapters and we still have no idea what relevance he has to the story, and all the others are just there filling up holes.

The art is terrible. Not much to say about it, I think anyone who ever looked at a human being can see that. It's rough but without any style like Jiro Matsumoto's, so it feels accidentally bad. And even then, for some reason, the author thought it a brilliant idea to give every female but Hibiki a cleavage so sumptuous it completely disrupts any attempt at anatomy, especially since he clearly doesn't know how to draw one.

The manga also adheres to the "deal with it, wimp" attitude that wimps themselves are always so fond of, but different from other works that manage to deliver that gut-punch that makes you go hmmm, all it accomplishes is feeling insincere and, at worst, offensive. Seeing a 14yo girl who acts like your usual rebellious teenager who just discovered nihilism going on empty rants teaching adults how to live their lives is hard to digest.

Really, what makes me the most surprised is that this manga actually won an award. I wonder if maybe the judges all caught a cold that day and sent their children in their place because it's hard to imagine this work being actually taken seriously in a competitive environment or by any grown adult.