issues:
- this is a shounen. the fight scenes are not good. the posing is repetitive and SO STIFF not dynamic at all and when characters get more powerful their strikes and moves are drawn the exact same way as at the beginning of the manga. if i was only looking at the art & not reading the words, i would assume theyre at the same weak power level.
- the monster art is the only good art. the rest of it is just not great? all the claymores look the exact same w/ the same massive forehead but with diff hairstyles and almost the exact same emotionless, stoic personality. its the same person copy & pasted
- for a female-centered story with a male-run head organization, the story does very little to actually discuss the role of women, especially warrior women during this time. and so many of the women are just... awful people and abusive to each other for NO REASON other than to drive plot conflict

Giving it the 5-chapter check. The art is gorgeous but it already feels like a poor-man's Hell's Paradise (the plot is literally the EXACT same) except the adventurers are regular people, not criminals, which instantly makes it less interesting and unique. We don't get the character motivations of anyone before they die, so it feels hollow & meaningless. Story is rushed for sure.

It's fine. all the swag and character design charm of Kubo (along with his typical pitfalls aka too much fanservice) but it's an interesting concept. Unfortunately, it feels like the style of Kubo w/o much of his typical substance. the world and characters, esp the main 3 feel kind of superficial (the guys only character trait is he's a perv and has a dog). this was made more obvious to me after I read ZOMBIEPOWDER, and was reminded, even by this unfinished and incomplete story, what Kubo's worlds and characters look like when he really cares

It's good, I devoured it in like a week after catching up with the anime. The characters are so fun, i'm glad the anime/ manga had a short epilogue. it's not groundbreaking by any means, but it's got good art, great character dynamics, and a fascinating concept

it's kubo. it's great. it's got more unique powers, sick hairstyles, wild outfits, and cool shounen poses than you can imagine. the characters are fun and memorable and kubo's notes just add to the fantastic worldbuilding. it's a shame the story is so incomplete

at chapter 5 im left with too many basic questions about this world, and not knowing these (again, BASIC) answers makes it hard to care & connect w/ the struggle of the characters because i don't know why the characters are making these decisions (ex: seems like Mononoke don't attack humans at all outside of the espionage organization and rango only, so why does everyone hate the Mononoke sm and hate to their core the mc and the one normal Mononoke, rango, living in the mc?). the art is great and there's so much potential, but the story is dragging, cliche, predictable, not that original.

just okay; the art and concept are a great (bleach but if there were gangs) but it's just so boring. characterization just isnt that strong and some of the fights are beautiful but rushed

yoo it's just not good
the characters entire family and village died and he wasn't even sad. this makes for a tough sell when this is supposed to be a revenge story.
the plot doesnt make that much sense, why are his protectors other children (why did these children agree?). the god-man character is just creepy and his character motivations are unclear (why is he helping? why are these children helping?)
author has clearly dropped some hints that there is some creepy alien/ divine/ evil force behind the scenes, but the characterization is so nonexistent and the character choices are so unsupported by the plot that it feels edgy with no bite and i cant be bothered to keep reading to see what the eventual big twist will be.
also, this story is by masui, who did assassination classroom, and like that story, I'm not a fan of his comedy, it find it boring, cringe and not that funny

literally just exhausting to follow shouldve ended within 200-250 chapters, when Mikey pops off it gets exhausting to keep up with the story