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Holyland is different from general sports manga in the way that it takes martial arts to the streets. This includes all kinds of fighting styles from karate to kick-boxing and from wrestling to kendo. The colorful range of styles gives an opportunity for all the characters to represent their own one and therefore be relevant to the story.

-Story and characters
As the story follows Yuu's journey to become a better fighter and that way find a place for himself among the streets he makes multiple acquaintances - usually through beating them first. These associates sometimes become important allies to him or even teachers in order ... for him to master a new style. This might sound like a formulaic way of doing things and for the first part of the manga it kinda is but later it becomes much more natural and expansive.

The story fortunately manages to include other themes of the street life than fighting which makes the later parts much more realistic and ugly in a good way. As someone who has had experiences in that environment personally I was able to appreciate the way the manga portrays it as multi-dimensional and not inherently negative. This was done very well especially with the last arc and the amazing end conclusion.

-Art
The art style evolves noticeably through the run of the manga compared to it only being 182 chapters long. At the beginning I feel like it's going for a bit more psychological approach with the rough edges and inconsistent shapes. It's not necessarily bad but I find the later art far more fitting to the detailed fights and the manga is quite full of them.

The fights are probably the aspect the author wanted to polish most thoroughly and that certainly shows. Every exchange of fists and kicks has an explanation behind it that is based on actual information about the martial art techniques.

-Enjoyment
The series has a slightly generic start story-wise but the fights are very entertaining and detailed and are what carry the manga. Later parts even involve some well-written characters and drama so it's definitely an enjoyable experience as long as the excessive amount of violence is not a barrier.

Overall 9/10

Story: 9

The story of Liar Game is primarily about these two main characters Nao and Akiyama taking part in different mind-heavy games where the players' greed is tested and they have to find a solution that would benefit all participants as much as possible. The main obstacle in their way being the human nature itself and other players inability to remain true to the same pure ideals.

Overall I would consider the story a very original premise that shows tons of creativity from the author. The rules behind the games are all well planned out in advance to benefit the complicated solutions the characters eventually find.

There's ... also a consistent sense of uncertainty on the readers' part since the POV changes between the characters at a pace that complements the eventual conclusion as much as possible.

In Liar Game there are still few moments where certain things are repeated unnecessarily or explained in too many words for the scene itself to have the right impact. Most of the time it's not an apparent problem though as I see it.

Characters: 8

A lot of the critique towards the manga is targeted towards the main character Nao. Her exaggerated honesty rubbed some people the wrong way because of the contrast it has with the story itself. The way I see it is it wouldn't really work any other way. If there was no one challenging the Liar Game's logic with their own morals there wouldn't be much conflict. And thanks to Akiyama there's still enough detail in the clashes between brains themselves.

Akiyama's beliefs towards doubting people and using psychology to read other people is the perfect combo to Nao's eagerness to save everyone. Even if the two don't agree on almost anything and don't even have the same objectives, the chemistry they have with each other keeps the story going and brings up interesting questions with no clear answers.

Aside from one or two most of them aren't that memorable and are mostly treated as masses than individuals. I kinda like this because it's more realistic and brings more tension but it' still a shame when characters like Fukunaga who are super entertaining are pushed to sidelines with their stories still left inconclusive.

Overall I'd say the characters that need to be relevant are done very well and the characters that are there just for exposition work for that too. It's better not to get too emotionally invested in them though since that's not really what the story focuses on aside from Akiyama, Nao and Yokoya.

Visuals: 7

The art-style is very simplistic in order to not deviate focus from the dialogue and they even use illustrations to demonstrate some of the more complicated elements to make following the story easier.

However there are times when the perspectives of manga panels are simply off in relation to each other and the assembly of pages ends up bit clunky as a result. It almost feels like the manga could have benefited most from being in novel form since while the visuals don't distract from the narrative they don't add much either in terms of style.

Ending: Brilliant

Liar Game finished with 201 chapters on a controversial ending that some consider genius, some just lazy. Some even interpreted it as a cliffhanger leading to a sequel series. Personally I found the ending very fitting to the message the author was going for and there aren't too many series that would have dared to take the same approach.

Overall: 8

I'd say it's definitely worth a read in terms of story and characters if the iffy visuals or the vast amount of dialogue aren't a problem. A lot of Liar Game focuses on exposition and diverting the focus from that on to actual mind games. This means there's a lot of text but the visual demonstration is used well to accompany that so it's not that challenging to read. Figuring out some of the twists beforehand isn't that hard but then again the story is built in a way where the readers are supposed to do that.

Liar Game is not the most intellectually provoking or visually appealing work but the effort put into the games themselves and their narratives is enough to make it a worthwhile experience. And a one that stands very much on it's own with a strong theme and message.

Manga artist Junji Ito is known for having done some of the best horror manga out there. Out of all of them Uzumaki's probably the most well known one. The series ran for 3 volumes from 1998 to 1999 and over the years has become quite a classic. So in honor of October and all I decided to give it a read.

Uzumaki tells about obscure events taking place in a small Japanese town. These events are presented through mostly separate stories that have the same main character, Kirie observing them. But Kirie isn't the only link between all of the absurd cases as it turns ... out they all have some kind of connection to spirals.

The story starts off with fairly traditional horror themes when people close to Kirie start getting involved with all kind of spirals. For the first half of the manga every chapter is basically a different tragedy with a different way of bringing spirals to it. And they cover a lot of different forms of spirals from snails and tree trunks to hurricanes and the skin on fingertips.

These stories are not realistic as there are some plot-holes, like why
everyone doesn't just leave the cursed town, but they offer concepts that make you think. Every occurrence is interesting and there's always an unsettling tone present which is mostly thanks to the wonderfully disturbing art-style.

While Uzumaki has fearsome themes, it's never quite scary. The story varies from scenes that are quite upsetting to ones that are just kind of hilarious. And it's this sense of obscure comedy that makes me how much of it is intentional.

Around the second half or the manga the story starts to change a bit. Suddenly the conflicts carry over from chapter to another and there's an overarching story with quite a step up on the stakes. But weirdly enough, to me this felt like the most lacking part in it's entirety. he previously nightmarish tone is replaced with intense catastrophe-type action sequences that just don't feel like they're complimenting what the story was good at.

Fortunately towards the end it goes back to the original pace. The whole story is concluded in a way, that without spoiling anything, completely fits the narrative and quite literally ties it all together. However considering the varying ways the spirals were around in early chapters I was left with a feeling that more of those elements could have been brought back as relevant plot points towards the end.

To me it would have benefited from some more consistency in themes and plot. Also the main character could use some personality so that her reactions to all this weird stuff wouldn't be so neutral.

In the end it's definitely worth checking out if you're looking for something different that's less about realism or plot but more about conversing themes through obscure situations. Although a fan of more traditional horror might find it too amusing to take as seriously frightening.

What makes School Rumble original isn’t the romance melodrama, which is so obvious that it almost makes fun of itself, but the comedy. Most of the chapters are self-contained stories where the characters have a normal encounter that gets more and more ridiculous
leading to a punchline.

The biggest strength in it’s style of comedy is taking advantage of the rich cast of characters that keeps growing through out the manga. Separate chapters can show different interactions that all take place in the same environment and in the end they combine them together to an even more satisfying pay-off. This tactic doesn’t really get used much in ... it’s continuing story arcs because surprisingly they focus more on trying to be serious.

School Rumble isn’t all comedy despite that being it’s overlying strength. Many comedic scenes can change to serious ones or vice-versa. It kind of varies how well done the transition is. Most times it’s the romance thing which gets really repetitive after a while. There’s misunderstandings after misunderstandings to carry the plot forward and even to bring in harem elements. Most conflicts get solved so easily it’s hard to take them seriously after a while. However when the manga actually takes effort to bring in some realistic emotions through surface-level comedic moments, it really brings it home.

The art-style is mainly simplistic fitting the comedic timing of the manga panels. They’re not too detailed so they can be read at right pace to catch the punchline which is pretty basic knowledge for all gag comics. Sometimes the art even breaks the mold of it’s usual style and offers some amazingly detailed fight scenes. These scenes really bring in some emotion to the middle of the jokes.

Only real minus with the art is the continuous usage of similar character designs that make it hard to keep up with who was who. It becomes a problem especially when there were so many named characters that could just act as the main focus any chapter without other cast members around them.

The biggest missed opportunity I see in School Rumble is it’s vast cast of characters. Most of them don’t have significant roles on the story. Some of their stories are even left without conclusion which makes you wonder why their problems were explored in the first place.

This manga is all about high-school life and despite it’s over-the-top shenanigans it also works as a fairly solid parody of the genre. So much of the comedy comes from character interactions going beyond what you’d think and not stopping before the absolute maximum of ridiculousness.

And without spoiling, the ending does conclude the main conflicts and some relationships even lead to happy endings. Just be warned, because despite it’s appearance, it does get to some heavy stuff at the late parts of the story that completely caught me off-guard. Even if it didn’t really gratify my personal ideal image of a successful comedy/drama ratio in the end, I have to recommend it as one of the best manga of it’s specific type.

Bleach is a manga that has a lot of potential which is why it's one of the most popular ones in recent history. But popularity alone can only get you so far. It's how well it lives up to that potential that determines if it's truly worthy of certain recognition. it doesn't matter how big of a fan-base a story can build by pandering to a certain audience, in this case to young Japanese boys between the ages of 4 and 12, when you're looking at something critically but it does help at looking at something and understanding how it got so well received in ... the first place.

It's important to make clear from the start that Bleach was only decent from the beginning despite its vast potential as a huge Jump series. Of course a lot of the long running series have the same kind of beginning that usually depends on the fact whether it's gonna be a marketing success or not. Therefore only once Bleach had its established place in the magazine it could start focus on a more broad scope of things knowing that there'd be time to close it all.

Problem is that the things presented in the beginning partially contradict what it slowly becomes. A lot of elements and details are conveniently forgotten overtime like the very mechanic of the introduced souls leaving bodies etc. This isn't uncommon for battle shonens, especially for long-running ones, but it still doesn't excuse the repetitive usage of lazy and predictable writing techniques almost even abused during the first proper arc of the series, Soul Society.

Soul Society is a decent arc overall with tons of exiting fights, mediocre story-line, entertaining characters and a new and interesting environment. it's not as hugely impressive as some other stories opening arcs and happens rather late overall but it gives you at least a sense of where the story can go and even ends with a surprisingly good cliffhanger. Although the beginning parts of Bleach isn't still anything to write home about it still explains enough of why it got popular among children, even overseas. And unlike the anime filled with filler, the manga actually steps from what it set up with Soul Society straight to the story-line that follows it.

Now the parts that lower Bleach as a story from pretty decent to nearly kind of average mostly start during this area of the story. In which again, there are interesting environments introduced, new exiting characters, enjoyable action and a hugely mediocre story progression that kind of stops and continues at weird times (even more than in the first arc). This part of the story serves as interesting enough to keep the reader's attention but still fails to make a conclusion satisfying enough because you feel like you've read just the same thing again, just with less certainty of what it's supposed to be.

And that's the main problem that the series has all through it. It ignores the well established theme and doesn't give the feeling that the events in the story have a point towards something. It's not a parody but it's not serious enough either, the plot gets filled with characters but is too generic to use them, the premise is refreshing and deep but isn't taken full advantage of.

The third arc is very poor compared to the rest while introducing some interesting aspects and is overall forgettable because it would honestly work better as an individual story. The final arc which covers almost half of all the content suffers from mostly the same problems as the second one except this time the beginning is actually exciting for much longer which makes it even more disappointing when it just kind of derails to a mess of writing and inconsistent usage of techniques. The fourth arc has also the worst fights all out and makes a bunch of the best characters the story had to just simple "this is my real strength"-"no this is my real strength"-characters along with the new bland villains introduced.

A lot of the last events in the manga end up as just empty and flashy fights between previously well-developed characters. Instead of using all this time to tie in all the opened plot-lines the author decided to fill most of the endgame content with shallow and repetitive scenes. As an addition to everything there are also old characters brought back for fan-service that barely have a role to play which makes the ending even more satisfying when it actually happens.

Overall it's an entertaining but rather empty series all out. There are many poorly constructed moments but also redeemable aspects to keep it going. It has flashy action, a too huge but still mostly enjoyable cast, good art style, average designs, impressive panels/ compositions, interesting symbolism with rather low effort, lacking fights and a decent story compared to the demographic and genre it represents.

Pretty much what you'd expect from a hugely popular battle shonen, nothing more, nothing less.