Reviews

I'm not one to write super long reviews or go into much detail so I will just mention what my main problem is with the manga series as a whole. My one problem is that filler story arcs, that you would typically see written into an anime adaptation of a manga series, are specifically written into the plot of the manga. I don't understand why Yuki Tabata has made this decision. Maybe it's to give him more time to flesh out his own thoughts but regardless of the reasoning I find it frustrating to be reading the manga and then all of a sudden we're going to have a dating chapter or a trip to a hot spring.

While there are some elements built into these "filler but not filler" arcs that move the story along it seems very cheap to use these tropes within the plot of the manga itself. I've seen reviews of certain episodes of the Black Clover anime adaption that reference it being "a filler episode" only to turn around and tell them it's actually not filler and the entire scene was really in the manga to begin with.

It's for this reason that I give the manga, overall, a 7/10. It's good but since this manga isn't supposed to be in the slice-of-life genre I don't expect to see mundane scenarios written directly into the plot. Save that stuff for the anime and please don't pad the story-line of the manga.

Edit: As of chapter 172, I still rate this a 7/10 but for a different reason than mentioned above. There is very little to no padding going forward after chapter 100 or so. With that said, the reason why I keep this a 7/10 is because of the art design. Without spoiling anything there’s a certain arc that kicks off around chapter 120 that is non-stop action/mayhem. While the story is exhilarating, it is very hard to follow the action i.e. can’t tell who hit who and can’t tell which person is speaking. It’s minor but was enough of an irk for me to get frustrated while reading. All in all though, the way the pacing is going right now I would 100% check this series out.