Perhaps fitting a story based on classic tales, the story of Red Hood is one of its stronger points. Without explicit spoilers, it takes what would otherwise be a dull and repetitive shounen manga story and twists it, much like it does to the stories of its origin. By the end, the story isn’t at all like what one would have believed it to be like at the start, and it gets there by means of a gripping, interesting, if sometimes cliche, narrative that keeps you invested.
By far one of Red Hood’s greatest strengths though, is its world. Pulling from the Grimm tales, the world is all at once familiar and completely new, taking these familiar tales of old and putting them through a new take that drastically changes how we view them. Stories like Cinderella and Red Riding Hood are seemingly warped and changed, forming a world of fairy tales unlike I’ve seen before. It’s truly remarkable, and something I wish could have been explored more than it was.
That lack of exploration is regretfully one of Red Hood’s primary flaws, and it really rears its head regarding the characters. While most are fine and a few even interesting, the little we got of them was simply not sufficient to make most fully fleshed characters in their own right, feel like little more than caricatures in a fairy tale novel. The beginnings of something were evident, and many have compelling character with which showed easy promise to grow, but the time was simply not given, leaving the cast feeling rather paper thin.
Lack of time leads to another of Red Hood’s issues, being its pacing. While the story runs itself fairly regularly at a decent pace at the start, the further we go into the manga’s run, the quicker and less reasonable its pacing becomes, up until the end begins to move at an absolutely breakneck speed that the limited setup it has simply cannot support. It’s an understandable issue for some unfortunate real life complications, yet one of the most notable to exist.
Red Hood’s themes are by far its most interesting aspect of the manga, mostly in how they seem to evolve in response to real life occurrences. The Shonen Jump ax is an all-too familiar fact of manga nowadays, where any series can and will be cut off at the whim of Jump, forced to rush an ending in a few chapters. For most series this is rather indicative in the reading, mostly in a sudden rushed pacing and raised stakes that clearly heads straight for the story’s endgame. And, while Red Hood is similar in that manner, there is also something else of note, that being how its themes changed to handle this sudden shift.
To say the themes completely changed wouldn’t be completely accurate; the makings of the story’s final message were certainly always present even if not always emphasized. But what I find truly remarkable is how Red Hood used its real life impending cancellation to better push its own theme, the rushed pacing and sudden conclusion almost add to the impact its message creates. It’s not something I want to spoil, as the manga is short enough to be a quick read for one to experience it themselves, but it managed to stick with me in a way no other canceled manga did.
In conclusion, Red Hood is a prime example of the unfortunate circumstances behind Shonen Jump’s trigger happy axing of manga. The series had a strong narrative and world with slightly lacking character and pacing that nevertheless had much promise, along with its interesting themes, but was cut short and thus never achieved the heights it displayed the capability to achieve.
Grade - B-
