Act I is sometimes needlessly brutal, almost comically gory and overtly cynical. But gradually manga sheds its edginess, and its characters turn from over-the-top caricatures into more or less relatable and certainly lovable humans. The premise is wonderfully ridiculous, the mysteries are captivating and exiting, the horrors of the deadly island are disgusting, thrilling and alluring.
Of course, there is an impressive rogues gallery. Villains are completely amoral and hopelessly evil. It is very easy and very stimulating to hate them. And their inhuman wickedness makes it easier for us to accept our (anti)heroes as a force for good. Because, yes, almost all of them are criminals, almost all of them are “bad people”. But at least there is Something good in them. At least they are People, not literal monsters.
Act II is all about classic shounen fighting, duels to the death, rapid evolution and self-actualization of characters. You know, the good stuff.
Unfortunately at this point lovely and nuanced relationships between main characters Gabimaru and Sagiri begin to fizzle out, because story forces them to spend too much time apart from each other. Author decides to just stop developing their friendship, as if there is a limit to how many friend-points two people can get. They hit 100, and their friendship is locked, and now they are friends forever and don’t have to bother anymore. Their internal conflicts are also very cleanly resolved by this point, so nothing to see here.
As a result, our “protagonists” are constantly being upstaged by crazy, charismatic secondary characters. Which is not a bad thing. It’s nice to have a robust and diverse team of colorful individuals. They gel together very well and develop strong bonds. Every time someone dies, it hits hard, it is painful to accept. Every time they score a point it feels exhilarating.
It is true that characters spend too much time explaining to each other various powers, abilities and affinities. But when the time comes to punch and kick and slice and dice, they enthusiastically get down to business.
Then Act III comes, and everything starting to fall apart.
Author decides that he have to throw more able bodies into the mix. So he brings a second expedition of fighters to the island. Naturally, it poses a problem. Because the whole story up to this point was about maintaining a delicate power balance between heroes and villains. Heroes sacrificed a lot to figure out how to fight the bad guys, and then spent a lot of time and effort to catch up to them. It feels immensely satisfying to see them fighting back, hurting and even killing their ridiculous inhuman opponents.
But now we have new fighters on the island, bursting onto the scene like a bunch of overpowered paid DLC characters. They don’t have to level up, don’t have to learn new skills. They are regular humans. But it doesn’t matter, because they just steamroll through everyone and everything to jump into the fray as soon as possible. Our heroes have been fighting gods up to this point but suddenly find it difficult to deal with samurai and ninja.
By the way, badass newcomers bring with them a squad of 40 shinobi, to use as cannon fodder in battles. And it feels like there are not dozens, but hundreds of them. Everyone and their grandma fighting these shinobi, everyone killing them. But there is always more. As if there is a spawning point hidden somewhere on the level.
The most embarrassing scene comes when The Main Villain of the story suddenly confronts one of the newcomers and a bunch of her goons. In previous episodes this guy demonstrated power that far surpasses even his closest comrades. But now he is being outplayed and outsmarted in the most ridiculous ways. It is true that he never before encountered opponents so cunning, but it is not the point. Imagine Dio Brando being robbed in the middle of the street and then helplessly watching thieves running away from him.
At this point I just started rooting for the villains. Not because I found some sympathy towards them, but because I wanted them to eradicate foreign elements and get the story back on track. But, alas, it couldn’t be salvaged at this point.
Like many shonen manga before, this one devolves into ridiculous mess during its final volumes. The Final Battle goes on forever and escalates to the point of absolute absurdity, when any suspension of disbelief is being thrown out of the window, every single person involved it the story "dies" several times. At this point we look not at the characters, but at toys being crashed into each other. One is like - BAAAM! And the other is - DRUUM! And then - CRAAASH! It is utterly exhausting to read.
But it is not the end of the world, it does not ruin the experience. For the most part the manga is very well paced and visually unique. Sometimes even educational, because it is bringing up a lot of interesting mythological information. Like a said before, it is fine. I am genuinely happy for characters that managed to survive it.
