Reviews

Oct 23, 2024
Preliminary (36/86 chp)
Good Lord, this manga is disgusting. Quite possibly the most degenerate piece of military fiction I've ever consumed. It's a shame as what started out as a great story which showcases the naivety of the public and how the world treats distant wars along with a strong Korea parallel with great foreshadowing to Ukraine, ended up into a messy and perverted slog that absolutely killed all interest I had in moving forward.

The greatest flaw of this manga and what turned it from a strong 8-9 in the first arc is its obsession with shock storytelling. The manga is littered with scenes where something sexually degenerate or a bunch of gore happens with absolutely no benefit to the story, but just for the shock value. The first sign of this is the conclusion of the first arc where the love interest whose sole character is being "slutty" and whining about wanting to be at home with her daughter, dies in a Looney Tunes fashion where a pistol's bullet bounces off a mech, travels several hundred yards and perfectly penetrates bulletproof glass to blow her head off. I straight up hollered when this scene happened because it was just so ridiculous I lost all investment, and it went downhill from there.

At first the story does a good job at showing the horrors of war, how innocent people suffer in a conflict started by greed and the consequences of a nation being divided for artificial means. Then after the first arc, the enemy faction the USN, the America expy, basically become Nazi rapists, and I am not exaggerating at all. One arc has the protagonist fight against literal genocidal squads like the SS who exterminate civilians, for no reason, and all the villains and like half of the extras and side characters for the "good" faction are rapists or horny degenerates. Even worse is that the sexual violence is not treated as a horrific crime that it is and one of the many brutal horrors of war, but presented as a sexy ecchi scene meant to get the readers hard.

This was what ultimately caused me to quit the manga. There were two super long arcs which were a combined quarter of the entire manga that emphasized this and just utterly disgusted me. In one of them, a cyborg super soldier unconsciously grooms a prostitute with a child-like mentality and takes advantage of her after she was assaulted by a squad of the enemy, and said prostitute is taken advantage of by the cyborg's officer who was presented as a stern and competent leader yet when she meets the prostitute, becomes a lustful degenerate because of the author's lesbian fetish. The second arc is basically a loser Incel murdering his best friend to get in bed with his hot wife. I'm not joking, that is the entire arc from start to finish and all of volume 4.

When a writer puts sex into their story, it has to be done tastefully. This manga is so raunchy and degenerate it makes The Boys show look like Veggietales. There is also an incredibly annoying protagonist character, a war otaku journalist who just wanders across the battlefield in each arc and takes as many gory and action pictures as possible and never is injured or suffered despite being in the heaviest fighting. At first, it seemed like he was an excellent critique of military otaku culture and the obsession some develop with war, but then he becomes a literal Deus Ex machina who teleports around the battlefield and is able to move around literal mechs and heavy military equipment with no issue while never coming under harm because he has an "invisible face".

Even if one were to ignore the trashy story and characters, you can't even find fun in the military fights because literally every single fight is a one sided massacre where one faction wipes out the other troops completely without any losses. There's absolutely zero nuance to the battles, it's just massacre after massacre.

The only redeeming quality of this manga is the artwork. The art is beautiful and highly detailed and the mechs are excellently adapted from the video games. It's just a real shame that the action sucks and the author has a strong habit of making most of the characters ugly as sin like the most awful of hentai, which in many respects this manga is, a glorified hentai with mechs.

Overall, this manga is garbage and it's a shame because if you read Gundam Thunderbolt, you can tell that the author improved dramatically with Thunderbolt being a legit grounded war story with nuance. For anyone who likes this manga, please watch any Hollywood war movie or a documentary, do not delude yourselves into thinking this is an accurate portrayal of war.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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