Hiro Mashima

The cover looked pretty boring, but after taking a look inside on the publisher’s site, it did seem quite cool actually, so I checked it out.

I was gonna say the style reminds me a lot of Fairy Tail and One Piece, but Hiro Mashima is literally the mangaka of Fairy Tail, so yeah...
If you like FT or OP, you’ll love this too, probably. I, on the other hand, have never been intrigued by those 2 franchises, and this manga shows why. The art is great and I love how diverse everyone’s show more appearance is, but that’s about it.
Personalities of everyone are incredibly flat, there’s no real plot except constant fighting, and the main goal is something as basic as killing the ruler/god of the world. Protagonist has the most plain MC-energy, someone who would’ve died in the first page if he were a side character. But he’s not. So while the side characters are all more interesting (my favs are Chako, Frey and Mikoto (these two're unhinged, I love them)), he steals the focus with his lameness. Or may get a harem because he’s from a rare species. Nothing intriguing.

I was so bored most of the time. Wanted to give it a chance tho, trying to figure out where exactly the hype comes from, but again shows that I don’t understand mainstream hype.
But of course – it ends on a cliffhanger. I’m not really interested in following this story, though I do wanna know what happens... ugh. Although it’s quite self-explainable how it’ll continue and end.

Maybe I’ll check out volume 2 someday, maybe not. It’s definitely not in my priority list, though. If you’re gonna do the most basic dungeon academy plot for the perverted male gaze, at least give it some originality. Like a queer twist or a disability rep or something. Not chewing the same old heteronormative & neurotypical gum over and over again. (Well, I guess perverted men don't need more than that.)

~

Thanks to Kodansha for offering an eARC on Netgalley.

-06.04.25 show less

This is the best first volume I've ever read! It's funny, engaging and a bit unpredictable. I don't normally read ongoing series (still haven't read Bleach, One Piece, Hunter X Hunter, Attack on Titan... you get the drift). I just hate waiting for the next issue. Silly me, I thought I'd take a glance at the first chapter and ended up getting completely hooked. Now I have to burn through 495 chapters and keep an eye out for future chapter releases.

This book was really fun to read. I didn't think so at the beginning, but I was very happy I read it by the end. I mostly felt that way because the book was not very fleshed out until near the end. I learned how Natsu, Lucy and Happy, all in FairyTail, the guild of wizards, became a team.

I also was intrigued by the artwork. Each panel was extremely detailed, and there was much to see by studying those details in depth. I also was surprised by how beautiful the author and manga artist could show more make Lucy in one panel and how grotesque in another panel. The book's pictures of her proceeded just like that, back and forth.

At the end of the book were some interesting and valuable notes by the author as to how his Japanese work translates into English in more ways than just words. Both puns and cultural items are used to bridge the language gap.

The very end of the book had the opening panels to volume 2, which I think would also be a fun read. show less

Interesting fantasy manga from the creator of Fairy Tail. The characters are interesting and the action is really dynamic, which are points in its favor. Additionally, unlike Fairy Tail, Rave Master, at least in this volume, doesn't have Fairy Tail's problem with, well, the bust size of the female characters being rather absurdly large.