ib: Instant Bullet

Well, you might say I am a little bit generous here with the score, but this one did strike close to heart for me, enough to make every nine into a ten, keeping in mind I'm writing this fresh after finishing it up.

So, the story. It sure is something. You start with Mr. antihero being all NEET in his little room with his two imaginary friends, finding the most mundane excuse for a shut-in to get outta the house, meet the main girl, learn about supernatural setting, go fight a level 1 monster...

And that's where the similarities end. The author takes this story into a completely different direction, far beyond the realm of a "clever twist", and breaks all of these conceptions into pieces.

I do love it when smart authors break the rules. Not for the sake of art or anything, but for the sake of giving us some food for the thought. These authors have the great talent of asking "Why?" and doubting conceptions that are overused. not just following them to become mainstream or breaking them to be all artsy and edgy, but actually stopping and thinking about it for a moment.

Now, I don't want to spoil anything, I'll keep everything as vague as I can, but let's just say this quality shines in this manga.

Art: I don't know nothing 'bout art, but this thing was kinda pretty.

Characters: The bread and butter of instabullet is it's characters. You won't find no "tsunderes", no dense main character (but i guess you could jokingly say it's around 80% yanderes). Not kidding, nor am I complaining, Instabullet is all about those twisted characters. nothing yuno gasai/ everyone from tokyo ghoul sorta bullshit, but an actual, legit (though sometimes a bit over exaggerated , which is to be expected of a paraphrase of a battle manga) deciptions of characters with traumas, depressions, and psychopathic tendencies. Emotions, both negative and positive are presented in a honest, real, and even heartbreaking (if you're immersed enough, like I honestly was). Without spoiling anything, that's all I'll say in this regard.

As you can obviously see, enjoyment is through the roof. It was feast of keen observation of the human heart, a celebration of the beauty and ugliness of our specie. The author clearly knew what he was doing with this one, despite this being his first work, and despite him not having the name or resource to extend this to the length he wanted, it was still an amazing piece, all thing considered.

So overall, get there and read it. it's only 27 chapters, you can finish this in an afternoon or two. as I said earlier, i might have been a bit subjective and generous when i had to score this one, but I don't care. I stand behind this shameless row of tens without a single shred of regret. With that said, thank you for reading my review, and I hope you have a lovely day.

PS, keen yet obsessive fans of undertale might notice the similarities between a lazy skeleton and a boy who looks like he works in a ramen shop?

Spoilers included inside of course.

What kind of story does Instant Bullet want to tell? It's meant to be a story of anger, regret, sorrow and redemption but does it really accomplish it? I personally don't think so.

So what did IB do right? It tries to tell a story about the forgotten people in society, the 1% who have been hurt and have nothing to live for, the ones who hate the world for what it's done and want it to end for all the pain it's caused. In a sense, it does accomplish that in terms of giving us characters we can sympathise with and whose backstories feel genuinely painful. I actually like that we don't get to see their full backstory and how they turned out. The manga gives the bare minimum for some characters especially the witch, and lets us use our own imagination to play out how the characters in general grew up and the suffering they endured along the way, which brings me to my next point; I liked how in general almost all the characters have had some form of childhood trauma. It's the most powerful period of everyone's lives and having a messed up childhood reinforces the idea that every single one of them are loco.

Now to the problems - I had no problem following the story at the beginning all the way up to close to end. Now I know it's probably because the story got slashed but that's when the story decides to go full deus ex machina and lost sight of the original plot. The IBs all wanted to destroy the world for their own personal reasons. I really expected the story to become really dark after the witch's death but it flipped the story on it's head. Now instead of wanting to destroy the world because of what happened to his childhood friend and his girlfriend, he now tries to save the world? The protag kept stating that he was the one who wanted to destroy the world, which I could've bought if it was flower girl, but it felt really asinine after all his claims.


On to his childhood friends, what purpose did they serve in the manga apart from reminding him of trauma? Were they supposed to be his redemption? It seemed to slant that way and now that I'm writing this out I do feel that maybe they were the reason why he decided to save the world but it came out of nowhere and felt like a bad asspull.

Oh and don't even get me started on how there's supposed to be 20 IBs but we only see 8 of em.


Now should you read this? It's only 27 chapters so why the heck not? Just give it a shot - Maybe you'll come to enjoy some thing I didn't.

WOW .

No really wow .So this is actually given a 7.9 rating on this site .Pretty amazing if you ask me but I guess that's just other people's taste being different from mine .I don't think this was terrible but I think that it was a serious waste of potential .Mostly because it was so short .

Plot - 6
Not a very common story but not very interesting despite that .I think to many this will come off as a manga that just tries to be (yes I'm using the dreaded buzzword) "edgy" .Nothing is really good about it apart from its uniqueness .I feel like this was something that I could like a lot really .Too bad it suffered from bad pacing and poor/insufficient explanations .It all felt so.......uninteresting .Not to mention that deaths in it didn't make me feel the slightest bit of loss .The ending could have been pretty good but it was ruined at the last moment .The meaning behind the story (that there is an unbelievable amount of pain in the world) is also something I couldn't relate to and so found a bit stupid .

Art - 6
The art wasn't anything special either so it would normally get a 5 .I suppose the expressions were a little good sometimes so I can give it a 6 .If the art was better I think I would have liked the manga more too .Nothing special here so I'm moving on .

Characters - 4
Yeah these were pretty bad .Not that they were generic but when you try depicting characters that need a few good episodes of development and then you handle that all in one or two chapters then you can tell that it'll be pretty bad .

Enjoyment - 6
My review is scanty mostly because there really isn't much to say about this .It simply wasn't good but wasn't terrible either .I probably should have spent time reading Absolute Duo rather than this but I don't exactly regret reading it .

It has a standard battle royale premise, with some interesting powers thrown into the mix, so at first Instant Bullet seems like a promising read. You couldn't be further away from the truth.
The author doesn't take long to throw all his edgyness into the pages when it is mostly uncalled for. The plot moves in the most cliché and lazy way possible, and romance happens without prior development whatsoever.
This would already make for a really bad read, but it doesn't end here: Forgetting plot-points established in the prologue, a complete disregard for character development and an overall "fuck you" to the reader.
Yes, this manga got axed, so the ending can be excused. But taking all the issues prior to this into account, thank god it got terminated.

Note this is a bias review and the high score is aim mostly towards its beautiful potential. But I hope I make an interesting review here goes.

Instant bullet, is a psychological mystery series of where people mysteriously obtained powers. The series I believe is well done on conveying the dark aspect of some of the character's mind. Whether some are bitter or some just have a broken moral compass leading to being sociopaths.

The series is not for those who wants a more uplifting kind of emotion, as some may consider consider too emo or depressing. As the series explains only minorities could feel this kind of these emotions. It also try to talk about beyond the concepts of good and evil in an interesting manner

The criticism is the rushed ending due to it being cancelled, plus all the unanswered questions.

Hope the author will revive the series one day as that is one of the author's greatest dream at the moment.

Although it has been cancelled for now, try the first 5 chapters the series is good, if you don't mind the dark tone and lack of uplifting moments

tl;dr: Some interesting concepts but tied together in a really messy fashion, though with really strong highpoints in regards to characters. 

This manga had a lot of good concepts and did a lot of things incredibly well, but it was so messy and rushed that it was hard to see through to them at times. There's an underlying theme about the world being a complete trainwreck and making those who live in it trainwrecks of themselves. It's incredibly edgy, but at the same time, how things ultimately get resolved, despite everything that's said, makes it seem a bit hopeful, and how it manages to be so despite everything being so utterly cynical makes it have a good amount of impact. The highest points in the manga are those involving Yume, especially the arc focused primarily upon her, which I felt was incredibly well written and set up an aftermath that felt like it could have a lot of potential in terms of connections between characters. Yume herself was also really easy to like and a really good character, especially opposite to Kuro. Kuro was an interesting character too, but what was more interesting was how he influenced the people around him, Kokage, Sera, and his sisters mainly. There are some issues regarding most everything else however. There are various other ibs but they never got developed. And even with the stories involving characters that were developed, it felt rushed and somewhat random. The randomness worked pretty well at times, such as Yume random involvement in the ending, but overall it just felt kind of confusing and made it feel like things were nowhere near explained well enough. This is further made a problem by how rushed it is at times with scenes that feel like they're just massive infodumps where things change too much in the middle. The ending too while amusing, wasn't really an ending while also being one, wherein it seems that it's at the end, but it doesn't actually feel like it from how it ends. It was weird and oddly didn't feel unsatisfying, but also felt kind of annoying at how open ended it was. The art was okay. 

Instant Bullet can be pretty edgy for a lot of people's taste but is worth the reading in one go. Let me explain furthermore.

The story is about our anti-hero main character named Kuro who hated the world so much to the point that he already wanted to destroy it. One Christmas Eve, he meets a girl and a mysterious creature which triggers the start of his journey as he tries to attain what he desired from the start. Right off the bat you'll notice how unique the story is and you'll get hooked as you continue seeing as to how many twist and turns there is that will be revealed. Even just after the second chapter this manga already blew my mind making me want to dig in further.

The characters can be either a strong point or a weak point of the manga depending on the reader's perspective. The main character is basically an anti-hero which is the type of character that a lot of viewers/reader like. But sometimes the main character turns away from his original beliefs making him a hero. This fact also applies with some of the remaining characters. At one time they are with the same side as the main character but next time you seen them they're already the enemy.

There's not much to say about the art. Though it generally look simple or normal, there's a lot of point where the art excels the dramatic parts and thus boosts the overall feel of the manga.

Overall this manga is pretty short and you can read at one go. I've pretty much enjoyed this manga because of it's never ending twists and some tear jerking turn of events. Even though its not the kind of manga that can be recommended to everyone, i really love it and made me want to make a review of it because i feel like it deserves a lot more attention.

Thanks for reading!

I don't like writing reviews but, this is a very good story depicting depression, loneliness, discrimination and hate that the today's world harbors. It's not about the story it self, or the characters them self, but the path that we as a civilization are taking and where it leads. The demeaning of those less fortunate, demonization of those with whom we do not agree upon, discrimination of everyone who may even remotely be better than us, and hate for all of whom are different than us. It puts "ME" in very realistic portrayal of today's age.

I find this manga to be a masterpiece, 10/10, because it shows you that actually nothing is predetermined, nothing is unchangeable, that the good actually can be achieved, only if you tried

Read it ^_^

This is a brilliant manga that tries to do too much in too few chapters. The story is pretty mediocre and isn't what makes this manga so good, it's the characters. This manga tackles some really heavy subjects in a really short time. What it takes to be human, drugs, traficking and the concept of good and evil are all subjects tackled by this manga. While trying to do so much in such a short time it only partly succeeds, and that is the biggest flaw of this manga. While the characters are pretty good the lenght of this manga don't give them time to grow. Thats why i am really excited for the supposed continuation becuse this manga could be a 9 or 10 if the characters are well developed.

In conclusion, the score i gave Instant bullet might be a little high but i think it REALLY got room to grow, and with a little luck the sequel might turn out amazing.

(First review i wrote so don't expect a top quality in-depth review but i tried the best i could)

Earlier work of Akasaka Aka, now author of the famous Kaguya-Sama, more than anything Ib: Instant Bullet made me wish he got back to writing serious stuff but with his current experience.

Because this manga is *crazy*. It's a wonderful expression of all the negative emotions of humanity, and a lament for all those who suffer because they're so different from society to be completely incompatible with it even at its most basic level.
And these characters, so deeply broken that they'd rather see the world burn, are chosen as the ones who will save it.

This is everything but the start of a redemption story, because the author takes whatever narrative structure he can and throws it out of the window. It's a manga so chaotic, unfocused, so full with content and themes and just as fast in reaching its conclusion it feels like one long cry of sorrow.
To the very end Instant Bullet keeps defying both common sense and common writing standards just as much as its protagonists defy society.

On some level it reminded me of Kinoko Nasu's Kara no Kyoukai, as they both present characters who are beyond common sense but still playing around its threshold, at times seemingly unsure of which side they want to be on; but it also gave me similar vibes to NisiOisin's Shoujo Fujuubun, with the way the characters were confronting their fate.

This manga is probably too specific in its strengths to ever garner much attention from the majority, especially because of its lack of focus or even direction which could be a huge turn off for most people, but if you liked any of the above stories I'd say give Instant Bullet a try.
But if these things aren't a problem for you, and especially if you are into the whole sheer chaotic madness thing, oh boy you're in for an extremely cool experience.

TLDR: if Akasaka Aka ever makes a longer battle manga similar to Instant Bullet but with added quality from his work with Kaguya it's going to get on my favorites instantly.