LeaOotori14

Solo Leveling fucking rocks.

The art is unbelievably great. Every panel of this manhwa falls into two categories: kickass wallpaper material or great potential profile picture. Everything’s in color, everything pops, and it all just works so damn well.

The story is a pretty generic power fantasy, but it’s executed better than most others and has enough twists to avoid feeling repetitive. Watching the main character grow stronger and stronger is extremely entertaining, especially since the world is distinct and deep enough that it doesn’t feel like everything revolves around him.

The characters are also nothing too special, though they’re all well designed and manage to be surprisingly charming. The main character is from humble beginnings, and this alongside the staggering amount of cocky bastards in the manhwa make you really want to see him get stronger, blow some minds, and deflate some egos.

Overall, Solo Leveling is fun. So fun, in fact, that I'm giving it a 10/10 primarily because of how damn fun it is. You know what’s going to happen. You know there’s no real tension. And yet, somehow, you can’t wait to see it all play out.

Do not run away, running away is for cowards. This is the world for the brave, the world where there are lots of dungeons. The world, where there are many undiscovered paths to untouched treasures. At least, that is what people say. The story focuses upon a boy, who one day discovers a woman in the dungeon. Chained and unable to move, she claims to be one of the best adventures. She tells the boy a story that one day, she was clearing the dungeon and met a demon. Although, it only took her seconds to defeat the demon, it also activated the trap. And because of that, she has been chained for 200 years already. The boy explains the chained heroine that he wishes to become stronger in order to become a hero known to everyone and to be of help to his family. That is why, the chained heroine agrees to share her power with the boy and grants him very powerful skills. Every time he uses one of these skills, his life force will be consumed. Once it reaches 0, he dies. To refill the life force: lust, desires and just tasteful food will do.

I have very mixed feelings on this one. Maybe this is because of the fact that this series is a borderline ecchi, maybe because of the fact that you do not know what to expect out of it. What I mean is that this manga tries to touch upon some serious topics: a boy, whose family belongs to the lowest nobles, does not want to be a burden to his family and so he tries to become a strong hero that will have the power to help friends and make his family proud of him and then you see some rather questionable episodes that make you doubt the whole manga. Like, you cannot take seriously a manga, where a male protagonist asks women to sit on his face to restore his ‘life force’, which is the resource needed for him to cast magic.

Do not get me wrong, though. I do not have anything against ecchi. But there should be limit. Okay, Noru needs ‘life force’ to be able to cast magic and it is stated in the manga that tasty food and just whenever he accomplishes something in his life, help him restore his power. However, most of the time he restores his magic with the help of these borderline ecchi moments, which makes it somewhat boring. I am not trying to say that this manga is awful, though. It also has good things about it: boy is not that usual crybaby, his family does not have status and he does not want to be a burden to them and he wants to succeed in life without the help of his family. Because of him being a hard worker, he meets the strongest hero there is, who agrees to train him and many, many more.

All in all, this manga will have an anime adaptation and the best comparison I have for this manga is Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?. So, if you enjoyed Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, I guess you will enjoy this manga, as well!

This is easily the worst Japanese manga ever published in Russian.

I am actually shocked that it has been published as tankobon not just in Japan, where they obviously should know better, but in other countries too! And such a lot of truly great one-shots and one-volume mangas rest unpublished and untranslated!

The art is just medicre. Not shokingly bad, but rather bad - so it was definetely not published because of this.

The plot is non-existing. It rather is like porn, except there is no porn. A boy makes a figurine, it turns out to be alive and then without any reason, a series of battles between figurines begins. Some characters appear out of nowhere and say something random (which is kinda their motivation to battle, but it may change in the next chapter) and then the fight begins - so the "plot" betwwen the battles is the same as plot in porn - it exists only as an excuse to draw more battles. Which is kind of logical, because the only other manga the author ever published is a series of hentai one-shots.

The battles were actually so boring, that it was actually the first time ever I considered dropping a one-volume manga which I specifically bought. I've read it till the end hoping for any explanation or plot twist or logic or something which would make me understand why it was published in the first place. Alas! - I never understood.

There was actually one episode in the middle when it was getting better - a story about two figurines that by accident ended up in garbage and are trying to survive. There was even some drama in it - but it ended abruptly with a comic relief and wasn't really connected to other parts of the manga except happening in the same world.

It is not "so bad that it is actually good". It is just bad. Looks like the author just doesn't know what a scenario is or how stories work. Or like he had never ever read a manga from beginning to the end or watched a film, for that matter.

I just hope that nobody ever had read this as their first manga because it is a model of all the stereotypes about manga, especially shounen-manga. It is full of unmotivated violence and pantsu and devoid of any sense or plot.

Warning this Review May Contain Spoilers-

I don't think I have ever found it so hard to rate a manga before, but here it is. We have a manga known as 'Hoshi no Ponko to Toufuya Reiko' which follows the story of a family that 'finds' this alien but their discovery turns into a nightmare which I can express any more as that will spoil this 3 chapter story, well if you call it a story.

STORY

As you may of judged by the introduction I wasn't majorly impressed with this manga as I felt like it lacked in this area, the story. It was an interesting premise but I feel like it was over too fast and this just let it down by quite a bit, there didn't seem to be much development leading up to what I assume was the climax and then the ending just messed with my head. However I did like the fact that it did show the true nature of human's in an interesting way that not many manga are able to capture, our downfalls (such as greed and other things).

ART

The art was interesting, I wouldn't that that it was unique or anything but they put some effort into Ponko's true human form (despite it being naked...). But yeah, nothing to really comment on here other than the fact this is probably what saved it from getting a lower score.

CHARACTERS

Now the characters, they were something. So our main girl does have a rough time throughout this manga, and it is clear the motive of her actions later on in the manga from the early scenes. Ponko, was a unique character in a way despite the story being quite predictable. As far as the other characters go, I can't say I paid much attention to them...oops.

Now you may think this is an extremely short review, that is exactly what is it because this manga confused me so much and I had so much trouble rating it due to the fact that it wasn't necessarily bad but wasn't what I like.

-AngelBeatsYui-

PS- This review was originally written on my main account on anime-planet.

Ogeha is an interesting departure from the usual romance stories. It’s not explicitly one in writing but it does come off as one.

Everything starts when our sociopath of a main character finds a huge larvae and for whatever reason decides to rip it with a stick to get to the bug inside. The bug inside is the titular Ogeha or as her bug friends call her, Inferno. She’s a weird but kinda cute looking hybrid between a human and a butterfly with some extra abilities under her hood. He calls her disgusting, grabs her by the legs and drags her over some steps, which knocks her out. Then, after dragging her to his house, he puts her in a shitty little box and feeds her a pickle.

This is Kiji, a main character of the story that you’re supposed to care about, one you’re supposed to root for as his relationship with Ogeha kinda gets better and one you’re supposed to sympathize with when she’s forced to leave and he goes out to look for her. We barely started but we already have a protagonist that’s severely unlikable. As author themselves point out in the afterword, they wanted to make a character based on a type of person that reflect on their actions but isn’t very expressive about it on the outside which often makes people think they’re insensitive. Because of this she insisted on not having any lines or even really body language or anything that would express his change despite editors suggesting otherwise. While it might be a nice intention, what we end up getting is a character that acts like a psycho and then makes a 180 for unknown reasons. At best you as a reader can ascribe some motivation onto the character in whatever way makes sense to you but it’s not reader’s job to write the story.

Most of the manga pretty much focuses on these very poorly presented interactions between Ogeha and Kiji and it’s one of its biggest downfalls. Aside from that all we have going on is this weird subplot about giant centipedes that kill people to get nutrients and look for Ogeha so she can lay them some quality eggs before she dies. We don’t know who these guys are, what their long term plan is, why Ogeha is this weird creature and why can’t they just find another one that isn’t born prematurely. Not all of these questions have to be answered. It would be just fine if Ogeha was some unexplained creature Kiji finds but when you add in these strange centipedes that are extremely motivated to find Ogeha and make her breed as soon as possible I want to at least know why it’s such a crisis and what their plan is, since having a few of those butterflies also means killing quite a few people to feed them. I feel like it only exists as an excuse to separate her from Kiji and have an emotional reunion while killing off easily dispensable characters.

I wish that was the only thing detracting from the main narrative but it’s far from it. A bunch of page space goes to classmates of Kiji who are only used to move other plot elements along and add nothing to the manga overall. There’s a subplot about a blind hobo who hates people cause they’re cruel which culminated in Ogeha murdering some teenagers which is never brought up again. These deviations and lack of proper focus on anything in particular makes this manga a complete mess thematically. I read it and glanced over some parts again to make sure but I couldn’t really make out what the point even was. Not being prejudiced against people? Was it about how people can change to become better? I have no idea and there’s nothing in this manga to make out a coherent theme and on top of that there’s even less to point out what’s the point of that theme even was cause even if there was one it sure as hell wasn’t explored.

The way I see it this manga only has 2 good points and they’re rather superficial.
First one is that Ogeha herself is adorable. Despite being a somewhat ugly looking combination of bug and human the author put in a lot of effort to make her seem cute and likable. She comes off as a naive, very impressionable child that’s excited about learning the world but her lack of awareness evokes that “I want to protect this” feeling. I genuinely enjoyed the moments like her discovering TV for the first time, watching Titanic and panicking when it turns off cause she’s worried about what will happen to the characters, or the way she befriend a nutcracker toy that persists as her friend throughout the manga. Maybe if all the unnecessary plot points were stripped out the manga was focused on redeeming Kiji and Ogeha slowly learning about the world around her it would be better as a whole.

Second and last good point for me is art. While it’s not exceptional there’s a lot of detail in it and afterword sheds some light on how dedicated the author was to researching for the manga. They crawled around without using legs, to get a feel for how it would Ogeha would move around; they made a hobo house out of their bathroom to make sure hobo houses in the manga make sense visually and they even went back and redrew some pages after noticing a character doesn’t have a trash bin and air conditioner in their room. While there’s many flaws it’s obvious that the author put some love into it and that’s always nice.

While this review is rather negative overall, the manga is short enough that you could read it in an hour or two so if you have a passing interest in it, it’s probably worth a try. It’s worth mentioning that it’s pretty well paced and paneled so instead of dragging on the whole thing is a smooth read.

This review is written in english and spanish
Esta review esta escrita en español y inglés

English:
I love gyarus, that's why I came to this manga, hoping to find entertaining short stories about them, but I left with a bittersweet taste after reading this. The manga is simple, they are different stories made by different authors, therefore, they are oneshot of each of the authors. Here we can find a problem or a virtue, but I think this time it became a problem, all this will be developed later

Story: 6/10
I have decided to give a 6 to the "stories" in general, it seems to me that some are quite interesting, that give you the feeling of wanting more, but there are others that are very bad, it seems to me that some authors had no idea what it was a "gal", so his stories don't have much to do with the manga concept
But in general there are more good stories than bad.

Art 7/10
Being different stories, there are different types of arts depending on the author, generally the art is good, but some authors drew quite badly.

Characters 6/10
Another 6/10, but it has a justification similar to that of the story. Some characters are not gyarus! You will come across a story where the girl does not seem to be a gyaru, but a kind of "delinquent girl", some authors did not know much what a gyaru was, so they based themselves on their erroneous stereotypes. Although there are also gyarus that were perfect, it all depends on the author of the oneshot.

Enjoyment: 6/10
But even so it seems to me that it is enjoyable, there are better stories than worse within the manga.

Español:
Me encantan las gyarus, por ello llegué a este manga, con la esperanza de encontrarme entretenidas historias cortas sobre ellas, pero me fui con un sabor agridulce luego de leer esto. El manga es simple, son diferentes historias hechas por diferentes autores, por ende, son oneshot de cada uno de los autores. Acá podemos encontrarnos con un problema o con una virtud, pero creo que esta vez se transformó en un problema, todo esto estará un poco desarrollando más adelante.

Historia: 6/10
He decidido dar un 6 a las "historias" en general, me parece que algunas son bastante interesantes, que te dan la sensación de querer más, pero hay otras que son muy malas, me parece que algunos autores no tenían idea de lo que era un "gyaru", por lo que sus historias no tienen mucho que ver con el concepto de manga
Pero en general hay más historias buenas que malas.

Arte. 7/10
Al ser diferentes historias, existen diferentes tipos de artes dependiendo del autor, generalmente el arte es bueno, pero algunos autores dibujaron bastante mal.

Personajes 6/10
Otro 6/10, pero tiene una justificación parecida a lo de la historia. ¡Algunos personajes no son gyarus! Te vas a encontrar con una historia donde la chica no parece ser una gyaru, sino una especie de “chica delincuente”, algunos autores no sabían mucho lo que era una gyaru, así que se basaron en sus estereotipos erroneos. Aunque también hay gyarus que quedaron perfectas, todo depende del autor del oneshot.

Disfrute: 6/10
Pero aun así me parece que es agradable, hay mejores historias que peores dentro del manga.

Hmm this is a strange manga series. I first came to read this manga as I read all the Hana-Kimi and Sugar Princess series, which are both by Hisaya Nakajo. This series isn't like the other two mangas.

The story...Well it doesn't really end properly, there are many things which are unanswered, however I believe Hisaya Nakajo said that she may carry on the series in the future...? It is a shame, because in the second volume, you get to meet a certain character which I think a good story could have came out of, but it didn't (as of yet)

I wasn't overly keen on how the main character Ai looked, does that sound wierd? I don't know but for some reason I just couldn't conect with the character, how ever I did like her "child hood friend" :)

I read this series within half a day, I thought it was good but i doubt i will read it again, but if the series does carry on then i will probably carry on reading.

Yes Lolita but Father? or My Father is a Loli, is a strange yet funny manga, about a Father scientist who turns himself into a Loli, and since that day a lot of funny, strange and dangerous things happen.

Characters- 7/10

The father scientist who turns into a Loli, the assistant with big boobs, the Lolicon son, the girl who is the childhood best friend that is also in love with the MC, the girl's other friend, the MC other friend, the the genius transfer student, and a very special cockroach(yes that's right) etc.. we have the classic characters for a school/comedy and some more original with some twist/secret, they are all funny and well draw.

Art- 8/10

The Art is good, the comedy scenes are very well draw, the face expresions are really good and the Lolis are very very cute. Some ecchi scenes and kind of action are also very good.

Story- 7/10

The Story is not anything deep and complex, it's simple yet nice, just a story about a father scientist who makes himself a Loli with a fail experiment and then good,bad, funny things happen. What can you get from reading this? well you get comedy, cute Lolis some good and funny plot twists.

Overall/Enjoyment- 8/10

This may looks like a stupid idea for a manga but it was fun to read, don't go into it expecting something amazing, life changing or anything like that, this is just comedy with Lolis and weird stuff happening all around witch makes it very fun and nice to read. I recommend it to anyone who has 30 minutes to 1hour free to read it :)

I gave this an overall 8.

The story is really good and I really enjoyed it. It is very ecchi, with a lot of humor. To be honest i don't understand why this is a One-Shot and didn't get serialized.
The characters are very like-able and the main male character kind of gets on your nerves but all in all they are good.
The art also in this manga is very well done.

I hoped this review helped you in anyway, and thank you for also taking the time to read it.

:)

seemingly, it's custom here to announce that it's your first review in your first review. so yeah, this is my first review.

Short spoiler-free review


--- Likes (4):

- The art and faces drawn are pretty good

- The foundation built for the story (That is reversed gender roles) is actually quite solid. I think the author tried her hardest to think of all the possible differences in such a world.

- The MC is rather likable and the supporting characters are supporting and funny

- I'm actually invested in the story and it seems promising


--- Dislikes (0):

- Nothing notable as of yet


Overall, I think it's a must read if you've ever read an ecchi comedy, and I recommend it to anybody else for the sake of the promising story and art.