Jinjun11

If anyone is planning to read Steel Ball Run, I recommend that you lower your expectations as it may not be your cup of tea. I know of some people who were told about Steel Ball Run and they seemed very enthused and hyped about reading it. In the end, they ended up being disappointed because to them, Steel Ball Run seemed over-hyped and did not live up to their expectations. I advise to anyone who is planning to read the manga to just take it as it is and go with the flow and not let the hype overwhelm them.

Without further ado, here is my review of Steel Ball Run.

「STORY」 - 9/10
Steel Ball Run may not be captivating at first though it was very nice to see familiar names of the JoJo universe. Steel Ball Run starts to pick up the pace when stand battles begin. The story arcs are very well written with an excellent cast of minor characters to accompany it.

「ART」 - 8/10
Hirohiko Araki comes back with the art from part 6 and then improves it as we go along the story. From here, we really see how the characters from Part 1 with fabulous bodybuilders evolve to Part 7 with skinny Gucci models. I prefer the latter as it tends to be more glamorous which goes well with the story, at least in my opinion.

「CHARACTER」 - 10/10
Jonathan Joestar was a kind, tall and muscular English gentleman. He would probably be likable in real life but not so much in the manga/anime because he is very one-dimensional. Johnny Joestar in contrast is a short,skinny and paraplegic American asshole who acts very sarcastically to friends and acquaintances, especially to Gyro.

He is only motivated by the chance that he may walk again if he pursues his journey and that's all he really cares about. He is very relatable due to this because he is not some hero out there to save the day, he only wants to benefit himself. He is accompanied by a goofy mentor who is there to babysit him which makes the story all the more fun.

Dio in the form of Diego Brando is a much better villain, if he is even considered as a villain, with an actual motivation to fight with other people unlike his counterpart who was "born evil".

The villain of the story, Funny Valentine, is probably the best character in my opinion. Although Funny's goal is very immoral, he just does so in order to benefit his country as the President compared to Johnny with his goal to harden his flaccid legs. This makes you sort of cheer for both characters which made me give the characters a score of 10/10, I would give an 11 if possible.

「ENJOYMENT」 - 9/10
Nothing much to talk about here as I probably already expressed my love for the manga in the previous sections of the review but I will say that none of the other JoJo parts have really captivated me, they were just fun to read. Steel Ball Run was very enjoyable,introducing a new way stands fight, although the user does most of the fighting instead of the stand. This made the users seem more vulnerable and made it seemed that there are high stakes in each stand fights. JoJo's lives up to its name for being a manga that's over-the-top.


「OVERALL」 - 9/10
I was glad I avoided as much spoilers as possible when reading Steel Ball Run. It is a very fun and enjoyable read. I highly recommend that people read this with the advice I had at the start of the review or if lacking the free time, have someone summarise the story for you.

If I were to rank all the parts of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure from my favourite to least favourite, excluding Part 8 as it hasn't finished yet by the time I'm writing this review, it would be: 7>5>4>2>1>3.

Vagabond is one of the greatest manga ever written. The manga is totally different from the majority of seinen manga who focuses on gore and storylines without any depth to it. It is a gift to all those readers who enjoy philosophy and realistic stories.

Vagabond is a journey of a samurai named Miyamoto Musashi focusing on his life and the hardships & challenges he faces throughout his journey. The mangaka has done a brilliant job in portraying his life right from the first chapter.

The artwork is on a level of its own and the narration is exquisite. The story progresses at a good pace. Character development is great and each character is introduced in a nice and comprehensive way. The fights are just epic and so realistic that you will find yourself enjoying every single panel of it.

The story is portrayed in an elegant manner and you will see that each chapter teaches you something about life in some way. So for those of you who have been disinclined to start this manga, throw away your reluctance and just start reading this masterpiece.

Beck was one of the first animes I watched. I was about eleven years old and was playing this Guitar Hero 2 mod with anime songs. The creators were huge fans of Beck. The game started with Hit In The U.S.A and one of the first playable songs was Moon On The Water. I was hooked.

To be honest, I was a kid. I barely remember the anime. I know I liked it, but I don’t think I absorbed much. But the songs stuck with me. So now, more than 10 years after, I stumbled upon the manga and thought I should give it a try. It would be nice to remember what the story was like. Was it even that good?

Oh, boy it was.

I read band mangas before. Nana is great, but the music feels more like a background to the characters development. I also read Fuuka, whatever that trainwreck was all about.

Beck struck me differently. It is in fact a manga about music. About its power, its grip. Made by someone who clearly loves it, dropping references all over. Band t-shirts and manga chapters reenacting famous album covers to please any music geek. Going from rock legends like Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix to hip hop classics like Wu Tang Clan, the alternative rock of Radiohead and Sigur Rós to the hardcore of Black Flag and Converge.

The art at the beginning was a big let down, especially the character designs, but it improves greatly towards the middle. The live shows are downright stunning. They’ve got this serious concert photography feel, capturing the energy of these moments. There are some weak plot conflicts, especially Ryusuke’s background being too absurd to take seriously, but they don’t ruin the the build up of the band’s career.

Beck’s real magic is its ability to convey passion. We feel everything as the band goes through it’s ups and downs, excited as they write great songs and frustrated when they have a bad performance.

It also captures incredibly well these striking little moments for any music fan. The thrill of discovering your new favorite band. Buying your first guitar. Being blow away by seeing a band you love live. The enchantment of being in a music festival, surrounded by amazing artists. A memorable concert that only those who were there can understand how amazing it was. Never other media translated these feelings so well.

No one has given this manga a review, so i'll try to review it myself.

Story: 7
The premise is like this: our heroine is a timid and socially awkward girl. She is very slow when it comes to thinking. Her grandma hates her (she live alone with her btw). She wants to be more social and want to have a sharper mind, because she needs to study harder than other students in order to keep her grades good (remember, she's a slow thinker). Then, she make pact with the devil so that she can gain more time by stopping it. However, this power comes with a cost. The more she use this power, the more lustful she becomes. In order to relieve her lust, she masturbates and also using her childhood friend.
The story gets more intense as she gradually use her power more and more and she needs to calm her sexual urges that keep on rising by exploiting her childhood friend. The story is really short, so i won't explain too much of it. There's plot twist at the end which is kind of anticipated for me.

Art: 6
The heroine hairline is weird. It seems that she has balding on one spot. The childhood friend has generic face. Her rival seems quite different from other characters. The background is not really interesting

Character: 6
The heroine gets the most development. She goes from mild and socially awkward individual into more confident and snobby. Her childhood friend doesn't really change that much. He keeps on being himself, which is almost always concerned with the heroine. The other characters do not gain much development, probably because there's only little time and the story itself doesn't really require many characters.

Enjoyment: 4
This is pretty enjoyable at times and it is quite light, so you can dash through all the 12 chapters, whether you enjoy it or not.

Overall: 6
I gave this series a 6 out of 10. It should had been a little bit longer, though.

After really liking Jigokuren I looked forward to this sequel. I'm not disappointed per se, but I expected more. Death Life feels like step down from Love in the Hell.
The world is same, solid, interesting and brutal place that we know from original. Story is less dramatic and instead has some feels and better pacing, but overall it's still just a gory comedy - maybe even a little more gory than previously. One very strong point are cameos of old cast - like an epilogue that we all missed after first manga.
Where the sequel starts falling are characters. Most of them are weaker than pevious cast and even without such comparison they aren't that great characters on their own. It's especially noticable on protagonist, who, unlike Rintaro, isn't good source of comedy and rather feels like just a guy around whom the comedy happens.
Art is great as always. One of the best points of this manga. Author's good taste when it comes to body proportions (for ecchi purposes) only makes it better.

In the end, if you read previous title, you will like this one too, and even if I said otherwise, I doubt I'd discourage anyone. It's still a solid sequel, even if not as good as I hoped for.

So...

When I talk about a masterpiece, then it must be perfect.
But...
Let's talk about that some other time, cuz now I'm too busy to write this wonderful piece of art.

Story:

I have no idea

Characters:

A group of three kids:

A leader that hangis himself all the time. Best thing is, he always has a rope around his neck! I wonder what his parents must think.
"Hang in there!"
As a reason for doing this is that he "thinks" like that, but I'm sure he just wants to end his life because he can't get that wonderful circle around his left eye away, that looks like as if someone had played a prank on him, oh, how much I feel with you....

*Ahem*

Moving on.

We have a girl with a (note)book. No, not a Death Note, cause that be breaking copyright, but even though, I'm sure it would have been better. The girl is quite boring so let's just forget everything here.

aaand last but not least

A guy with a mouth mask. But not a mouth protection, it looks like a lolly with two strings on the side. Perfect for little kids!
Maybe he's wearing it so his teeth won't fall out? Or is it really a lolly?!

I guess there are many more "stupid" stupid people, but no one wants to know that, right? Better tell you about the psychos! I mean, who doesn't hang himself from time to time?

Art

I always ask myself what the people thought who designed those characters. I mean, it's for kids. Sure, show how those cut off arms look like, why not? And I mean, every kid needs to know how to get the hanging done, am I right? Wait were by the art....
Well never mind!

Overall

A work of art! I mean look at this wonderful review!

Oh

Wait.

Were at the overall part

Overall

Story 0/10
Art -0/10
Character -100/10
Enjoyment guess

Overallllllll: 4/10

34-sai Mushoku-san is a story about a 34-year-old woman who recently became unemployed and her daily routines of cleaning her apartment, making food, watching TV, going to the store, sleeping and overall enjoying her free time as best as she can. This manga is in my opinion slice of life in its rawest and most relatable form and depending on your preferences it can be an absolute hit or an abysmal miss.

Looking at the plot, there really isn't much to say. We follow this unemployed womans life( whose name we don't even know) and we learn about her habits( the things she likes and dislikes) and we occasionally get to see what her personality is like through brief interactions she has with the people around her. Almost the entirety of the plot takes place in her rented apartment which I found really fascinating. There are chapters in the manga where we are just treated to images of the apartment when our heroine is not present there. Sometimes it almost feels like the apartment serves as a looking glass from which we the viewers get to see a glimpse of this womans life as she goes by. Although this experimental method of storytelling at first felt fresh and intriguing, in later chapters it made me very frustrated regarding the overarching plot. Throughout the entirety of the story we get to witness our heroines interactions with her family, friends, and neighbors but her relationships with them are left very vague and open to interpretation. Which at one point gave our MC a vale of mystery. But as the story came to its conclusion we the readers were subtly told that she solved her issues but we were never shown what actually happened. Which to me felt a little disappointing and unfair from a readers perspective. The vagueness of all overarching plots in the manga can maybe be attributed to the specific method of storytelling I mentioned earlier. Or maybe it can be attributed to the inability of the mangaka to write compelling drama. But after thinking a little bit more about the manga and rereading some chapters, I came to the conclusion that this entire manga from beginning to end was just a small slice of our heroine's life that she spent living, sleeping cooking and slacking off in her rented apartment. In a way, I believe this story is a meta-slice of life.

My overall rating for the story is a 7


Regarding the characters, we experience almost the entirety of the story through our heroines perspective. Although we know little about her due to the vagueness of her backstory and lack of character interactions. We can't help but feel drawn to her in a relatable sense. Throughout the story, we get to hear her monologues and see what she is like when nobody is around which makes her appear really relatable to the audience. However due to not knowing much about her because of the lack of character interactions, we never quite see the entire picture of what kind of person she is like. There are other characters besides our protagonist but there really isn't much I could say about them without getting into spoiler territory.

My rating for the character/s is 8


There really isn't much to say about the art except that it looks pretty neat for a story with such a simple plot. The quality of the art stays the same from beginning till the end, great attention is paid to the details and character designs although being pretty simplistic suite the story well. I also appreciated the fact that the mangaka regularly changed the clothes the characters were wearing.

My rating for the art is 6


And finishing off with overall enjoyment I must say for me it was a strange ride. At some point, I loved the story and at others, I was really bored reading it. Due to the chapters being repetitive at some parts I wouldn't recommend anyone to try to read this manga in one sitting. The best way to read this manga would be through a prolonged period of time in my opinion at least. Again I must state that this is just a "slice of life" in its purest form devoid of any drama, romance or action. And despite me being not a huge fan of the genre I still found myself compelled to read this manga that for the most part is basically "plotless".

As for my personal enjoyment, I must give 34-sai Mushoku-san a 6.

My overall score for this series is a solid 7.

Thank you all for reading, I hope this review was helpful.

A very good funny story about a guy and his trap friend, would really love to read more but it only has 13 chapters, short but still very enjoyable.

Not much to say since it's just a story about a guy, his trap friend (actually has a valid reason to cross dress) and their school days and friendship.

Only problem I have with it is the length, like I said 13 chapters isn't much and when I finished it was kinda hoping for more.

Maybe recommend Hinamatsuri if you like this, not sure why but I keep thinking about that when reading this

Definitely worth the read.

I wouldn’t have minded the edge and the raging puberty in the plot – I came for them: one has to read teen angsty action sometimes to mantain the balance in the world – if not for the absolutely disgusting and out of place torture imagery. I am not sure why it’s suddenly acceptable to have spreads with main heroine being strangled on her own intestines and dragged along the street by a car in shounen now. Even if these are “visions”.

So basically right after the start it’s what this manga focuses on. We have bog standard everything – a main goody two shoes hero, who suddenly can crush buildings because of some violence “virus”, an awkward teen love, a secret society of the infected, every figure of authority being conveniently nasty-lip-licking-evil (cus you know, everyone “lies” to a teen). The only original thing is that our hero constantly sees “visions” of murder, mainly violent and disgusting murder of his beloved bubbly school-beauty-queen childhood friend girlfriend.

The issue with this is that you, a reader, also have to watch them and they are a) unpleasant, b) out of place. In my opinion, you can have the nasty in your manga, but you have to work for the inclusion of the nightmare and/or sick fetish fuel – it has to be consistent with the tone and the goal. Which doesn’t seem to be the case here, especially considering that it’s a work published with teens in mind.

So yeah, the art is pretty good, but the tone is very imbalanced in a disturbing way. The main narrative is immature (those who are able to enjoy this say that the plot devolves even more later after a timeskip), and the only thing that stands out would likely be off-putting for most. (My example in the opening is relatively easy on the eyes, the rest is much more gross.)

I normally don’t write reviews for things that haven’t clicked with me, and I can barely call this text a review, but I wanted to warn other readers.

So, unless you are into seeing female bodies mutilated, and not even random bodies, but a body of a character with whom you’re supposed to have a positive emotional connection – you should probably stay away from this manga. The imagery here goes way beyond what you would expect from the demographic or mainstream manga in general. This work also doesn’t offer any supporting structure for this, like horror does, nor does it belong to genres where it’s par of the course (hentai, eroguro). It’s just a damned usual power trip shounen with zero subtlety, which thinks it can pull off torture porn.

Simply put, this manga’s plot is cheap fastfood, even if wrapped in a pretty plastic wrapper (art), and torture porn is not mainstream and shouldn’t be mainstream, whether the author enjoys fapping to it or not. I do not and I see no reason to look at this for zero plot gains. So here you are, now you know what to expect and whether you really need it.

My first impression, the art is cute, as shoujo typical cute. But as I progress, I realized, that the art, the story, the characters, the emotion, the moral value, are not just cute, they are mindblowing. "Don't judge a book by its cover" is maybe created for this manga.


Art: Actually not only cute, the drawings are drawn so well, the emotions are real and we can feel it. I like how the author, rather than by words, put more clues on the drawing. On top note, this manga has the most bone-chilling smile ever in shoujo manga.

Story: Many people got irritated reading as the story progress, some drop it out of frustration, and some, even still frustrated, like a curse, can't help but to keep reading. Why? Because it is irritatingly addictive. The flow and pace is good, making us always curious what the hell will be happen at the next chapter.

Character:There is always problem in each chapter, but Nana, though weak at the start (typical Shoujo MC), keep growing strong through all the problems, making us pride of her. Her character growth is real. Yuyu, the antagonist, the source of all problems, is the best antagonist ever. She successfully make so many readers flipping table in their heart and hating her to dead. She is wickedly genius, that we can't help to respect her for that. As the story progress, more reader understand her reason and even come to like her. Shioka, might not the kindest lead male ever, but he is one of the rightest lead male ever. He understands Nana well. Because of his words, Nana can be strong by herself. He even understands that Yuyu too, as he is the only character that Yuyu can't manipulate.

Enjoyment : The romance moments are rare, but that's what make they are so precious, "kyuuuunning" our heart tightly. The girls friendship and sympathy value of this manga amaze me, they are deep. Moreover, the author choose to not put that deepness into words. We can't simply read it, readers have to really thinking to understand that deepness, having us, understand what is the real friendship and sympathy, their forms, and what lies beyond that. As it claims by itself, it really is no. 1 friendship story. It really is standing out where all other shoujo manga are mainly about romance and romance and romance and just then the other thing.

Overall: For me, it is really the best shoujo ongoing, and even in Japanese, it is the most popular title in Ribon Magazine since its debut for 2 years straight (2014 and 2015), I greatly wish for its 3 years straight