axelmania's manga / #shounen(191)

what a subversion of the current popular shounen plots. it draws you in with a funny guy going to magic powers school and taking ridiculous risks, and then floors you with how the risks have consequences, everyone is dying around him, his funniness is gone and replaced with setting up plans to die to protect everyone, and that magical world is full of people with this near genocidal sense of kill or be killed and treatment of anyone not like them as less than bugs. is that pleasant to read, i wouldnt say so, but it accomplishes what it sets out for and really captures.. that sense of inescapable fate, small choices spelling the end, no one really being invincible. the arc where they showed how the magical society accidentally lead to its own end in the past was pretty incredible. theres so many characters who have hopes and dreams, who take a dramatic last stand and feel theyve planned enough to succeed or like this cant be happening, and then they die. given how shallow almost all the characters are, im impressed that the writing usually makes me feel for them. the question is if i can keep reading to the end now that basically all of humanity is close to annihilation.

this isnt the series for you if you cant stand things that are callous about death. a frequent trope is introducing so called strong characters only to kill them off in order to make the protagonist look even better. also, children die in this and personally thats something i struggle to see. nevertheless this isnt surprising when you consider this is the one of the first isekai ive seen that leans heavily into horror. the tone of utter despair and bloody ruthlessness in advancing your interests that begins from the first few chapters heightens as the series goes on. it seems so wonderful that he gets a second chance, but is it? i was thinking, well i cant be too angry about all the death because at least we have the cute chibi summons, but then, maybe it should be scary how quickly and unbelievably they go from wanting him dead to loving him. go into this expecting the glorification of traits associated with men that most shounen contain, but something beyond the fanservice, something speculative and mind-warping. well, im definitely overstating it lol, but i love isekai.

this is so fun!! which is odd to say in a series where the main players are all motivated by the imagined wishes of dead comrades, but its true. lots of cool battles, the mysteries involved in the shadow world and how the worlds previous destruction played out are exciting, and they have the level of obstacles down so its not too easy and not too difficult for the protagonists. its a friendship is magic type story, so it doesnt get too dark, but it does have plenty of random people dying if that bothers you. i appreciate how women reach close to 50% of the fighters, and they have real personalities and arent hypersexualized.

while this manga is pretty funny, the fascinating thing to me here is the completely broken capitalist hero system, and the character of garou, who wants to be a hero so badly in a system that says he cant he decides its easier to become a monster than to argue back. get ready for the transmisogynistic character and other stereotypes, and some really hypersexualized women (oddly, a couple men too.)

if you have the protagonist be overpowered from the start, and use it for action rather than much comedy, your manga is gonna be fucking boring