#Magika no kenshi review series#

He actually remains an incredibly prominent main character throughout the series, and, as an added bonus, he doesn't get a shounen power-up to make him more in-line with traditional 'strong' male protagonists. Aforementioned boy then either disappears into oblivion or is relegated to the support of comic relief background character for the remainder of the series. You know the type: appears on the first color page, has a prominent role in the first chapter, but ultimately is shown to have bitten off more than he can chew and is then saved by the real protagonist. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Osamu wasn't a bait-and-switch protagonist. And, while it never entirely rises above the story cliches it uses, it does undoubtedly set itself apart with its battles and characters.

#Magika no kenshi review series#

If I was judging this manga just by its opening chapters, my reactions would definitely be 'bored' and 'unimpressed.' It definitely seems like a 'been there done that' series at first glance. World Trigger begins fairly typically: with monster invasions and an overpowered boy who is more than he appears appearing and saving the day. (Or, at least, one from a mangaka that I've never heard of before.) It's been a long time since I've felt so excited about a (fairly new) shounen action series. Last updated on November 4th, 2018, 6:22am Luckily, World Trigger was popular enough to receive an official licensed English version, and I had no issues with translation quality there. PPS: The scanlations of early chapters in particular often have a terrible translation quality. PS: In terms of rating, this is a clear 10 for me, and the individual story arcs are highly recommended, but given the manga's pace and the author's health issues, I'm worried whether the overarching arc will receive a conclusion worthy of what came before. They're not as sneaky, mind-gamey or filled with unique superpowers as in something like Hunter x Hunter, but these more down-to-earth team fights are on a similar level. The battles and confrontations here constitute a peak of battle manga storytelling. They're way above anything I'd come to expect from typical shounen: not just about every combatant using their trademark move once and then calling it a day, but rather about trying to outwit, outflank and out-coordinate the other side. (One simple but smart choice: Before every team battle, all side characters are introduced via a caption, no matter how many times they've appeared before.)įinally, the battles in this manga are large-scale squad battles, and while they always take lots of chapters, they're handled with astonishing grace. Tower of God, whose cast grew way beyond the author's ability to handle it). In this regard, World Trigger is one of the few manga I've seen which actually manage to cope well with a huge cast (in contrast to e.g. Pretty much all of them are likeable, and a surprising number of them get moments of glory. Incidentally, the story's focus is distributed over quite a lot of characters. There's the typical genius outsider, but there's also a character that doesn't have any particular talents in combat and becomes a leader figure anyway. For instance, they strike at weak points, don't attack when they don't think they can win, don't explain their abilities (I hate it so much when that happens), use special abilities (like foresight, camouflage, etc.) in smart and not trivially obvious ways, and so on. The pace is rather slow, but in exchange, this is one of those rare shounen battle manga in which both protagonists and antagonists act smart (or at least much smarter than outright dumb). I did not expect to like this manga so much. Heck, if you ignore the excuse of innate magic talent, it makes more sense to see 0 kids in the fighting force, let alone the elite sector. It's basically people fighting in video games and then overload you with tactics theorycrafting for an arc.Īnd god damn I don't know why it bugs me so much that shounen stories NEED to have the majority of their cast be under the age of 20? This setting allows no reason for a huge age range of people being enlisted for service. The doppelgängers fights with easy escape don't offer much suspense during most of the fights. The internal politics and strife presented in the plot seem forced, but it gets toned down after an arc. Human(oid)s will always be the main antagonists in these type of battle shounen with the robots/monsters just being mere pawns. The intricate team fights are what keeps me reading this despite some annoying factors (like how slow the pace is at times). Hybrid between Naruto and Bleach minus the constant power ups, add in a bit more tactics and a bit less 1v1s.