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I am not at all a connoisseur of manhwa, this is probably the first one I picked up that really stuck with me, I think this is one of the cooler series I've been reading recently. The leveling up of this is really cleverly done and it made me realize how well the author has captured that feeling of grinding. Of course there's a general idea of plot armor and I know the MC will not die but I like seeing what types of hard work/deus ex machina come clutch to save the situation. I love the vibe of making all your weaker starters into ... godlike characters, that's more my vibe, try to make all characters work and disregard the meta. There's like three general story elements that are overarching that we have a lot of questions to remain unanswered: the fate of the MC's world Townia, the fate of Earth and how that factors into the story, and the mysteries of the company who made the game and the upper levels. Lots of mystery prevail but the action, the growth of characters, the development, I'm excited to continue reading.

non-objectively, this to me is a better season (and part of JJBA( because of it being a culmination of something so great and wonderful, the entirety of jojo's bizarre adventures. Pucci, as great as he is in his conviction and calculating strength, I did not fully really understand the motivation of changing the world, it was him wanting to reach a world where everyone is free to know what will occur to them and therefore that will make them make the best choices? it seemed like a lot to hope for with a largely dumb populace (this is jojo's, the non-mains are rather ... silly and not fully as talented or smart as the main characters). I love Jolyne, she's so cool and such a badass for her friends, and really went up an evolving stand user with her family/found family and managed to be so inspirational that even in her death she was able to end it all. It's a bittersweet ending and this third season had the wild stands of Dio's three children, Pucci's three stands, weather report's full stand ability, just a crazy amount of wildness that is only really rivaled until jojolion or steel ball run get animated. The universe reset hit so hard and beautiful at the end, when new universe jolyne tells emporio that things are gonna be alright, it's like a weight is lifted in the cruelest of ways. These are not our protagonists, but they are, visually, vibes-wise, but they know not their past or alternate selves and the turmoil they went through.
I thought the OP interruption by Pucci could have been a little bigger, but it was okay, in comparison to the other antagonists messing with the opening theme, Pucci's was my least favorite.

I think on its own, this series is a 7/10, as a Jojo's series it's a 7/10, and as the last sendoff of this large adventure it's an 8/10, but to me and entirely subjectively, it's 8.5 but i rounded up for shits and gigs. You kinda need to get through 5 parts for this one to land as much as it did with me. It requires quite the investment.

I'm glad it's finally over for Horikoshi, let that man rest. This was a manga i only started reading since chapter 50ish so I cannot really comment on its early chapters but with such a powerhouse of a story ending, it is bittersweet for many. Not for me, it was being dragged on in an unsatisfying way and I was noting that at the same time the anime was airing the class A versus class B, the quality took a dip yet the contrast of the manga release was showing us a sort of darkness that many found a peak. It was this jostling back ... and forth of the manga product doing decently and the anime product being bad that overall made me realize that this series was probably better enjoyed as anime up through season 2 and then read the manga. I feel for this author who at one point was doing the less-than-standard 8 pages per chapter around the very necessary hiatus. I think horikoshi has a wonderful style and the art is really beautiful and please Horikoshi try to do a horror manga. But I think this beast became so giant and the stakes so high that it caused anything that occurred within the plot to take so long to make and that forces the creator to not put in their best work. it was rushed in the end, and instead of finishing with a focus on effort, the ending was made to match the 10th anniversary of the release date so that ruffled people's feathers but the hype that people create has damaged their reception. It's a realistic ending, not that it can satisfy everyone, it's not that satisfying, it's just too much ground to cover. I liken it to the drama felt by the demon slayer crowd where the final act occurs and then they jump forward in time, but in demon slayer, you get what the shippers wanted, you see how that ended up. Class A had, 15ish members, it was a story told through the eyes of one, there are hundreds of loose ends to tie up.

Highlights of this manga experience were the horror elements, like when Toga has certain transformations, Shigaraki's rampages, some gory bits here and there. The "Dark Deku" moments were quite well done and show a true sore spot in the world of non-heroes relying on heroes to feel safe but knowing and visualizing the destruction that is physically present in loss of homes but also the internal destruction of doubt and fear at superbeings. I will say those moments were dragged out heavily, the war between villains and heroes was nearly 100 chapters and took its sweet time. The battle with the final antagonists was long but done in short amount of weekly release pages. The manga sticks to its hype, it has wonderful moments of despair, it has the unfortunate non-finality of characters in shonen media, it has its positives and negatives over 400ish chapters and for that, rest up Horikoshi, and thank you for the long years of a decent production.

Due to it being july 2024 as of this review, we have access to the most content possible, just on the heels of 100 chapters, I might update this review once this Idol arc is concluded (yes there's idols involved, and it ain't no Oshi No Ko but the author chose this direction, without spoiling, it's maybe 4 chapters in so we don't know much). Okay onto the large review.

I will be honest, it's not my first gory edgy crazy series. There's a part of me that looks for extreme horror in novel form, and the same is true for manga, how talented can the ... writing and art come together to show the extremes of humans. This story starts out edgy and tries to be cerebral, and while the whole time it's trying to sound smart as fuck, the fact that every time it's a twist after twist makes it both predictable formula and just a silly little ride where you can just turn brain off and wait until the final reveal. You kind of go through maybe 8-10 arcs, where and in order to keep the formula "fresh" for the audience, deadtube is recreated a couple times through different creators and through different means but with the same base cast, which is kinda nice to see those characters and their "growth". You get to see the main character Machiya go through several arcs but the biggest growth comes from Hanae, who changes from money-hungry girl into a solid and very kind character, she's the most relatable as she is just normal and generous and just wants things to go right. The fundamentals stay the same throughout every arc: rape and gore, there's no other way around it. The series doesn't have many selling points beyond sex and violence, which sells, at the end of the day. The main character goes through hell and back and gets off on it, the secondary protagonists Mashiro, Kanae, etc, they all got fucked up pasts, presents, futures, but towards the latter half of the series (maybe starting around chapter 50ish), there's kind of a bond between this fucked up found family. I'm not really seeking this series for its violent aspects, as after a while it's a bit repetitive, the technique of the author is shock: you expect the woman to be raped, the man to be killed or maimed or do the assault.
The enjoyable aspect of a story like this is seeing how far and how crazy the author can get. But the author is a bit too reliant on the shock value. As a minor spoiler: a crazy character called Justice Man is introduced and much of his presence does not rely on the shock, he's a traumatized kid who never grew up mentally but gained strength, but then the author thinks "oh yeah this character is in an incestuous relationship with his sister and then only gets off on violence." So there are interesting moments but they go back to that familiar shock, it isn't the most novel or amazing thing.

MAJOR SPOILER ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF DEADTUBE: It's pretty crazy when we get to know the origin of deadtube, how it started as just three dudes wanting to out-edgy the other friends, they'd watch and get aroused with one another, the longterm project of creating children who would suffer in the future is a pretty sick and twisted idea, one that I will give the author credit for, it's disgusting and perverse that a father sees his children as pawns in his game of ultimate perversion, but the creator of deadtube just leaves so many questions happening with little answers, you gotta suspend disbelief that such a thing happened so coherently. Though I will say that it's kind of acceptable that it's not fully resolved at the moment because the author likes to do callbacks and returns of character. Maybe we shall know more in the end? END SPOILER

There's some great meta stuff where it seems the author is paying attention to trends that are viral in real life and matches the Dead Tube installment to match. from chapter 77 to 89ish, reality show is heavy, after that stock market/bitcoin equivalent is introduced, later there's some callback to idols (heavy on the Oshi No Ko analogue) so you can see each year that the arc changes as an update to match trends in real life. Smart mangaka keeping up.

I would say the manga has some peaks, the origin of deadtube is one such peak, and the Dead Tube Reality TV show is quite enjoyable because it's a type of genre exploration of whodunnits and detective stories... but there are equally valleys, ones where it seems the author is just truing to wing it and make things string along, the current as of July 2024 arc might not be the best but we are just beginning. I will say, characters appear, disappear and reappear, so in the essence of understanding the possibility of return for anyone, let the author cook. At the end of the day, it's still an edgy meh manga with decent concepts thrown in from time to time but its over-reliance on shock might not be the best for staying power, as shock wears off. I would recommend Pumpkin Night if you're into something like this.

Upcoming spoilers, I will mark them as we go but I just now finished reading chapter 37, and I'm looking through other media to find out if this series is either axed/cancelled, but its 37th chapter is titled Game Over and I imagine within the next chapters (probably doesn't go beyond chapter 40) this title will end. (as of june 21, 2024, the manga is complete) As you read the Jump Plus app's comments, you'll see that people are pretty bored or not expecting much from the initial chapters but all can agree that the interesting meshing of pixelation and standard manga style (albeit not ... the prettiest, not the flashiest) is unique and rarely seen. The main selling points at the beginning were not enough to impress many people reading and I'm not gonna say this is a masterpiece, I somewhat agree that the intro/prologue is standard semi-isekai, RPG in manga form, the main protagonist devoted himself to manga this whole life therefore he's a noob and doesn't get concepts and other characters have to explain them out loud, art is average to meh, even bad, at some points. Okay, you might understand now that I've front-loaded the bad to average stuff from this manga but I rated it higher than most.

SPOILER TIME

You have to get through that muck to get through a story with a major twist that will re-conceptualize many things, and it reminds me of the advice Robert Kirkman received from a mentor during his writing of the comic Invincible: deliver a quick twist early on. I'm not comparing the two in quality, but this manga delivered the twist a little late, potentially dropping people on the way, think about that meme of a dude mining diamonds but gives up. Okay enough preamble, this story isn't a diamond, the twist comes in the form of a backstory reveal of the black knight character that accompanies Roku. Roku is played off as schizophrenic/hallucinatory because only he can see the Black Knight, he starts to mentally break down. The pacing and sidelines within this story are where the crux of character depth exists. Half of the characters we meet early in the party within the first town will get exposition, we get to know their lives before the game and their connection to the game's creator, making their standard character introductions fall away once you discover who they really are: truly each of these backstories has a twist. Midway through, a new character is introduced that becomes the main character for a new arc, his existence is a twist, a bug in the game, you could say. SUPER SPOILER: The gameplay has deathloops, so every time Roku dies, the game creator resets the world, like a child in a tantrum. And then during one loop, no one wants to return to reality because their own reality, their own lives, are mistakes, dreadful, no longer possible to return to. So the meh story of the first half of the manga, with some slight depth in characters, some good interactions, all that is cut short because of the temperamental attitude of the creator. And then the story continues like most video games do: at the "continue?" screen. Random words thrown together here to that no one reads the spoilers in the previous sentence in case they mind the spoiler tags.

END SPOILERS

There is much commentary on art theft and passion when creating, there are deeper moments of grief and depression, there's a rebellious attitude towards corporations who treat their employees as trash, and of course there's the standard shonen drive and hope in making it big in the hero's journey. But I'm afraid that gets pushed towards the midway point that if you don't carve a path through some less-than-stellar early story, you might not get to see this evolve. This is a good case of "let them cook" because i think my feelings at first were what I've seen from other reviewers, I wasn't feeling the novelty or the hook, I was simply going through because I like video game narratives but I don't mind 40ish chapters, it's not very long and it's a rather quick read.

What I will say though, is if none of this seems appealing, don't force yourself, it's still a 7/10 story, 7/5/10 if I could do decimals, I just think I'm rating it higher because I expected nothing and then got meh and then it turned into "oh shit that's pretty cool" and I wanna echo what I've seen in the comments, this is not entirely my thinking: if this series was delivered in a longer format, not fearing the ax of manga publishing, if it came out as a whole, perhaps this would be better received. I could not imagine the weekly/biweekly release format with a story that isn't really developing well until a major twist, halfway through its current run time.

So yeah, this is my yap sesh on why it shouldn't be dismissed early on, work through the nearly 40 chapters, then lemme know what you think. Thanks for reading <3

Oh yeah this one is for me, supremely weird, funny and memey, the jokes sometimes fall flat and that is a form of cinema in itself. I am sad that this didn't get to flourish beyond what we got, I love a lil anti-conglomerate narrative, fuck them trying to monopolize the space and replacing fun with whatever their grubby lil greedy minds think. I love lil eggplant main character and his homies coming together to help a small business thrive. And yet in what little amount of chapters it had left in the build up, it still carried on with a cheery energy to carry ... into its axing. I love it, I would rate it higher if it was allowed to grow.

I feel like I will remember those that were cut short more than the ongoing series. Really beautiful art reminiscent of Witch Hat Atelier, which is one of my favorites, so I was drawn in by that at first. I will say, it's slow, not much happens throughout the narrative in comparison to the action-packed electric plots of everything else surrounding it, but I feel I wanted to give this a chance. Will I read Shun Akagi's work again? Yes. Am I running to go seek it out? No, I'll be slow with it. A solid start with an interesting universe, witches and humans are ... able to have close contact with each other and trade in a rather bureaucratic way. Gadgets and scenery were similar to steampunk without the edge, closer to a Ghibli version of the world like A Howl's Moving Castle type of world. There's a mysterious magical energy running around and causing havoc, that's how many characters are brought together and an everlooming villain plagues the world. We finally get to figure out who it is, the connection between all characters, and then we get to see the backstory and why this all matters to our previously listless main witch character Nat. There's a beautiful seed of a story, one that shows how the overarching rules of the world might be wrong, something that might be explored with much more chapters in this authors runs. I don't know if they set out to do oneshots or given the situations that manga companies engage in, if it was axed. But given that we get to the climax and the ruling witch government just barely received their first case, I wonder what other moments/cases could mean for witch-human contact. I loved the apprentice-mentor relationship shared by Nat and I enjoyed this so much but feel that something like this deserves more time to cook, it is not something that entertains immediately, it contains very little hype, more so comfy and mysterious in familial connections, kind of like Frieren in that regard, we get to see things through the characters slowly. Given all this, I feel there's a cap on my enjoyment, I'm left sitting with the beauty of potential.

Yeah, fine is just how I'd describe it. You get what you ordered. Its art style is not at all within my wheelhouse, but it's fine, it's cute. I had no idea what to expect from this at all, the fact that there's a loosely held story is a plus. Asumi-chan wants to find a childhood crush but in the most convoluted of ways, like they're both just two ships in the night. And then a kouhai gets introduced and there sparks something akin to a relationship, some exploration. I'm happy to see the queer types of relationships happening here, and there is some good ... moments of smut, I like the characters, but this ain't no masterpiece, just as the ranking system is saying: fine.

I don't know if it's because my experience with fantasy anime is rather limited or if it's because I'm not seeking the high intensity anime bullshit that once enticed a younger me, but this to me is one of my favorite anime, maybe within the top 3. A better reviewer would deep dive into the individual aspects of how to arrive at that score, and to be honest I would give it an 8 objectively since some animation, designs, worldbuilding, and music is a tad less than perfect but my focus is not on any of those realms. Instead my great enjoyment of this anime ... (and subsequent 10 score) stems from the story and the feeling of comfort I experienced as I watched it. When I read manga or read anime, the flashback to explain a powerup or important lesson or meaningful moment is a classic staple and Frieren had some of the best explorations of this trope, particularly why Frieren's favorite spell is how to create a field of flowers, it's a large connection to two of the most important people in her life in different moments across her timeline. Flashbacks are interspersed to give important background to various characters and seeing how it all interconnects in the end of the arc or episode is so satisfying. The travelling group encountering challenges on the daily and solving them in real time without quick need to advance is also fulfilling because sometimes you just gotta take things slow. At some point in the past I might have agreed with Fern's early reluctance to take things slow, as if the world was ending if I didn't get to the next step in the journey. But I think Frieren's stop and smell the roses approach is a tactic I'm learning to appreciate in my own life. Even though there is a large cast of characters coming in and out, the tender care the author/story provides in order to reveal their importance to the story is a good tactic in letting me enjoy the ride. The arcs we were given had a decent variety, sometimes solo growth arcs, sometimes flashback arcs, sometimes just chilling and getting through life arcs (Fern sick, Stark as prince) the tournament/exam arc of the end was a great pivot point to have people continue reading the manga onwards. The slow reveals in piecemeal tidbits of lore and the world I love, I've seen people say good or bad worldbuilding but I don't think there's an emphasis on the world because I agree it's underdeveloped but it's not something that would detract from the series since it's so character and storydriven. A deep world dive is not what we need to understand this land that Frieren inhabits, in fact, the majority of Frieren's existence has been her just living through things and not paying them any mind until she notices the finality of Himmel's death. I enjoyed watching a longlife being growing to understand the shortlived experience, to know and learn emotions of another species, to watch her and her friends just exist. It may reveal that I enjoy slice of life vibes, and to mix slice of life with fantasy, it was a treat.

I dont know the history or what happened behind the scenes, all I know is that reception and sales matter more than any series that has an interesting potential. Often creations in this windmill of story after story of the manga industry might suffer to in never letting their wings expand. I think this story had a cool promise, the alien understanding human culture, the wild effects the alien forced people to be honest with themselves to a caricature extreme, the possible team up with a meh standard shonen woe-is-me protagonist who seems to get more resolve towards the end of this short story. The ... gory and surprising bits of this are the main marketing for people, and they are effective, but towards the end, that post chapter 20 period, the story suffers from a need to wrap things up. It is rushed, it lacks any type of development, it's an epilogue tacked on to a preface and a couple pages-length book. I wanted more than the finished product and with 20 chapters, the story doesn't grow enough to leave a lasting impact beyond the blood and bits within. I enjoyed the scribbly and wild art, but it is just a big meh-fest. Glad I read it though as I think the artist has great potential.