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Dec 29, 2025
A few scores before the big rant goes down, if you will! The scores will be explained in detail down below.
Story: 2/10
Characters: 2/10
Art: 1/10
Art/Panel Cohesion: 1/10
I had a rough idea of what JJK would look like going in, but I tried to keep an open mind regardless! I actually find myself disagreeing with most critiques that fans have made and having different gripes. Borrowing from another reviewer however, this manga truly "owes a massive thanks to the anime adaptation" for popularising what I can only describe as an artistic waste at best.
It's really easy to leave a scathing review and I'd love nothing more than
...
to tear into this manga, but I'd rather add a more interesting proposal instead. Let's do that after the scores and see why things are the way they are, shall we?
Story - 2/10
- While the story starts really linear, it feels like as soon as the breakneck introductory arc is finished, everything just goes way too fast. There's almost no setup and I hardly know enough of the main cast (or the world which seems to be a modern day 1:1 urban environment) to care enough. Sometimes things are just mentioned in passing and now you're expected to know/care. If there's supplementary material I should have read to keep up with the manga, then that's on Gege for not integrating this information into the main story.
If there isn't, then once again, that's on Gege (the author if you didn't know) for not integrating this information into the main story anyway! The pacing was an issue because it focused on blitzing through the story, all the while assuming I had more involvement in it than I really did. It felt as if every new chapter, perhaps I missed something or hell, I skipped a few? And the premise itself is very run of the mill, and even so it forfeits all progression for the sake of being interesting.
That slow and not all that memorable introduction arc most mangas have at first to get you to familiarise yourself with the characters? That's there for a reason usually. Omitting that here just felt like Gege thought he knew better, when he really didn't. What starts as inoffensive and plain turns out to be a confusing, underdeveloped jumble of ideas that I could describe as a rough storyboard at first. Plot points are rehashed, techniques/tricks used in earlier works re-emerge chapters later, and overall creatively it's rather bankrupt.
There's no mention of the power system because it's hardly explained and it doesn't make that much sense to me either after re-reading it a few times over. Even so, the story keeps focusing on characters' abilities and how they interact with each other, pulling in the genre-classic scientific interactions or explanations here and there to sound smarter than it is. Being derivative of concepts and ideas is one thing, but to rely solely on being derivative and trying to be sneaky about it on top of it all?
Adding to that, you would not believe how many translator's notes were necessary during some chapters as the story and certain interactions are incredibly pop/culture-relevant. From the mention of Jennifer Lawrence repeatedly at the start of the manga, all the way to the constant vomiting of manga one-liners and japanese comedy specific jokes and gags later down the line. JJK's world doesn't feel fleshed out and instead, it just comes off as Gege assuming that the reader would relate with his own interests and culture too.
Characters - 2/10
- It goes without saying after mentions of just how fast the pacing was with the story, but characters? There's very few that I would say got proper characterisation, because most of them appear when needed and then disappear until the next time- or better yet, never show up again. There's a few characters I liked, but from the designs being forgettable to the lack of any personality or defining moments, there's little to like about them.
A lot of them are underdeveloped, unlike what the anime adaptation would make you believe. Scenes that would have been monumental for their personalities are cut short, or they never come to fruition in lieu of someone else's that was more popular and reeled in more sets of eyes on the manga.
The main cast is also surprisingly disconnected and hardly even feel like friends? Without giving away much past the first five chapters of the manga, they hardly have interacted with each other and yet I'm meant to assume that they're so close that they'd be heartbroken if something happened to one another? Most of the main 'shounen trio' of MC (Yuji), Rival (Megumi) and Female 3rd Wheel (Nobara) are typically split and not all together, and at that point why stick to the trope of trios?
None of the three is ever developed further either, Yuji is a meathead that's gotta man up for the story, Megumi is the brooding rival and Nobara is most offensively of all, the most stereotypical depiction of a woman you could imagine. When the author can't properly characterise even his leading characters throughout a manga, why should I care about them or their would be big moments? No, showing me someone's backstory before they die will not make me tear up, and neither will having them suffer when I'm hardly acquainted with them myself.
There are still, again, characters I really enjoyed. Takaba, a side character later on, was one of the most fun times I've ever had reading manga in general and his scenes are immensely memorable to me, alongside Higuruma whose cursed technique I found very interesting. Even moments earlier on during the start that could be as minor as the antagonists playing Game of Life (yes, that boardgame) were really funny to see. So why couldn't we take a moment to give everyone those unique little tidbits that made them feel more like characters and less like sock puppets for the sake of the story?
Art - 1/10
- As kindly as I can put it, it's bad. Coming to this from a lot of different manga, some from the early 2000's as well, JJK's style feels like scribbles and sketches by comparison. There is not a single moment that stuck out to me as 'amazingly drawn' because there is no consistency in the art whatsoever even in the same scenes. This is not helped by some WIP panels and pages being left in the finalised volumes of the MangaPLUS release where I read it either.
Characters also look incredibly blocky and Gege must have some sort of kink when it comes to blur lines because there are enough there to burn that striped pattern into your eyes by the end of a single fight scene. There is also nearly no shading, so every panel looks incredibly flat and some of the characters' expressions can be so goofy, they either ruin otherwise 'cool' moments or send you into hysterical laughter. I mean no disrespect to Gege, but by any means the art in this manga is not what I'd consider good after having read a fair few of them.
That being said, chapter 242 has to be one of the best chapters art-wise for reasons I will not go into to avoid spoilers. There are moments that the art is good all around JJK: but on the whole, they are barely even there compared to sketches of what should have been a storyboard to the finished product.
Art/Panel Cohesion - 1/10
- With the art hardly making any sense and the power system barely established, how are panels meant to be cohesive? It doesn't help that certain scenes you'd expect to see are skipped outright either. Fights don't stick and a lot of times it's impossible to tell what's going on without a character (or the omnipresent disembodied narrator) butting in to speak out what you, the reader, are already seeing since a few pages now.
There is a single chapter that was busy and I found to be phenomenal at taking advantage of the manga panels flowing into one another, and that is the aforementioned chapter 242.
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I truly believe there is nothing to recommend to anyone as far as JJK goes. It doesn't have good art, the characters are cardboard cutouts for the most part, the story is hardly there and the writing is not good. I do not think this is because Gege is necessarily a bad mangaka. What I do think and he partially confirms in the afterword, is that he was trying to punch way out of his league and fell flat on his face. His inexperience compared to other shounen mangakas shows throughout JJK and especially during the high stakes/power-level ending, and that's why I believe he should NOT have written a shounen.
As far as exorcism manga go, he should have either changed the premise to make it into a supernatural mystery, or as per my absolute enthusiasm about chapter 242's surreal marvel, a slice of life with heavy emphasis on comedy. I cannot praise enough just how funny that chapter was, and I believe that goes to show that even when Gege, who I'm not a big fan of, made me laugh my guts out because he tried. He played his cards closer to home, as you can tell from his intimate knowledge of Japanese comedy routines and gags, and he delivered one of the most memorable chapters (for me) not only in JJK, but across any manga I've read.
I wish he had done the same for the manga. Obviously it would not be the same Jujutsu Kaisen I'm reviewing right now, had that been the case. But just maybe, it could have been something worth anyone's and everyone's time because he'd care enough to try harder. He has the knowledge and expertise to craft something funny when he wants to- and he has the ability to characterise his characters so naturally when he so tries.
He should have honed in on a genre that would let him do exactly that, not on a battle shounen where he skipped half the steps that have made the classics into what they are.
Gege is NOT a bad author or artist. But this is likely his most misguided work of art that he's produced as a mangaka as far as I am concerned. This serves as a reminder for trying to be good at what you love, not what others want out of you. And if you could enjoy it even so? I'm genuinely glad for you.
Yet I can't personally bring myself to wholeheartedly recommend anyone gives this manga their attention.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Dec 21, 2025
If you're here for a very quick and cursory glance, have at thee- numbers on what I consider to be the basics!
Story: 6/10
Characters: 7/10
Art: 9/10
Art/Panel Cohesion: 10/10
I went into this not expecting to like it and yet here I am. A 7/10 is more than I've found myself putting on series with half the chapters' room of screw-ups than Fairy Tail, so this is a pretty big accomplishment in my book! This manga manages to deliver a fun and engaging narrative, albeit a little scattered, from start to finish. The characters and themes remain consistent and a hard limit is never put on the power
...
system, instead following a mix of suspension of disbelief and rule of cool.
... the one gripe I do have however is fan-service... sort of. It's there from start to finish, but there's a fundamental difference between the first half (fan-service is used for small gags that you can roll your eyes at and move past) and the second half (it now intrudes into the story and everyone is out to 'get some'). I would have been happy to bump the score up by +1 if the fan-service wasn't marring Fairy Tail as much as it did, as it makes a particular arc at the beginning of the second half incredibly tedious, but it is how it is!
You want an explanation on those scores from earlier, don't you?
Story - 6/10
- There's no qualms that come to mind in saying that the story isn't something to write home about. Fairy Tail starts relatively scatterbrained and with mini-arcs that slowly build up the world and introduce plot points, although the author does well in revisiting those plot points later down the line and letting no character or story beat go to waste. Nothing phenomenal comes out of these in terms of 'uniqueness' or unpredictable plottwists, but this structure helps the world feel very much alive and the story feel more deliberate.
Each arc is foreshadowed in the last and sometimes even from a few further on back! I found this to be refreshing as opposed to other shounen, although it got a little cumbersome during the second half when a lot of plot points were being resolved. Though I never found it to be stuffy, it would definitely be easy to lose track for someone taking their time reading through all of Fairy Tail over a few months.
Something else that made the closing segment of Fairy Tail feel really smooth (though the last chapters felt a little rougher than the rest) had to be the manga's consistency throughout. Its themes remain very prominent from start to finish and are woven into the story enough to never throw my hands up and say "Oh but of course!" once.
One of my favorite aspects of the story, though it's hard to emphasize without spoiling anything, is that the author both knew what he was doing and he looked to be having loads of fun writing things out. As much as Fairy Tail lacks in originality (at the very least during the first half), it makes up for by engaging with a lot of fun concepts that other media tends to get wrong or half-ass.
The other? The author did not try to make Fairy Tail's magic system to be more than what you'd expect on the tin! There was never any complicated explanation or breakdown of what a magic does, nor of the hard limits. Depending on your taste for a soft or hard system, you might enjoy the freedom and lack of restrictions that the manga offers! Personally, I found it refreshing because there was no need to worry about the story contradicting itself, nor was I ever given an excuse to roll my eyes and go "Pop off". This isn't to say it didn't have tacky moments, but I feel it's handled really well for the most part.
Characters - 7 /10
- For how much I enjoyed the characters, I find there to be little to really comment on without giving them away fully? Although a lot of them *could* be boiled down to a single trait and 'the power of friendship', each of them are developed over time to the point of being distinct from one another, and yet retaining that one quirk all the same. It's disingenuous to pretend the character development wasn't there on every front, and it shows in their actions and the small things they do in ways I found to feel rather rewarding to keep track of.
It's also admirable how massive the cast was, but due to the proper worldbuilding done from the very start of the manga, they never felt neither underdeveloped nor suffocating until the very end- where a lot of familiar faces converge once more, so I'd argue it's to be expected. There were very few 'wasted opportunities' here and even so, Fairy Tail manages its characters quite well all around!
... so why's it a 7/10? Haha. Let's move back to that pesky fan-service once again. As mentioned above, the second half ramps it up a fair bit and that's... debatably alright. What isn't alright is when rather than being treated to characters with real dialogue, motivations and thought patterns, you get greeted with character after character (and especially women too) that are hellbent on destroying clothes for one reason or another. So hellbent, they'll prioritise stripping their opponents bare rather than taking them out outright.
At some point it gets much too grating when more serious moments in the story get dragged down by a literal catfight, and it destroys what could have otherwise been well-written characters with actual depth and not a "haha i'll humiliate you by stripping you in front of everyone!!" complex.
Art - 9/10
- From the getgo, Fairy Tail is absolute eye candy. The art is clean, really well defined and it feels stylized all the same. It's very reminiscent of One Piece in places, but take it for what you will from a non-One Piece reader! It only evolves throughout the manga, but it already starts off at an incredible level and that made it such a nice experience to stare at panels for minutes at a time.
There's not that many spreads compared to other manga, but with consistent quality and past experience from the mangaka seeping its way into every page, the comedy feels really well placed and emphasized through the pages, the fights feel meaty and heavy and the framing is always just right. Which moves me to...
Art/Panel Cohesion - 10/10
- Never once did I stare at a page and need to do a spit-take to understand what the hell I am looking at. Goes hand in hand with the previous section, but this was a check for the mangaka's experience and it shows really well. Scenes flow beautifully and some pages are even set up to help a punchline land or to emphasize important character moments or beatdowns in fights- it's incredible and by far one of Fairy Tail's strongest suits.
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I really ended up liking Fairy Tail beyond expectations. This might not go for you too though! If I had to make it simple, you will not like it if you are: a) incredibly peeved about fan-service or b) looking to climb Mt. Peak Fiction. On the other hand if you're looking for a fun piece of eye-candy to enjoy your time with and you can look past man's worst enemy, spontaneous horny, then this would be really up your alley!
All I can vouch for is that it consistently made me laugh, kept my interest and now I have a backlog of truly iconic panels and gags that are more effective than initially anticipated. If the thought of fan-service isn't too appalling though... give it a shot. Who knows, maybe your screenshot collection will grow larger than mine!
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Nov 22, 2025
This is a short one, as it's very few chapters and uh... wow. Let's get right into the ratings and explanations can come afterwards. :)
Story: 1/10
Characters: 2/10
Art: 4/10
Art/Panel Cohesion: 6/10
... what a fall from grace. I am too much short of hyperbolic when I say reading this had me crying for the wrong reasons. After what I can with all due respect best put as a 'gag ending' to the original manga, there were a few extra chapters here meant to wrap things up and wrap things up they did. If the previous ending was disrespectful, check this one out.
Story - 1/10
- ... the story
...
is basically non-existent. Left in the middle of a gauntlet from the final chapters of the original, the heroes trudge on through to meet with Hao and do their best to stop him. I guess it's a good time to criticise the broader writing here instead, since the story's as linear as an arrow is straight.
What happened here??? Reading this felt like a fever dream and an absolute bastardization of the original work these chapters were meant to 'fix'. The tone has shifted to be joke-y and if you were not a big fan of the power of friendship, just wait until you see how egregiously unfunny the writing becomes. I am truly dumbfounded from the direction these final chapters took. Cool writing is still there, but phenomenally rushed as expected and it goes back into the expected and truly dogwater quality one would fear before long.
There were heartfelt moments between characters cut short for no reason but to 'progress the plot', making even what few redeeming qualities you could squeeze out of this impossible to extract through the slop. I wasn't laughing with it, I was laughing at it and that's... not good.
Characters - 2/10
- I'd love to treat these chapters' characters with respect, but it doesn't look like the author did. You'd expect with the shrunk cast of the added chapters that they'd get their due diligence, but everyone except for Yoh starts acting like a one dimensional slapstick character. Oh, and on top of that they don't really retain much of their personality at all?
There's parts where out of nowhere, all of a sudden these jacked 15 y/o's appear to be blessed with the knowledge of physics and intense natural phenomena to surgical precision, even though we're talking about again, 15 year olds in 1999 (was it?) with different backgrounds, none of which involve anything close to granting them this sort of knowledge.
Hao is the only one who seems to retain his memory, and I will agree with him on one line. "Humans are like cancer cells". I too would go clinically insane if I had the same encounter he does during the climax of the story, and I'd definitely adapt his plans to destroy humanity as it is.
Art - 4/10
- ... not much to say. The author has come back with a new artstyle, and though it looks clean, it feels a little 'too' clean for what you're likely used to with Shaman King's original release. The lineart is really thin but it tries to keep that stylized flair of the original, and it comes off a little odd. I'm sure it'd have grown on me if there was more room for it, but it was about fine for the few chapters I got to see it in.
Art/Panel Cohesion - 6/10
- There's not a lot of panels, and yet some still manage to be as muddy as the original's. The action is really grandiose and it makes for some muddy panels. As there's hardly any action however, most of the shots turn out to be really neat and they flow together relatively smoothly when scenes aren't skipped entirely.
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I have nothing short of disappointment and mixed feelings for the supplementary ending chapters added in the Kanzenban. The amount of ironic enjoyment I had was about as great as my genuine displeasure at the read. What a waste of a chance to make everything right. If you read this, please keep in mind exactly what you're in for- you got slapped in the face once with the original ending, and then you came back for more. Little has changed, and you hopefully won't stubbornly stick around to find that out for yourself... right?
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Nov 22, 2025
Before I go in-depth with each category, some basic ratings on each of them. Reasoning will be given in the respective paragraph(s) with a foreword and an afterword to boot on the whole manga.
Story: 4/10
Characters: 6/10
Art: 7/10
Art/Panel Cohesion: 3/10
Prior to the (spoiler free) details on each rating, there's two things I'd like to preface. Firstly the type of people that are most likely to enjoy the manga, are NOT the ones who are looking for a satisfying conclusion or a cohesive story. You'll most probably get your mileage out of the manga if you want to see some cool designs, concepts and occasionally pretty artwork.
...
If the story matters to you, you'll be very soured by the end and quite likely feel disappointed beyond measure.
That's because this manga is a cautionary tale of what happens when you take someone's compact story and give it scale time and time again. Shaman King was not meant to be a shounen, and the parts of it that work the least are the ones that try to play into being a shounen. But let's go into the categories for that, starting with the:
Story - 4/10
- With a very slow if not slightly generic start, Shaman King sets the scene for the big tournament and power system nicely at first. It still has its flaws and fair few cliches, but not in a way that makes them feel too familiar? Having read and watched a few shounen, I could see cliches but they were used with purpose when they were there- the obligatory villain gauntlet, the in-group fighting and so on. Where the story loses steam is around the halfway mark (ch140 or so), when the 'shounen' aspect takes over.
Fights begin to go one after the other, and as soon as one ends another starts, all for the sake of a villain of the week. The worst part about this is the amount of characters and powers introduced gains so much scale (seeing a theme here yet?) that everyone naturally loses depth. The overall narrative keeps a main thematic focus, but sooner or later one problem becomes evident. The odds that the protagonists are facing become increasingly impossible to overcome due to the story's binary power system.
I will not go further into details to keep things story free, but it's truly baffling to put into how little the author tried to respectfully close the story off in the original release (as there is an alternative ending in the 'kanzenban' release), even if it'd be rushed. There's parts of the story that can hold up on their own as parts of the bigger narrative, but the constant fights muddy the pace and make it so chaotic, it's easy to forget the little nuance the series has to offer from a point onwards.
Coupled with the aforementioned ending that I can only respectfully describe as a 'gag ending', the story has as many highs as it does lows. I do however want to go out of my way and simply mention that the mangaka's ability to write captivating stories shines brightest during a short arc in the middle of the manga (around ch160) called Osorezan Revoir. It's nothing short of a 10/10 arc and it truly brings the rating up in ways I only wish the rest of the series had mirrored.
Characters - 6/10
- There's sadly not a lot to go into here. Although the story starts with a compact cast, it slowly expands to the point where it's truly difficult to give anyone more depth than the first few chapters already allowed. One flaw I find the series to have is that it tries to do everyone justice equally, and this also includes villains and side-characters that would have otherwise been a 'one note' inclusion in the broader narrative.
The protagonist Yoh has a lot of depth that's gone further into detail during the previously praised Osorezan Revoir, and he makes for a very interesting lead. Everyone has an interesting backstory, but chances are sadly missed a few times over to further elaborate on them with the appropriate amount of tact so only the few that do get the special treatment and extra time end up shining. Thankfully, among those few are also included Anna, the protagonist's fiance, and Hao, the main villain.
One consistently pleasing aspect however of the characters are their looks, but that's probably best left for the...
Art - 7/10
- I'll sadly tire of saying this but even so, there's not a lot to say here. The mangaka has expressed before that he wanted to draw cool things and honestly, he succeeded. The character designs are amazing and for as little as I ended up liking the story with how it played out, there are designs in here that will live rent free in my head for years to come. The protagonist, villain, side characters, even the spirits oftentimes look so much cooler than they had any right being and that's incredible.
The manga itself starts really heavily stylized, but slowly molds into a charming amalgam of the classic 2000's 'anime style' and the original style that Takei started off with. Although a lot of the pages look pretty, some of the action feels a little muddy as it has 'too much' going on even when taken on a case by case basis. The pages I enjoyed the most ended up being those with more chill scenes and a lot less focus on any one thing or character.
Art/Panel Cohesion - 3/10
- So... about action scenes. Eventually, as has been touted at nauseum, the fights get a bit too large and it's difficult on a mental level to even understand what's going on. The same very much goes for the panels themselves. Either there's too little focus where it's a character moment and you're being introduced to someone's new power-up, or there's way too much and it shuts out what would have otherwise been a cool spread or 'wallpaper' for lack of a better way to put it.
You can mostly tell what's going on, but there was more than a handful of instances where I scratched my head trying to understand what exactly was going on sadly.
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I went into Shaman King's manga looking to see the differences between the 2001's anime's original story and the source material, and I came out conflicted, especially with the high praise the series has taken. I love character driven stories with logical conclusions, and Shaman King was not seemingly made for me. Even amidst its truly worse half (the second one), through the rushed chapters and releases you can still see some of the charm of the series lingering and trying to shine. But the way it all plays out and how the ending is handled really, truly undermines it all.
If you want to look into the thematics of the manga, I do believe there's creative merit to reading through it. If you're looking for a good use of your time and adding to thought-provoking reads though, I'd steer clear sadly. It's little more than a fun read with occasionally flashy art that goes nowhere.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Nov 5, 2025
Before I go in-depth with each category, some basic ratings on each of them. Reasoning will be given in the respective paragraph(s).
Story: 2/10
Characters: 2/10
Art: 7/10
Art/Panel Cohesion: 1/10
Before saying anything else, I want to add that I wanted Black Clover to be a little underrated gem. If I only had to describe it using two words however, after catching up to what is (as of writing this review) the current chapter, I would use the words 'instant gratification'. Let's move on with the category analyses to explain it one bit at a time.
Story - 2/10
- Asta and Yuno, two brothers from the boonies, start at the
...
age of 15 when they're to receive their grimoires. Yuno ends up getting what's considered a legendary grimoire, while Asta gets none at all. In a world full of magic, he is the only one without it. Instead, he's the only human with the ability to use anti-magic, and this premise kicks off into how he's trying to still cut through the Magic Knights and become the Wizard King. From uncovering a hidden cult with an ulterior motive, the story escalates at a pace that's... conflicting.
It starts low stakes and with small investigations, and before you know it, it has become of national importance, yet the two new recruits find themselves starring every event that leaves even veteran magic knights with their mouths agape. Arc after arc, the story keeps gaining and gaining scale to genuinely no end. New kinds of races and systems are introduced constantly to serve whatever plotline the current arc is on, and at first, there's some setup for it. The first arc (Eye of the Midnight Sun) sets up a lot of key points that are relevant for the second arc. The second one finishes, and its end was already a little far-fetched for the world's limitations.
From the third arc onwards, it really becomes the powerscaling olympics as far as the magical system goes, with old concepts (like element affinities and interactions) getting replaced by the new measure of power we're rolling with (ancient or forbidden magic, arcane stages, mana zones and so on). A lot of the actual measures are being omitted to keep the review as spoiler free as possible, but... the story doesn't do much better either. Whereas Black Clover's premise is rather generic and begins as a parody of shounen, it eventually stops trying to setup story beats and gives itself less than a chapter or two of preparation.
Hells, later down the line plot-twists are set up and executed within pages of one another, and fakeouts don't even happen within more than a few panels of one another. Everything begins to lose gravity because there's no plan, the author is coming up with and executing concepts on the fly with little hints ahead of time, so why bother getting invested in the first place? And on the topic of pacing, during the very first arc of the manga, there's a few characters introduced out of nowhere with scenes never shown before in the manga itself.
That's because they originate from the supplementary light novel 'Stubborn Bull Book', and there's no attempt to integrate them in the manga despite featuring them out of the blue (for those who were sticking to just reading the chapter releases). They play a prominent supporting role only for a single arc and then are phased out, with this blunder thankfully not being repeated again. The story itself is handled poorly as is, but something done as haphazardly as a light novel being important to the canon from Chapter 82 (in a *currently* 386 chapter manga) is absurd.
It's not like we have it any better with the...
Characters - 2/10
- Tying in to the story, they are a key part of Black Clover. From the Black Bulls' main cast, to the supporting characters (like the coveted Captains and Wizard King) and the villains. Sadly, while there's a few standouts like Yami and Finral, most of them tend to be quite one note. A big part of the main cast is built off of tropes with little substance added further down the line. Anyone included in the story gets the standard starter pack of a backstory to explain why they are how they are, and a lot of characters that should be taken out of the story never are.
Instead, they are saved or somehow survive whatever they're going through, only to serve no purpose further down the story. Characters are almost never truly discarded here, instead left to obscurity and not even mentioned until there's a callback to be made in the final arc or some flashback. Even of my favorites, like Finral, there's only so much to do with a backstory that's been played out. How many times can I feel happy my favorite is on the chapter, only for the same joke of "pretty boy resisting flirting with women" to be pulled again and again..?
These are truly some of the best and worst this manga has to offer. They can really grip you, as much as they can remind you exactly what you are reading. A manga that doesn't want to take risks, nor displease. It capitalises on moments that add nothing to the broader whole, and this reduces its very vehicle to guide you through the story to little more than cardboard cutouts. There's countless characters that are introduced as the centerpiece to a story beat or arc, only to fade out of relevance once their backstory has been touched on and that's so, so much wasted potential.
Art - 7/10
- This is really the one saving grace* of Black Clover in my opinion. Although I'm not particularly fond of the style, the art is absolutely beautiful. The fights feel heavy, the chibi style is really cute and the expressions can be exaggerated both to lighten up scenes that got a lot of chuckles out of me, and to dim the mood down to however serious it needs to be. I think Tabata is an incredible artist and it shows in each and every panel. They are really well drawn, a lot of the designs in his works feel slick and well-put together, and some pages are really a treat to the eyes.
Art/Panel Cohesion - 1/10
- ... then why this rating? Once again, I will repeat: I think Tabata is an incredible artist, and it shows. However, the panels themselves come out underwhelming when the story is poorly strung together, powers go unexplained when they need to be delved into and the story has gone from low stakes to humans fighting at inhuman levels. The weight becomes excessive and you get absolutely lost in certain scenes, not knowing where you're supposed to look at. Especially in the latter chapters where powers go out of whack, it's impossible to tell what you're meant to be looking at and in all its grandure, a lot of the art just loses its impact.
The story is really hard to distinguish from the panels, and there's so, so many unnecessary spreads during certain fights. Pages that need to have spreads just don't, and scenes that have no right to have as many spreads as they end up having, just have that much effort put into them. I think much like the rest of BC, the art suffers from a 'pacing' problem and it became more of a visual mess for me than something I can wholeheartedly say I enjoyed. Do not take this as the art being bad. But the way it's presented in the final product really gets in the way and causes it to trip over itself.
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I really want to add some extra notes, but I feel really tired from reading this much of BC and seeing how much potential it had to be a fun underdog squandered. It started as a parody of all the crazy shounens, and it ended up becoming the very thing it made fun of. I forced myself to read the final few chapters, but it keeps getting more and more off the rails with no way back. I have gotten so tired of hearing "Right here, right now I'll surpass my limits" and "I'll be the next Wizard King", this print has been burnt into my retinas by the current release.
The very beginning of Black Clover, as well as the first arc or two are harmless fun, if not a little underwhelming in their resolution. I'm not entirely sure where it 'started going wrong', but it's definitely one of the most disappointing reads I've had in a while. I hope Tabata learns from this and if he ends up pursuing another manga after finishing this series, he does the next one justice.
Give it a try if you want to, but remember. Not every gem is a diamond in the rough.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jun 7, 2025
Following in line with the previous season's review, some arbitrary basic ratings to get you started:
Story: 8/10
Overall Sound: 6/10
Animation: 6/10
Characters: 8/10
This season is split into two arcs, unlike the starter one. First there's a War Game between Hestia Familia and another, which sets up a lot of the ground work for the rest of the anime from now to however many seasons get released. And after that, follows a Redlight District arc that's got better writing than I expected. I'll cut to the chase one arc at a time and then with some final overall thoughts for S2.
War Game Arc: It's a very small and
...
basic arc. It introduces some characters whose names are echoed throughout the fanbase, so I assume more groundwork, but overall it's... just alright. There's little in terms of development, and more in setup for the second arc to hit a lot harder. If anything, the pacing is much too quick and it feels a little underbaked for the impact it was building up to, including what character development Lili does get.
Redlight District Arc: By far the seven episode highlight of the season. Although I don't particularly like these sorts of stories, I think it was executed really well here. Bell, as well as Mikoto get some very nice characterisation and the white haired protagonist is actually faced with the dilemma of taking actions that'll have consequences on himself AND those around him. Haruhime, the central character and prostitute of the arc, is also a nice reality check for Bell at times, and I think the two just make the season really fun to watch. It's not the best written story, but it has a lot of nice characters and interesting themes, though they could have been pulled off better.
Moving on to the overall closing thoughts on the season, the world is slowly being built up to be a bit more than a sandbox type playground for Bell, and characters start to feel less and less one dimensional. They're far from moving and sadly, I feel the inconsistent animation also takes away from the show at times as one scene is absolutely brilliant, and then the next is mostly stills or reused frames. I think it's a step above the first season, but not in ways that appeal to me specifically. It sets up the world for further exploration really well, and it starts to feel like a real story bit by bit.
If you enjoyed Danmachi for the no-brainer action, there's not too much of that to be found in S2. If you wanted the setting to be actually taken advantage of and convey a story though, you'll probably be happy with the results. The next seasons use it to a MUCH greater degree, but as for S2, it's a first step in that direction.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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May 31, 2025
Danmachi isn't a bad anime- it's not a good one either. "So why the score?", you ask. Good question. Before giving my overall thoughts, some basic ratings:
Story: 5/10
Overall Sound: 7/10
Animation: 9/10
Characters: 6/10
I have very little to say in terms of the anime besides this: it's your average run of the mill "we must climb the tower for money/to raise our stats" anime, although it's a lot less rigid in its 'stat' system than something like Sword Art Online. If anything they're there for gamification's sake, and something the universe makes abundantly clear is that even something that you overpower by a lot can get you
...
if you're cocky.
The characters are pretty standard with some fun variations here and there, and the soundtrack is a bit generic sadly. Some of the concepts, most if anything, are very basic, although the execution is really unique and that's part of what hooked me in. The animation is admittedly much better than what one would expect off the plot alone, and the sound design (not the soundtrack) is really powerful and heavy.
Some minor gripes with it are the incessant fanservice in the form of man's worst enemies (the terror known as "boobies"), and for some reason Bell (MC) seems to attract every single woman in the near vicinity. The way he reacts is usually nonchalant and dense, which overplayed as it is, gave me a few chuckles throughout my watch. It... also made the whole near-harem dynamic a LOT more bearable when most of the characters thankfully give up on pursuing anything more than.
Overall, I'm really happy with it. I expected it to be a lot less bearable/fun than it ended up being, but it's easily digestible, even if far from top tier. It's a fun ride you're in for, and rumors say it gets better down the line. If you can put up with some fanservice and a basic story, it's a really neat watch in your free time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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