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My review of Isekai Samurai is OVERDUE as I have been reading for a while now and this is PEAK. It is just too undeniably fun. One aspect that immediately sets it apart from modern isekai is that the isekai aspect actually matters. Rather than immediately blending in or being a genius (already knowing of this world), Ginko Tsukitsuba is an odd ball from the setting every chapter; knowing absolutely nothing of the world, and being extremely dense in general of things such as magic (although she still has great battle intuition). An extremely personified, quirky, and honorable feudal samurai in a fantasy world plays ... out excellently, and the manga greatly benefits from being an Isekai rather than just being a fantasy, unlike most Isekai. I don't even know why I have to mention this, yet it's such a breath of fresh air: It's really important that Ginko was a young female samurai in Earth, and continued to be when she was reincarnated. She was not a modern day NEET who liked the play the samurai class in his favorite video game. From now, I want to move away from tropes and genre conceptions in this review, and focus on what actually makes Isekai Samurai itself good.

Ginko is also not overpowered, not only is she generally dense and unknowledgeable, she begins to struggle more and more with her fights as the chapters go on. It's not just a steamroll. The villains are also actual characters with competence, and ones of actual strength begin to pose actual threats as they become aware of Ginko's appearance in the world.

Next is that the art is 10/10. Might be the best ever. Although updates are infrequent, it makes complete sense as you are dropped with 40+ pages of excellence without fail. Ginko is aurafarming every chapter. I do NOT use that word lightly. I swear this time it's COOL. Ginko has SWAGGER. The double spreads are incredible. Every chapter is peak. No ongoing read is exciting me as much as every new chapter of Isekai Samurai, because of the immense work and detail that goes into every single chapter.

Lastly, aspects of adventure and a lively, beautiful world really bring everything together. As the party travels through the main lands, they head through a lot of very interesting environments. The background art is beautiful and the mangaka has a lot of fun with the types of monsters and environments they come across. However, there's certainly a lot of world-building still needing to be done, as the manga has not yet addressed much of the history of this new world, and we sort of just are in it blind with Ginko. Also, the supporting characters are admittedly not nearly as interesting as the protagonist. You will basically be reading this for Ginko. There are definitely some incredible designs, especially with the villains, but they are yet to be fleshed out whatsoever. I really look forward to and hope for a great development in the story and world-building (often takes many chapters), as well as more interesting supporting characters.

The isekai genre really sets the bar low, and while this manga does go above it, I would say it even sets the ceiling. This is extremely simple. Isekai Samurai works because the art is incredible, the main character is fun, and the Isekai factor plays a large part in the plot-- rather than being cast aside after the first chapter.

Shotgun Boy really had me invested throughout. I was pretty curious about the universe Carnby Kim was adding on to from Sweet Home, so I was attached to this manhwa from the start. But then the last ten or so chapters were rolling by... and then by the end, instead of "wow", or "incredible", it was more like "uh ok".
MC Gyuhwan starts off as an incredibly troubled kid, in fact, hes ready to shoot up his whole class. So in a situation where he is trapped at a camp with his classmates and a ton of monsters, he and his shotgun don't really see ... them all as any different. But, he slowly becomes more of a heroic character as the story moves along... dare I say, maybe even generically heroic. Like a shounen protagonist.
The supporting characters are all really boring (save for maybe Zero). None of them really go anywhere, and some just killed off just to kill them off. Most of all, everyone does what you expect them to do. No one has any compelling development. Sweet Home and Bastard's characters often fell morally gray, which kept things a lot more interesting. In Shotgun Boy characters that are good do good things, and then there are characters that are evil and try to kill people. Shin-Yeong is boring, she is just Gyuhwan's sidekick. Seong-Bin is a disaster. His character was the last I expected, by being everything that you'd expect of the excessive, korean comic bully.
Shotgun Boy worked pretty well to give context about how Sweet Home came to be, and the art was also very good, definitely on par with Sweet Home, despite having a new artist. On its own, I read on and it felt basic; formulaic. This is one of the stories I finish and gives me the thought: why? Why was this made? The characters and plot felt like tools to set up lore for the more interesting characters in Sweet Home. Shotgun Boy doesn't stand well on it's own. I've considered Carnby Kim to be the top of the webtoon thriller authors, but this one just felt like one of the rest.

Overall a High 5 / 10

Life of Keyaru from “Kaifuku Jutsushi no Yarinaoshi”:
KILL BAD GUY -> BRAINWASH GIRL AND HAVE SEX -> REPEAT
True life of a winner

It’s really no surprise that in this review I am going to say that this show is very bad. This show pretty much has nothing redeeming about it whatsoever. I am not offended by the rape in this show, because I have half a brain and I know that I am just watching an anime. In fact, the only reason to watch this show in the first place is the shock value from the mature scenes, which have a lower and ... lower impact every episode, leaving me with a boring fantasy show with boring robot-like characters and a boring atmosphere.

Keyaru is a tragic antihero and rapee who was raped a ton and then went back in time so he could rape his rapists back. He is just a very boring self-insert who never shows any glimmers of humanity or being a likable character. The villains do not have any layers to them. They just want to have glory and sex. Therefore, I am stuck watching every battle not rooting for anyone because I do not care for any of the characters. The girls are boring. Any personality they ever had was absolutely depleted once they became a sex slave for Keyaru. Basically, all the characters are soulless.

The atmosphere is so boring. The cities look boring. The royal castle looks like it was made solely from minecraft stone blocks. The fantasy powers are boring. I still don’t understand what the main character’s power is. He has the ability to heal, which looks like that means he can shout “HEAL!” and then whatever he wants to happen will happen. Change his face? Sure. Turn into a woman? Sure. One-shot a demon lord? Sure. Basically, Keyaru always wins and always gets what he wants but you never feel any satisfaction yourself, because he is so soulless and uninteresting.

There is nothing particularly extremely irritating about this show. It just has nothing good or interesting about it. This show is just a hentai with a plot to keep things going. I wrote a review for this show because it is really not hard to see the flaws in it. It’s obviously a meme at this point and it can be a pretty fun experience if you watch with your friends.

Most of the opening shows stiff characters and the song isn’t good and gets annoying after a couple listens. The ending isn’t anything special or great. I didn’t notice anything great about the soundtrack.

I do not care if you agree or disagree with Keyaru’s goal and his motives along the show. Because story-wise, even if you try and justify Keyaru’s raping spree, this show is still an extremely bland show with nothing good about it.

KARMAN D’=

Opening: 4/10
Best characters: Bullet(funny), Karman(funny)
Worst Characters: Pick any of them

Verdict: High 1 out of 10.

ARMA is a Korean webtoon about a group of people whos superpowers that only work on animals. These superpowers may not seem too exciting, but when horrific bullet-immune alien creatures invade Korea and begin attacking the city, guess who is now here to put up a fight.

The story contains much more than fighting the aliens who are invading. It is a very dark telling of a superhero story. Human experimentation and torture, betrayal and mistrust, corrupted military, and a morally gray and conflicted protagonist.

What I like about this story and others like it is that it takes place in a time where superpowers are just ... emerging into the public. It shows how the general public and government reacts to the uprising of a vigilante group of superheroes. I enjoy anti-hero stories, and this was a short and intriguing read.

Verdict: Mid 7

The review contains slight spoilers of the first few chapters.

The story is really nice. It reminds me a lot of the hunter exam in Hunter x Hunter. Everyone competing is supposedly murdered by some girl with a cannon and brought to live in another dimension(?) where they are all granted a random supernatural power that they are supposed to use to pass multiple trials. Each character has their own goal, the MC wants to destroy the system, others want to just leave, and some even decide to just live inside of the trials and build a settlement.
The art is the best part of the whole ... manga. Each panel has so much attention to detail and every character is distinguishable and personified by the appearance. The characters look really nice and the background is always amazing.
The main character's ability is incredibly unique to the other abilities, and his ability is just whatever "the other person believes [his] ability to be". This makes most of his fights psychological mind games, which is good for him, because he's basically a boy genius. The other characters are pretty straight forward. There is his self proclaimed rival who is an airhead, the girl deuteragonist who gets kind of angry sometimes, a big muscley guy who is very levelheaded, a typical psychopathic girl who takes interest in the main character (actually there are a couple of them), and other fun supporting characters.

(Note: People are seeing this review because the anime adaptation is now airing. This was my first review i ever wrote for anything. It's not the greatest)

Verdict: Mid - High 8