I might as well start explaining why you got this instead of Drifters. So I was going to start writing the Drifters review right after the L4D review since I’m not a big movie person and there was nothing in cinemas interesting to watch (until that new Mama Mia movie comes out that is) but then through sheer boredom, I find out that Drifters has an anime and I knew I couldn’t review Drifters without watching its anime adaption but I also didn’t want to leave a large gap in my reviews so I was thinking what to do then it hit me. I remembered that there is a lot of stuff I would love to talk about but there is not much to discuss in a long review so I thought about stringing these small rants to make one large review so welcome to “The Undiscussables”, the new series of reviews where I talk about three things that may not be related together but oh boy, they are sure hard to talk about in a 2K word review (Also, expect spoilers for this series as per usual).
First up is “Arachnid”, a manga created by Shinya Murata and Shinsen Ifuji And if I’m to be frank, it has the “Death Note” problem of that it becomes crap after the first half. We follow Alice Fuji who after witnessing her Uncle’s death and being taken in by an assassin called Kumo (Japanese for Spider) who then trains her to succeed him. After succeeding him and effectively killing him to take his title, she is now on the run from “The Organazation” which then sets up the “Arachnid Hunt” in her school which makes up the second half of the series and is what makes this disappointing for me. The series only has 75 chapters so it’s considered to be a short run in terms of serialisation (in my mind that is) which is why I hate these shorter serialisations. When a series is completed within 100 chapters, I know some things will be rushed and not expanded upon if the writer doesn’t know how to make a tightly written story with those restrictions in mind and unfortunately, this is one of them. To its credit, the first half is pretty good as we see Alice develop into the person she is, meet new friends in the form of Goki and Geji as well as enemies like the school nurse who we will call Scorpion and the P.E teacher who is pretty much a Water Strider. Also, if you couldn’t tell, everyone in this manga takes after an insect which pretty much represents their fighting style which is also very interesting and does add some uniqueness to what would be a generic action manga and that’s all the praise I have for this. If I was to start the bashing, I would start with the second half AKA The Arachnid Hunt because this is where it becomes confusing. This whole second half is just a mess. For an example of this mess, let’s start with the start of the hunt. It starts with Strider trying to drown Alice in a pool but it doesn’t work because “special technique” (that’s pretty much the get out card for everyone in this manga) and then suddenly, an assassin who is a Tiger Beetle who nearly kills Alice but then Geji comes in with rip-off Kamen Kick but before he kills Tiger Beetle, Beetle run offs but then gets his head punched by this other guy and then those two have a fight while Alice runs away. Did that confuse you because if it did, good job, you just got a feel for the whole of the second half. The second half is full of one off characters who are either then killed off or just disappear off the face of the earth as well as some very big shifts in terms of plot. Like before the second half, all the assassins have shown to have some insect like traits which suits their insect E.G Alice has a thread and fang combo weapon like a spider and Goki is quick and unpredictable like a cockroach and the only thing you are supposed dispense from your self-belief is that Alice and some other characters has this special condition which allows them to be pretty good at fighting as well as the occasional feat of super strength which is all fine and dandy but near the end, they just take it too far. Like, how are we supposed to believe that the Queen Ant character has the ability to control everyone she seduces with just pheromones? There is many other cases of this but in the sake of saving time, let’s just say everything gets crazy by the end and talking about ends, lm just going to say this: The ending was trash. The ending is vague, has some set up for a possible series sequel (which hasn’t magic itself into existence yet since its ending in 2015) and is just so bad. It feels like rushed ending with a sequel set up so they can hope to bait fans into demanding for a sequel so they can continue on with this project and for that part, I don’t blame them. If “Bakuman” taught me anything, publication companies usually have final release dates set for these mangas who don’t generate that much promise so the writer has to end up quickly tying up all the loose ends into a ending so if this ending was like this in the hopes they can continue this story, I don’t blame them but I do have to criticize what I was given so it’s just a 5/10 for me. Although it does go all pear shaped by the end, this is still an action manga and it’s action is more then satisfying.
Next up, we have “Otaku No Musume-san” and if “Archanid” was my main section, this is just the cliff notes. Let’s get this out of the way, this is a slice of life manga and I like slice of life mangas but this is a very boring slice of life manga. The general idea is that an Otaku gets confronted with his own child which he never knew he had and now he spends time learning how to be a good dad for the next 63 chapters while being an typical Otaku and oh boy, it’s cliche as hell. Like, cliches aren’t inherently bad but they are bad when you don’t do something interesting with them and for me, this is what the manga is to me. Just a bunch of cliches that aren’t shown in any showy way. The gags aren’t fun, the ending is a bit out of no where because someone went “we need drama” so some unnecessary drama happens, everyone gets a happy ending and I won’t remember any of this so here’s your 4/10 and I’m going to go now.
Finally, we have “Naze Toudouin Masaya 16-sai wa Kanojo ga Dekinai no ka?” and unlike the title, this is going to short. The plot revolves one guy called Seiya and his quest to get a girlfriend and unlike me, he is so motivated to get one that he does so many cringe worthy things. Like, I haven’t even got past chapter 40 and I have put down this manga more then ten times because this manga is just so cringe worthy and when it’s not Seiya doing something stupid, it’s something that gives me depression. While it only gave me depression during the start because you generally feel for him but after a while, it felt like it was becoming harder and harder to relate to him because he just becomes so desperate for a girlfriend, he not only caused an accidental love triangle and then ruin it, at the point I am at, he is now doing the equivalent of stalking a senpai who he knows is in a relationship with someone else just to get a date. The closest I got to relating to the guy is around the time he was doing a double date with his less attractive friend, he was so close to getting a girlfriend but after finding out that they were trash talking his friend, he not only declined but slapped her and I still hate the guy. I mean, I like the fact he has at least some morals but you just slapped her. You just not only ruined your chances with any girl in your school, you just hit a woman which is so morally wrong and with that, I now effectively hate our protagonist. I’m not a SJW and I usually don’t care about hitting women but that’s only if it’s the sense of self defence so this is just so wrong to me. I’m just going to give this a 3/10 and tell you to read it if you take enjoyment in others misfortunes in a non humorous way.
See you guys next week for my Drifters review and I can promise you that it’s going to be better than this half-baked excuse of a filler
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