I kind of made myself make the decision between doing this or a game. I do feel like I will need another week to at least finish the story so I'm going to be reviewing World Trigger this week. Yeah, I am not excited either to review another shounen manga this week, especially after Bleach but I have nothing else interesting to talk about until I finish reading History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi or get the money to buy the Black Panther DVD. So yeah, we gonna bare the dull feeling of boredom which is the World Trigger reading experience. Now, this doesn’t mean it’s on the same level of Bleach. I actually think World Trigger is the better one of the two but not by much let’s get into the plot so we can see why I think this is rather dull.
“World Trigger” follows the life of Osamu Mikumo who is a mere trainee agent for the agency known as BORDER who are in charge of taking care of the alien invaders known as “Neighbours”. The agency has co-opted the alien technology to use in their fight which all mainly use Trion as energy which can be found in human beings (you will need to remember this since it’s an important plot device). When Osamu meets an neighbour that looks suspicious human known as Yuma who wields a black trigger (Triggers are pretty much their weapons which are powered by Trion), it kicks off the plot. Pretty much from there, Yuma and Osamu become teammates and form their own squad with Osamu being the captain despite being established to be utterly useless for the most part. There is a few things I want to discuss about the characters but for the most part, I think the plot is serviceable. It’s nothing mind blowing but at least it’s coherent which is something I can’t say about much manga but I do think it has a pacing issue. Yes, I am going to complain about it again but it’s nothing major this time because I don’t think it’s as bad as Bleach. The story progress is slow for the most part and while there is nothing wrong taking your time as you tell your story, I think it takes too long to get to anything of interest. Like, the current arc right now (at time of writing) is a ranking battle (not worth spoiling) to see who gets to go on this trip into the enemy neighbour territory and while I am glad something interesting is going to happen, this arc has been going on for way too long. While it does set up character growth moments as well as flesh out more of the other BORDER squads but that’s not really fun. They just spoiled us with a massive invasion set piece which was fun and introduced a bunch of new stakes on top of introducing new baddies and now you are going to follow it up with this? Yeah, I can’t help but feel a little bit disappointed. World Trigger is just a lot of talking and training against other agents for the most part which is nice and all but I want to see them fighting the aliens more often since they have interesting designs and offer much more better fights. I also hate how most of these neighbours are just human looking because when I think alien, I don’t think humans with slightly different appearances and talking about appearances, let’s get to the characters.
I am going to save time here and say it now; the character design is yet again flat as a board. The mangaka quite clearly went to the same school as the Bleach mangaka because they both draw by the rule of “A single physical character trait is all that is needed”. I mean, this is a shounen manga on top of being a sci fi themed one so where is the interesting character design? Osamu looks a like a background extra, Yuma’s defying physical trait is his white hair and the token female character, Chika, looks like a typical loli with just a really boring flat design. What about the big boss man at BORDER who is ambiguous evil, what is his physical trait? Well, he has a big scar going down his face because apparently all ambiguous bad guys has to have a visible scar to show that they have a tragic past and a grudge against the enemy. Like, I get this is supposed to be boys but don’t treat your readers like idiots. There is nothing wrong with using cliches but this is rather insulting. He already acts like an bad guy so you don’t need to make it more obvious. Everyone in this series just looks boring and unmemorable. I had to double check I was getting the right names to faces because of this and this is the second time I had to do it for one of these reviews (you can guess what’s the other one) but anytime someone can’t remember your characters after reading +100 chapters, you have definitely screwed up the designs. If I was to credit any form of character design, I think I would credit him for the Trion soldier designs because they actually look like aliens and they are far more visually appealing then the humanoid neighbours because I see humans on a regular basis. I want to see more unique designs, especially from a series with sci fi elements. It’s just a shame that they start getting phrased out for the far more dull humanoid alternatives. Dull is the name of the game for this series and they do carry it on with the overall style of the manga.
For me, the style of the manga is also very flat. It just doesn’t feel right for the series. While series like Berserk has a far more rougher design to it to suit the tone of the series, the drawings in World Trigger are a lot more smoother in general so it has this very clean look to it which is nice but it’s dull. I think a good series to define by its style of drawings but when it’s just really generic like World Trigger’s style, it’s just blends in with the rest of the other generic crap that gets spewed by Jump most of the time. It’s also because of this flat styling, there isn’t as many good spreads and you know I’m all about that spread. I have put in an example of this just below the paragraph and you can see why I don't like it.The only thing I think I like about the series from this aspect is the fact that the volume covers are very nice which I can’t say about some plot aspects so you know what time it is. Get the rubbish bin out because I am about to trash talk the plot for something it lacks: stakes.
I did mention how they introduced new stakes earlier in the plot section but I’m going to retcon it now. I meant to say they FINALLY INTRODUCED stakes to the series, well at least ones I would consider worth taking notice of. Stakes are important to a plot since it’s the cause of tension when depicting dangerous scenarios and stakes are usually introduced through character building because you should of gained a form of attachment to them by then. It’s because of stakes, we start to care about the well being of the character so it comes natural to root for them and you don’t want to see them lose. World Trigger really doesn’t have it for me but that’s mainly because I don’t see myself rooting for anyone since they are all so dull but let’s say, I did have some form of attachment to one of these characters. For example’s sake, let’s say I’m invested in the character of Osuma, despite being as flat as the plank of wood he was based on. Well, I still won’t feel any form of tension because of two major plot related things and the first one is the Trion body system. You see, all BORDER agents fight using Trion body suits which allow them to take damage without physically hurting their real bodies with some other benefits. Notice how I said that the Trion body stops their real body from being injured. This means they are under no threat of being killed during most of their fights. On top of this, there is the bail out system where if their Trion body gets seriously injured, they get teleported back to base to avoid being killed. So there is zero risk when fighting unless you really care about bystanders and the state of city but the manga doesn’t really touch on that aspect enough to care about it. The creator has at least tried to fix the lack of stakes with the mass invasion arc but he ends up just generating a massive plot hole (minor spoilers coming up). You see, Osuma gets seriously injured when he had to bail out of his Trion body in order to escape from an humanoid neighbour. It is set up that you can’t be harmed by Trion based weapons if you aren’t in a Trion body but then he gets nearly killed by a Trion based weapon. The mangaka literally broke his own rules just to make tension because he was unable to make any before this and I hate it when creators break their own established rules for plot reasons. It just shows poor writing techniques because a good writer shouldn’t have to break his own established rules if he avoids writing themselves into a dead end.
Before we wrap this up, I need to talk about the anime because I actually had time to watch the first episode (subbed) and it’s decent. It’s pretty much a pretty standard pilot. The voice acting isn’t bad and the animation is pretty nice but it’s dull like its source material and I think that’s all I have to say about the anime and manga. It’s just really boring to read but it doesn’t mean it’s bad. I have read this manga two times over now and I didn’t stop to have a mental cool down break during both reading which means I wasn’t bored enough to put it down. It felt like it just puts me in a trance of “I want to know what happens next” and that’s good. It’s just a shame what happens next is completely predictable so there is no surprise. I honestly think this is a very dull manga with a lot of potential to be entertaining and I think the mangaka is getting there very slowly. He is currently setting up elements for the next arc which does have me excited but it’s during this really boring, no stakes rank war arc and I have to criticise what’s is given to me so 5/10. Its just a very standard shounen manga which is why I had very little to say about this because everything else I haven’t mentioned is just decent enough to not be noteworthy. Next week will be the game review of an really old EA title which was somewhat a fond nostalgia trip for me but I won’t be as gentle in the review. For all my other content I make, link in the sidebar to my YouTube channel where I post really bad montage of me playing really bad YuGiOh decks in a really bad matter on a weekly basis.
I am going to save time here and say it now; the character design is yet again flat as a board. The mangaka quite clearly went to the same school as the Bleach mangaka because they both draw by the rule of “A single physical character trait is all that is needed”. I mean, this is a shounen manga on top of being a sci fi themed one so where is the interesting character design? Osamu looks a like a background extra, Yuma’s defying physical trait is his white hair and the token female character, Chika, looks like a typical loli with just a really boring flat design. What about the big boss man at BORDER who is ambiguous evil, what is his physical trait? Well, he has a big scar going down his face because apparently all ambiguous bad guys has to have a visible scar to show that they have a tragic past and a grudge against the enemy. Like, I get this is supposed to be boys but don’t treat your readers like idiots. There is nothing wrong with using cliches but this is rather insulting. He already acts like an bad guy so you don’t need to make it more obvious. Everyone in this series just looks boring and unmemorable. I had to double check I was getting the right names to faces because of this and this is the second time I had to do it for one of these reviews (you can guess what’s the other one) but anytime someone can’t remember your characters after reading +100 chapters, you have definitely screwed up the designs. If I was to credit any form of character design, I think I would credit him for the Trion soldier designs because they actually look like aliens and they are far more visually appealing then the humanoid neighbours because I see humans on a regular basis. I want to see more unique designs, especially from a series with sci fi elements. It’s just a shame that they start getting phrased out for the far more dull humanoid alternatives. Dull is the name of the game for this series and they do carry it on with the overall style of the manga.
For me, the style of the manga is also very flat. It just doesn’t feel right for the series. While series like Berserk has a far more rougher design to it to suit the tone of the series, the drawings in World Trigger are a lot more smoother in general so it has this very clean look to it which is nice but it’s dull. I think a good series to define by its style of drawings but when it’s just really generic like World Trigger’s style, it’s just blends in with the rest of the other generic crap that gets spewed by Jump most of the time. It’s also because of this flat styling, there isn’t as many good spreads and you know I’m all about that spread. I have put in an example of this just below the paragraph and you can see why I don't like it.The only thing I think I like about the series from this aspect is the fact that the volume covers are very nice which I can’t say about some plot aspects so you know what time it is. Get the rubbish bin out because I am about to trash talk the plot for something it lacks: stakes.
I did mention how they introduced new stakes earlier in the plot section but I’m going to retcon it now. I meant to say they FINALLY INTRODUCED stakes to the series, well at least ones I would consider worth taking notice of. Stakes are important to a plot since it’s the cause of tension when depicting dangerous scenarios and stakes are usually introduced through character building because you should of gained a form of attachment to them by then. It’s because of stakes, we start to care about the well being of the character so it comes natural to root for them and you don’t want to see them lose. World Trigger really doesn’t have it for me but that’s mainly because I don’t see myself rooting for anyone since they are all so dull but let’s say, I did have some form of attachment to one of these characters. For example’s sake, let’s say I’m invested in the character of Osuma, despite being as flat as the plank of wood he was based on. Well, I still won’t feel any form of tension because of two major plot related things and the first one is the Trion body system. You see, all BORDER agents fight using Trion body suits which allow them to take damage without physically hurting their real bodies with some other benefits. Notice how I said that the Trion body stops their real body from being injured. This means they are under no threat of being killed during most of their fights. On top of this, there is the bail out system where if their Trion body gets seriously injured, they get teleported back to base to avoid being killed. So there is zero risk when fighting unless you really care about bystanders and the state of city but the manga doesn’t really touch on that aspect enough to care about it. The creator has at least tried to fix the lack of stakes with the mass invasion arc but he ends up just generating a massive plot hole (minor spoilers coming up). You see, Osuma gets seriously injured when he had to bail out of his Trion body in order to escape from an humanoid neighbour. It is set up that you can’t be harmed by Trion based weapons if you aren’t in a Trion body but then he gets nearly killed by a Trion based weapon. The mangaka literally broke his own rules just to make tension because he was unable to make any before this and I hate it when creators break their own established rules for plot reasons. It just shows poor writing techniques because a good writer shouldn’t have to break his own established rules if he avoids writing themselves into a dead end.
Before we wrap this up, I need to talk about the anime because I actually had time to watch the first episode (subbed) and it’s decent. It’s pretty much a pretty standard pilot. The voice acting isn’t bad and the animation is pretty nice but it’s dull like its source material and I think that’s all I have to say about the anime and manga. It’s just really boring to read but it doesn’t mean it’s bad. I have read this manga two times over now and I didn’t stop to have a mental cool down break during both reading which means I wasn’t bored enough to put it down. It felt like it just puts me in a trance of “I want to know what happens next” and that’s good. It’s just a shame what happens next is completely predictable so there is no surprise. I honestly think this is a very dull manga with a lot of potential to be entertaining and I think the mangaka is getting there very slowly. He is currently setting up elements for the next arc which does have me excited but it’s during this really boring, no stakes rank war arc and I have to criticise what’s is given to me so 5/10. Its just a very standard shounen manga which is why I had very little to say about this because everything else I haven’t mentioned is just decent enough to not be noteworthy. Next week will be the game review of an really old EA title which was somewhat a fond nostalgia trip for me but I won’t be as gentle in the review. For all my other content I make, link in the sidebar to my YouTube channel where I post really bad montage of me playing really bad YuGiOh decks in a really bad matter on a weekly basis.
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