porchpuppy11

Steel Ball Run is the best thing ever. Its like a cowboy movie crossed paths with a 70s French film, replete with religious imagery and complex moral decision making. Throw out all expectations, pretend you've never seen anything before it. In fact, if you're just coming into JoJo now, start with Steel Ball Run, then go back to the old stuff. The art in SBR is phenomenal, clearly a result of the switch to monthly from weekly production. The characters are human: flawed and selfish. The goals of everyone are fascinating to behold: even Dio gets characterization beyond "WRYYY".

Johnny is a terrible human being, and a wonderful character. It has Stands, horses, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and the FABULOUS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. What more could you ask for? Oh yeah, metaphysical powersets used in novel ways. Who would have thought that "Spin" could be so interesting?

Give it a read, but as a warning, it starts REAL slow. The first Stand won't show up for quite a few chapters, and the whole thing is a long read. There's two REALLY uncomfortable scenes, but if you can read past them, you'll be treated to the most mind-bending battles in all of JoJo. This manga will take you across the United States, from the California desert all the way to Manhattan (not a spoiler, that's like page 2).

"Dojyaaan!"

(Note: This review contains some spoilers, but I doubt spoilers will ruin your potential enjoyment with this manhwa. Also, despite my rating, this manhwa can still be extremely enjoyable. However, enjoyable does NOT mean well-written. There's a reason why the term dumpster fire exists.)

"Do you have low self-esteem? Do the girls at school reject you because you're weak? Do you want to escape this unsatisfying reality? Well, oh boy, do I have the solution for you! Introducing Solo Leveling: the insecure weeb's most popular source of escapism and wish fulfillment."

The popular manhwa is rated a whopping 8.96 and ranked 12th in all manga, is it deserving of a 10/10? While fans may exaggerate it, saying, "this isn't your typical OP zero to hero story," it is far from a masterpiece. Every positive review for Solo Leveling relies on conveying their enjoyment and opinion through buzzwords. What do I mean? Quite simply, they're vague. Saying that something is "a f***ing masterpiece and amazing" doesn't specify how and why it is a masterpiece. Now, I'm probably going to anger a lot of people with this review, but keep in mind that I am NOT saying you cannot enjoy this or like it. I am merely letting people know that other than the art and early fight scenes, there is nothing praiseworthy within this manhwa. I have finally caught up and finished the first season of this webtoon and reread it entirely to be sure of my rating. So, allow me to explain why Solo Leveling is the equivalent of spraying Febreze on dog s**t and calling it a masterpiece.

Story: 1/10
Wow, already starting on an awful note, are we? I've been using my magnifying glass on all the panels within the manhwa, but I still cannot find the story. Not even Christopher Colombus would be able to find the story in Solo Leveling. Allow me to explain: Solo Leveling takes place in present-day South Korea, and magical gates leading to dungeons have appeared. In these dungeons contain evil monsters that will wreak havoc on the world.

Along with these dungeons, certain people have been "awakened." In which they gain powers similar to that of an MMORPG, and each person's power level varies. These people are called hunters. Quite simply, the concept is a combination of Overlord, One Punch Man, HxH, and Fairy Tale. We follow the journey of the world's weakest hunter, Sung-Jin Woo, who I will abbreviate as SJW. SJW is an E rank hunter and is scoffed at by his fellow hunters and wishes to get stronger. He and his group enter a dungeon only to decide to fight the boss of the dungeon foolishly out of greed. The result is some members dying, a few making it out, and SJW sacrificing himself due to circumstance. At this point, SJW is granted an opportunity from the system to receive a "double awakening" in which he would get stronger. He accepts but soon discovers that unlike previous awakenings, he can continuously become more powerful through experience points, and so begins his quest to become the best hunter in the world.

A relatively simple plot that screams shonen, and I won't lie; the first ten chapters hook you in and set up the story and main character decently. Unfortunately, that's about it as SJW quickly becomes OP after his first dungeon since the prologue. Now, I don't mind characters becoming OP, as it is the execution that matters. By chapter 17, after clearing the dungeon, he can already one-hit-kill a B rank boss using a broken blade. Alright, not the best start, but maybe it'll get better. Wrong again. Not only does he get more robust, but he ends up hiding his strength for no plausible reason. He'll tell you it's because it'll make him a target for other hunters, but make no mistake, he still ends up in danger through hiding his power. It becomes evident that the primary reason the writer decided to hide SJW's strength is to employ the troupe where everyone underestimates SJW only to be rescued by him and realize how much of a chad he is. The sole purpose is to make readers insert themselves as SJW and feel like the badass they're not in real life. In other words, pure wish fulfillment and escapism. No theme, no development, nothing.

The setup and execution for every dungeon are the same: SJW enters a gate under the motivation to get more powerful for no good reason. He then trounces all enemies but will give exposition on how they're still mighty. He then finds the boss who is either arrogant or mindless. SJW then has an "epic" battle with the boss and will give an empty narration on how he has to "go faster" and that he is in trouble despite never taking a single hit since the second dungeon. SJW levels up and gain some new power that won't change the course of the story in any way other than SJW looking more badass and edgier than before. Sure, there sometimes might be something different in context, but actually, the outcome is the same. For example, the system forces SJW to kill a group of hunters who betrayed him and attempted to kill him. We learn a bit about the system, but it only comes into play for the sake of SJW being edgy. Furthermore, the plot developments are as cringe-worthy as the interactions in The Office TV show. Unlike The Office, though, Solo Leveling is NOT FUNNY AT ALL.

The actual dialogue is also garbage. It'll usually consist of redundant exposition in which the writer dumps all of its world-building on you in the most annoying fashion possible. When it isn't exposition or boring narration, it creates the edgiest and most cringe-worthy lines I have ever read. Not only are they devoid of any meaning, but they also don't make any sense. The series exaggerates its events and attempts to convince you that its dialogue is balls deep when it is flatter than an A-cup. Not to mention the power system is just combining Overlord's MMORPG but dumbed down and ranks powers from E to S. Now, I'm not blaming them for using a system that's already been used before. The real problem lies in that this power system was used in Overlord because it fit the premise, here it's used so the author doesn't have to set any parameters and can be extremely vague in regards to power rankings. In other words, laziness.

Now, recently people have told me that the "true plot" hasn't been revealed yet and is being foreshadowed. It's been over 100 chapters, and the real plot hasn't started? In other words, SJW's boring and repetitive battles against shallow monsters are a set up to something even bigger? Yeah, I would lower the score of the story if it weren't already at a 1/10 if that's the case. Setting up is not the same as dragging the story. Like I mentioned earlier, every dungeon has the same formula just with something different in context to spice it up.

Overall, the entire plot consists of repetitive action against different enemies that look different, but the setup and outcome remain the same. Ultimately, the plot solely exists to make SJW look as cool, badass, and edgy as possible to make readers feel more secure about themselves before reality sets back in. Not to mention some dungeons/arcs feel as if they've been copied and dumbed down from other famous works. The Ant Arc is the most apparent one as it takes the concept of the Chimera Ant Arc in HxH and turns it into the laziest arc I have ever seen. I'm not even a fan of HxH, but even I was disgusted with what I saw. I'm sorry, but the Febreze (art) doesn't fix the fact that the story is still a load of s**t.

Characters: 1/10
Well, what a shocker, another 1/10! How can something be this bad? Thank you for asking my curious reader, let me tell you. The flaws start with our protagonist, who is the only main character in the story, Sung Jin-Woo. His reason for fighting is to support his little sister's education and pay for the medical bills caused by his mom being in a coma. Now, you probably think this is a pretty good reason to fight, and you're right it is. However, it is never expanded upon or brought up ever again. The author forgets it almost immediately. We never see SJW visit his mom or ever struggle to pay the bill. He even becomes filthy rich very quickly. How can you expect to believe he gives a s**t about his mom when he's too busy f***ing around in dungeons pretending to be weak. When I say not mentioned, I mean he doesn't bring her up in dialogue, monologue, and he never visits her. What's even more frustrating is that by the third or fourth dungeon, he could quite easily find a way to heal his mom but doesn't. Then the writer proceeds to resolve the issue in the most anti-climatic way possible but dares to act like he's been foreshadowing this and expects us to give a damn when he hadn't done anything to build upon SJW's relationship with his mother. Not even any flashbacks.

In addition to the trashy backstory and motivations, SJW is made to be as emotionless as possible so the reader can insert themselves into the story. He is morally ambiguous as he kills when the reader wants him to and helps others also when the reader wants him to, regardless of whether it is uncharacteristic or not. His face is always expressionless except for his edgy smile; he's calm about everything just to look more amazing; his attire consists of black and gray; he's able to make his armor invisible. All to make him as badass and edgy as possible for no reason other than "it's cool." He's a poorly written self insert character. The author wants readers to experience this absurd power-trip fantasy where they are the s**t, and everyone else exists to make them look more badass.

In a manhwa that's all about the "power development," it would be wrong to ignore it. The most glaring flaw is how vague SJW's strength is. The system will show stats like "strength" or "agility," but whenever he upgrades them, it doesn't feel like anything has changed. That's because the author has failed to use the golden rule of writing known as "show don't tell." It's no different than every other wish-fulfillment manhwa.

As I mentioned above, SJW's decision making follows no train of thought and is usually just whatever will make him more badass. His character development, if you could even call it that, comes off as edgy and cringeworthy like everything else. Except here, the author admits it is edgy like an offhand joke. However, it ends up being ironic because you'd think upon realizing this, the author would've started to give a s**t about his characters, but nothing changes. The story suggests that SJW is losing his emotions and humanity due to the system and getting stronger, represented by his flat facial expression and cold attitude. However, the writer fails to follow through with this as he continuously saves people he doesn't know at all. The Ant Arc is a prominent example of this as he decides to keep the main waifu from dying despite never speaking to her once and that he's lost his humanity, as the story suggested. Even worse, some random dude is killed during the event because he's not a woman, and the author expects us to give a f**k, which leads me to my next point.

If it weren't for the fact that the male characters are treated just as distastefully as the female cast, I would easily consider this manhwa's writing to be sexist. I'm no social justice warrior, but even I get annoyed when every female character exists to be SJW's damsel in distress and get rescued. The main girl, S rank hunter Cha Hae-In, falls in love with him because he "smells different" and, to this point, has never held an actual conversation. The female characters are said to be high ranked hunters but never accomplish or damage anything. At times they can even be utterly dumb like when Cha decides to head into a top-ranked gate, despite knowing the risks, without any armor or weapons except for a pickaxe she found at a nearby construction site. What happens as a result? She gets into trouble, and SJW rescues her, and she falls for him even harder. The third most favorited character on MAL for Solo Leveling is a character who has appeared in like ten chapters, and we won't see her ever again. Not to mention her role was mainly cute demon waifu who guides MC through the dungeon. Even worse, she starts as SJW's enemy in the cell, and after killing all the men, he leaps at her but spares because of wish-fulfillment. Despite being competent with a blade, she needs SJW's constant protection and falls in love with him. The writer saves all the women while the men die brutally. The purpose behind this is to satisfy the insecure reader's desire to be a chad. Women exist in the story to suck the reader's d**k and nothing else. The only aspect that makes Solo Leveling better than other wish-fulfillment manhwas is that it never takes the focus away from the combat, so there's that, I guess.

So how are the male characters then? Ugh, don't get me started. Whereas women are to boost the reader's ego through SJW, men exist to underestimate SJW and be evil. All men, except for a couple, are portrayed as arrogant serial killers who are greedy and have no redeeming qualities. Why is that the case? So SJW can put them in their place while looking a badass as the enemy says, "NANI!" I have never seen such poorly conceptualized and executed characters in my life. Your average hentai has more character development than this.

The only two characters I can give slight praise to are Yoo Jin-Ho, aka weak, rich kid who gains confidence, and Lee Ju-Hee, aka B rank healer with PTSD who we rarely see past the beginning. I almost forgot to mention, because Ju-Hee is a woman, she too gets saved by SJW. Great. That's about it, unfortunately.

Overall, these characters aren't characters. Instead, they're tools for SJW to feel even more robust and serve as wish fulfillment. It's the same concept behind almost every other popular manhwa: generic wish-fulfillment and power cultivating in a vague and unoriginal power system.

Art: 10/10
It's about goddamn time something good came up. The art is the Febreze being sprayed on the dog s**t story. The fully colored large panels make the action scenes come to life and are exciting. They're crisp, clean, and depict movement. It does everything it's supposed to do.
On the other hand, the character designs are lacking in that each character looks similar except for different hair colors and hairstyles. This flaw, combined with nonexistent personalities, makes it hard to distinguish the already forgettable cast. The weapons also lack a creative design and feel as though you could find them in any other fantasy action series. Specific action panels, for some reason, decide to zoom in on SJW's expressionless face as he provides meaningless and repetitive monologuing. As a result, it can be confusing to figure out what exactly SJW did in the next panel, often hindering some of your enjoyment. Nevertheless, art is a 10/10 and is easily the best aspect of the series, but that's not saying much.

Enjoyment: 3/10
Take this with a grain of salt, if you're looking for balls to the walls action with great art and wish-fulfillment, you'll have a great time reading it. However, the moment you start to desire more from this in other areas, your enjoyment will plummet. If I had to compare it to other series that fall in the power-cultivating and wish-fulfillment concepts, I would rank this second or third. Keep in mind that I like to keep my enjoyment separate from the quality of the writing. There's more to manga/manhwa than cool fights, masterful art, shallow waifus, and chad self-insert protagonists. Solo Leveling is comparable to Mountain Dew and Doritos: you may enjoy them, but that doesn't mean it's healthy for you. In other words, enjoyment does not always equal good writing.

Overall: 2/10
Solo Leveling is, at best, a dumpster fire, the writing is so bad, but you can't stop reading because, for some of you, it's so entertaining. The characters, plot, and even the art sometimes are all meant to make the self-insert protagonist feel even more powerful and edgier than before. Masterful art and crazy action panels don't equal an overall masterpiece, at least not for me.

"So did this review of the FANTASTIC manhwa known as Solo Leveling give you an insight into whether you need your ego stroked to feel more secure about yourself? Hopefully, it did, and you will realize that you don't need constant wish-fulfillment and escapism to feel better about yourself."

Ah, that feeling of boredom eating away at you when you have godlike stats in your game. Or just passing any test in school with no sweat. That's what Saitama, our protagonist in this action shounen manga, similarly felt when all of his enemies, big or small, fast or slow, all fall down, or worse dissipate into thin air, with one punch. Yes, 1 punch is all it takes, and thus the title of this manga. Worse of all, he is being underestimated because of his mundane looks and attire, like some crappy '80s superhero in tights. It doesn't even help that he joins an organization of heroes who look down on him too. And thus we follow his story of looking for his best contender in the whole universe!

At first one may be put off with Saitama's character design because of his looks, to some it may be enough to detract themselves from reading this manga, and his looks greatly contrasts with his newfound sidekick Genos, a white-haired bishie cyborg with equipment that can rival Iron Man's who wants to be trained under Saitama's tutelage, as well as other heroes and villains who have way too cool designs and gadgets with them. But this is okay, because it is compensated by the great variety of designs, and even the details of their hands are different. 

As for the characters themselves, you can't help but feel for Saitama, who even though strong, is left with a boring superhero life. Genos' development is such that he realizes his cyborg body may not be enough to defeat all those who stand in his way, and thus he strives to improve himself as Saitama's sidekick, much to the master's chagrin. Villains though are cliched, and are rather made to prove that Saitama overpowers them in a match. Even so, their interactions with each other are hilarious, especially when Saitama knocks them out.

All in all, the enjoyment factor is very high for a shounen manga, and albeit the battle scenes are quite short when Saitama enters the fray, the panels are very detailed to the point that one panel of their movement encompasses one page. Which brings us to what I think is a minor problem here. I don't know if this is one of the mangaka's quirks but detailing one page with only one movement frame of the character could slow down the pace of the manga indeed, in fact in one scene it took 2 chapters to finish one villain, and with one punch too. Nevertheless, if this is intended by the mangaka, I think it is really original for such a medium. 

Anyway, if you're into action shounen, then Saitama's antics will make your day complete! Not to mention sympathizing with him when he feels down as his day comes to an end knowing he didn't met yet his rightful rival.

So there are only a few chapters I have read (5), but I have fallen completely in love with this josei (but more like shoujo) manga. It's not revolutionary but if you want a sweet and happy feeling, have a read of this :)

The art is gorgeous and so refreshing to the eyes. The character design of the guy is impeccable and even tho the main girl is supposed to be "normal and ordinary" her design is pretty too. The story so far has been very cute and slice of life. The FL is a daycare worker who is too nice while the ML is very cute and is an actor looking after his lil sis. I read this in 15 mins and I can't wait to read more!

Mari Yamazaki is a mangaka well known for her love of history, travels and foreign countries in general with Italy in particular taking a big place in the stories that she would come to write about.

Chikyuu Renai is an occasion for her to write a few short stories set all around the world, and as far as depicting the different sceneries and the way of life of the people, it seems like Mari Yamazaki was very thorough in giving each of them a different feel and acknowledging the subtle differences they can have. It's self-evident with the sceneries themselves which stands at stark opposites, from the hot nights of Rio de Janeiro and its carnival, the vast and seemingly unending areas and sand and rocks of the Arabian Desert, the paradisiac beach of Tuvalu filled with coconut trees or a snowy village in the middle of Denmark, all presented in a fairly detailed and realistic way that's pleasant enough to look at, same can be said for the rustic homes which always changes from stry to story. Another thing I like is showing the typical occupations of the people we see, there's one character who's a traditional shoemaker, others are handcrafting toys and furniture from wood because they live next to a forest, a musician playing folk songs in a bar… they're details but make everything a bit more lively.
Now one of the shortcomings of this book is that Mari Yamazaki is much more skilled in transmitting her passion for culture and traditions than for love stories, it already showed with the second half of Thermae Romae and it also shows here, they're a bit too contrived and rushed to be enjoyable. They're not that ambitious though and it handles well themes like family or relationships between elder people if you're interested in that. I can't help but feel they're more like a pretext for showing off different countries and make a travel diary of sort.

Fans of the author will probably enjoy this, it's definitely not terrible but can hardly stand above average.

I dislike this manga. As usual the story seemed interesting enough for the first few chapters. Reading on I realized all the characters are stupid (hence the name I guess). I kept on reading because I like the drawing style but the story... seriously I think it would have been better off a one-shot ero manga instead.

Story: 5
Art: 7
Character: 3
Enjoyment: 2

Continuing on with the story just prolonged its idiocy... I stopped reading it before finishing the last chapter the scanlator uploaded. If they had kept going I might have continued because that would give me some hope the characters will possibly get smarter.
One character did show up who was almost smart enough to have saved the manga for me but then a couple more idiots showed up after him. I couldn't enjoy this manga when to me it was implying that their world mostly consists of vulgar people.

Stupid characters made the story stupid.
Yes, I am indeed blaming it on the characters. The story would have probably been much better if they started out with a smart character before chapter 13 or15.

Don't take this one seriously - a very cliched quote, but overall, one that very much sums up the best way to have the complete experience this series is intended to give, on a very intentional level. This series is basically exactly what one would expect from the ridiculous premise it gives us: it is an over-the-top, Super Sentai-esque series filled with ecchi (Super Sentai is the Japanese series that inspired Power Rangers btw). This series is aware of itself, in contrast to other series of this kind, being very clear on knowing what it is, it doesn't try to look like some pretentious drama for the sake of it despite lacking the actual ability to deliver in said stakes (unlike some other series whose names I won't mention here), and it instead milks the cheesy, silly and bordeline parodic premise it has for all of its worth. Working pretty much to be some kind of a love letter to the ecchi-action series we have seen in the many years before while embracing its silly nature that doesn't shy away from showing its Super Sentai roots, Dokyuu Hentai HxEros is one of those great series to read to simply have fun.

By god, I remember reading this and revolting to its awfulness. I will now recount my personal experience with it:

I came across it while pressing Random Manga back when One Manga still existed (God rest its soul. T_T) and I thought that the drawing style was alright and so I decided to check it out later.

I did.

It really started alright, it was a chase scene where a character gets involved with the main characters and helps them escape from their pursuers. That's fine and dandy, right? The setting seems to be shounen and RPG-like, and so I set my expectations of such. Another character joins them and seems to be a healer/support type. We meet the villans, it's the uncle.

At some point (I'm not willing to go back and check) it is revealed the male and female lead are brother and sister and that they love each other romantically. "Wait, what? No!" was my reaction to the idea of incest. "Why'd you do that!?" Thoughtlessly, I pushed on.

There's some rival-like character that joins (along with a buddy whom I forget) and now the cast finally resembles some sort of party that can work. They hike off to some secluded place, but too soon do the villains show up and somehow kidnap the two main leads and brainwash them over a friggin' timeskip. The story's a wreck after this that need not be salvaged more than that the ending was completely unsatisfactory in that they both die, but not really. Confusing? You'd see what I meant if you read it, but that's exactly what I don't want you to do. Biased review, blatant spoilers, point is that it was short and bad.

I disliked it. =

Story - I've never seen a take like this on mermaids before. Obviously ritual canabilism comes up in a great deal of stories but I've been seen a take like this before and I enjoyed the story much more than I originally thought I would. I found it fairly predictable however (though this might just be my cynical outlook on people) but the ending was a good twist if you didn't see it coming.

Art - The manga was well drawn. I liked the orignal take on the mermaids and how they look fairly human.

Character - In the end, it is only three chapters but I felt they explored the characters to the best of their ability in this time period and you got more of a sense of the two female mains than you might in other short mangas. Also the unexpected twist in character was very well done and worked perfectly with the plotline.

Enjoyment - I throughly enjoyed it. It is a nice quick read with an interesting storyline and a fairly disturbing turn of events.

Story: It's short, to the point, and I enjoyed the route the author took. It's not bad. Even if you think it's bad, it's not THAT BAD.. The story is different then what I've read before. Even though it's a time travel-type manga, there are some seriously heavy feelings involved and you can't help but to be wrapped up. Though, it's not all super serious, there are some pretty funny moments.

Art: The art was very good, I enjoyed the simple design of the pages and characters.

Characters: I liked the supporting characters, and the way the ending wasn't super conventional and predictable.

In the end, I really don't know how this got so many bad ratings. I think 7 is pretty accurate for this manga. It's unfortunate that it only lasted 19 chapters... It's a page turner, and great for a coming of age story where a character doesn't realize what they had until it was gone.