Another week in the books. Let’s chat about manga in the general discussion thread! Feel free to use this thread for questions, comments, recommendations, etc.
Like normal, please be careful with spoilers. I wrote a guide about spoilers in case you need a refresher on how to handle them (also linked in the sidebar).
I picked up two manga recently.
The first is Rentarou’s Family’s Families’ Daily Lives.
The illustrator for 100 Girlfriends is on maternity leave, which means fewer chapters will be released for 100 girlfriends in the coming weeks. This spin-off of 100 Girlfriends, written and drawn by the author, is meant to plug the gap. It features shenanigans that don’t fit in the main series.
On a side note, I thought that the author’s drawing is pretty good.
The second is Release That Witch after having picked up the anime adaptation. It is one of the biggest disappointments for me recently. I came in with high expectations due to the anime, but my impression (and rating) for it just drops lower and lower as I progressed through the chapters.
In hindsight, I should have expected this. There’s this quote (can’t remember the exact phrasing or origin) that goes something like: the characters in a story are only as smart as their writer. IIRC this quote was directed at mysteries, but I found it to be very relevant to kingdom-building stories too.
This story has the same flaws as all the other kingdom-building manga / novels I have read: the writer is an expert in one field, but is lacking in everything else. I thought it was quite obvious that the writer has an engineering background, if not a strong interest in the field. The protagonist’s dialogue made that clear, but beyond that, the manga can go into details when it comes to the technological advancement. However, when it comes to other fields (e.g. medicine, law), it is so shoddy and handwavy.
And that’s just the common / baseline flaw. It has plenty other flaws too, the most glaring one being: starting a subplot that I don’t give a shit about. For some reason, there is a dream world / side story with so many characters, development and chapters dedicated to it. But! The main plot wasn’t even resolved! Why side-track so soon, and so much?!
I ended up finishing all 695 chapters of it due to the sunk cost, but I should really have dropped it. In hindsight, there are plenty of signs that this manga would turn out to be trash. For anyone who’s interested in this series, I’d recommend picking up the anime instead. Or not picking it up at all - the anime could turn out to be disappointing too…
One last thing: I noticed that the way the kingdom is being built is essentially China. Not ancient China like in The Apothecary Diaries, but modern China. Not saying it is good or bad, just that it’s distinct from the typical kingdom-building stories written by Japanese authors.