Skip to main content

Click "Archive" or "Labels" in the sidebar to browse reviews, or use the search bar to look for a specific title.


Review: All You Need Is Kill

All You Need Is Kill All You Need Is Kill by Ryosuke Takeuchi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Banner

Series Review:
That was an experience. Why have I heard LITERALLY NO ONE EVER talk about this manga? It was perfect. I can't think of a single thing that could have possibly made All You Need is Kill any better. I'm not even joking. The art, the pacing and development of the story, the slow but definite retrograde in the main characters' psyche, the way the relationship between the two leads was developed in the most succulent way possible. A masterpiece.

This really doesn't feel like a young adult series. It feels incredibly mature, and is quite gory, but it was serialized in a magazine intended for young boys. I've read a lot of comics from this magazine and can easily say this blasts all of them out of the water. The closest series would probably be Death Note, which makes sense because that's another really serious, mature, and intense manga that also happens to share the same illustrator.

I found out about this manga in the most random way. I was researching Shonen Jump (the magazine that this manga was originally serialized in), and while I was looking at the issues on Amazon I noticed that they have a free e-book that has the first chapters of all their big series like One Piece, Naruto, Food Wars, Bleach, and this weirdly named series that I had strangely never heard of before: All You Need is Kill. I consider myself relatively well versed in most things Shonen Jump and shonen genre in general, so this was very perplexing for me. Needless to say, I started reading the first chapter.

The first chapter kills it. It's 70 pages (a gigantic number, even for first chapters) of intensity, revelation, brutality, hype, and absolutely breathtaking art, just like the entire rest of the manga. Anyone can go and read the first chapter FOR FREE right now, and I guarantee you'll be sold on this series like I was. [USA Link], [Canada Link].

When you do eventually buy the whole thing, I strongly recommend getting the e-book. This is because reading this in paperback format provided the one fault I can give this book. There are certain parts in the manga that end up losing nearly any and all tension that would otherwise be very present because I could see that there was still so many pages left so I knew it couldn't end there. That was a bit of a buzzkill, but it's something that comes with the format of the book and nothing that I could possibly fault the author for.

I've touched on literally none of the actual plot, and tried to be generally vague on the specifics of this manga while still making sure to instil what makes me feel so enthusiastic about this series. This is a manga I strongly recommend. Though since it does feel more mature, I agree with the 16+ age rating, and if you're not keen on seeing lots of violence, gore, and death, maybe give this one a pass. If you're unsure, like I said, give the first chapter a go and see if it's to your fancy. If it is, then the rest of the manga will be too.

Please consider giving this review a "Like" if you've made it this far, it helps me out a lot! And follow me if you want more!

View all my reviews
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Review: 寄宿学校のジュリエット（３）

寄宿学校のジュリエット（３） by 金田陽介 My rating: 5 of 5 stars Brb, crying. Not actually, though. Like, I didn’t shed any actual tears or even get close to it, it’s just that this series… is so good . The romance between Romeo and Juliet is still weirdly innocent, but the actual story is so engrossing and entertaining. It also seems like almost literally every single character is complex and interesting and multi-layered. (Only the background characters like Maru’s lackeys are undeveloped, but honestly they really don’t need any development anyway.) The relationships between characters keep getting more and more complex, and the situations that the characters have to deal with are also super juicy. This is such an addicting series. My initial problem with Romeo and Juliet’s relationship was that it seemed pretty unhealthy and one-sided to me. Later, I found it very weird how sexually immature they both are, and how un-intimate their relationship is. What is interest...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Lulu Is a Rhinoceros

Lulu Is a Rhinoceros by Jason Flom My rating: 3 of 5 stars The second I saw the cover of this book and read the synopsis I immediately thought that this was going to be a book that uses animals to create an allegory about transsexuality, as another installment in the growing genre of kid’s LGBTQA+ books. The whole "that's what she sees when she looks in the mirror" business felt really on the nose, and I feel like the authors purposefully used this wording in order to generate buzz around this book. In actuality, this felt like any other normal kids book. You have a character who feels misunderstood by their peers, and so they go on a "journey" to find and/or prove themselves and eventually end up finding peace with who they are and/or a group who accepts them. To me, the story was told in a way that presented Lulu like any other silly character in a children's book that had a silly problem stemming from their silly misco...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Bossypants

Bossypants by Tina Fey My rating: 3 of 5 stars Let me set the scene: Last week I was in Phys Ed class playing the ol' badminton. Our school only has one gym, and my class 60 kids. So you can imagine how cramped it was. Each team had 3 people on the court at a time, and yes, it was a mess. And then one of my partners slammed me in the right eyeball with their racquet. My glasses broke into three pieces as they tumbled to the hardwood gym floor. This was the second time my face had been assaulted resulting in broken frames, so you could say I was a broken-glasses veteran. With my experience I didn't freak out, just was slightly annoyed. Nothin' some good old super glue can't fix, right? So I tried to continue playing but I quickly realized that I could no longer keep my eye open. It felt extremely irritated and even if I shut just the one and kept the other open, it still hurt. When I closed both of them, then it was a little better. Re...
Post a Comment
Read more