A big, gigantic trainwreck
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Sakae Esuno
Translation: Caleb Cook
What They Say
When Eiji Hoshimiya was asked his heart’s desire, the young boy could never have predicted the catastrophic consequences. Ten years after the “Great Destruction,” the world has been reshaped with gifted individuals called “Orders” emerging, people capable to reshaping reality to their whims.
When some of these Orders start hunting Eiji, will he have to summon the power that nearly destroyed the world?
Technical:
The front and back covers here are both rather nice, presenting members of the cast posing, with a sketchy drawing of their Order behind them in black and white. They have some real pop, and do a good job of drawing you in (perhaps to your eventual dismay, due to the quality of the contents). In terms of extras, there are a solid number of color pages, as well as some character/ability synopses. Honorifics are maintained, sound effects are left in their original form and subtitled, paper quality feels solid, and the text reads smoothly enough.
The art here is actually quite good, in terms of designs and basic panel composition. There’s some real great variety and flair to both the characters and the personifications of their powers, and that’s by far the greatest thing this book has going for it. Emotions come across great, and the backgrounds are both frequent and have a solid level of detail. Were you to look at any bit of the book’s art in isolation, there’d be no problem with it. But like the story itself, there’s a critical flaw here: the flow just plain isn’t right at all. I’ve seen far worse, admittedly, but it’s off just enough that the action and gags and everything else is just robbed of any punch, and feels weak and awkward as a result. It’s a real shame as it’s so close, but it’s critically out of tune in a way that just wrecks the flow of the book. Hopefully that’s something that’ll be tightened up as the series goes on, but for now it’s a huge detriment.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The series opens up as we learn that ten years in the past, a young boy named Eiji Hoshimiya made a wish that ended up destroying (well, more accurately devastating) the world. And ever since then, there have been people who could use special abilities, called Orders, with those powers being driven by their wishes. And all the while, Eiji himself has lived on the down low, never using his power again. And it’s here that I can first get into likely the biggest issue with the book: its pace is all out of whack, and as a result things just get awkwardly glazed over, and nothing feels like it gets the proper development to actually catch the reader’s attention. I bring this up now is because it’s here, so early on, that we get introduced to Daisy, the one who’s been making Orders, and a mysterious presence who has stayed by Eiji’s side ever since that incident 10 years ago. So that sounds like someone incredibly important who should remain a player, but… she just disappears and isn’t mentioned for the rest of this double-sized volume, which is ridiculous. And similarly, the idea that Eiji “destroyed the world” is driven in, but… we never get even a hint of how, which is damn distracting when we actually learn what his power is, and it doesn’t fit properly with what we know of what happened in the least. Perhaps that’ll be explained better latter, but for now, I can’t imagine someone reading this and not finding that weird and awkward, so it seems like a real mistake for the series to have played its cards the way it did.
Anyway, things start moving when we get introduced to a new transfer student in Eiji’s class, Rin Kurenai. And again, we get some weak pacing, as we get literally one page of him saying “she’s cute!” after seeing her for the first time, and then almost immediately she’s full on trying to freaking kill him, and he’s all “oh no, my crush is trying to kill me!” And by jumping into that so directly, we’re robbed of the chance to be shocked or feel anything about this, because the characters had approximately zero interaction, and we didn’t get even a vague chance to know her before this happened! Anyway, she mutters some junk about her parents dying in the destruction he caused, and how this is vengeance, before he manages to flee. And after some back and forth, it turns into a full on power battle, as we learn that she’s immortal, while he can control anyone and anything within his “territory.” The fight itself isn’t 100% terrible, but it’s not great either, even if it’s by far the most nuanced bit of combat the book has to offer. And at the end of all this, Eiji pegs her and essentially says “yeah, you’re my servant now.” I’ll say that someone begrudgingly forced to help the target of their vengeance isn’t terrible in theory, but it’s utilized horribly here, and results in Rin just constantly being all “I’m going to kill you despite not being able to!” and little else, to the degree that… she just doesn’t feel like a character. Like, there’s just nothing to her, so how is anyone supposed to be at all interested in her?
From there, Eiji ends up in an encounter with the Kyushu government, led by powerful and eccentric Orders known as the Ten Hands. And at the end of this, he ends up forced to be a puppet leader as they launch a coup d’etat of their own. This eventually leads to a battle with an Order who controls a giant rock monster, which ends in a freaking nuclear strike… but it’s all so poorly paced and underdeveloped that I’ll again say the ideas COULD be interesting, but they’re terribly utilized here. Oh, and there’s a weird bit where Eiji touches a girl’s hair ribbon and she temporarily becomes faux-pregnant for no reason whatsoever, so… that’s odd and pointless and incredibly stupid.
The one last thing I want to harp on, though, is the powers. It’s blatantly obvious that this series is ripping from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure heavily, what with the Order personifications essentially being Stands with a different label slapped on top. And in making the obvious comparison… it’s clear that this series just doesn’t understand what made the battles there work. Whereas those use subtly crafted situations with limited powers to push the logic of a fight to its limits, this book has none of that, and is just the most basic sort of battles. There’s a touch of that, ever so slightly, in the battle between Eiji and Rin, as they at least try a LITTLE. Even that’s pretty bland and has an awful flow, but it’s at least SOMETHING. Like, the ability to control things in a limited area and immortality do have SOME wiggle room to work with, but one of the later guys has the ability to “destroy anything,” and… just what sort of interesting combat situations are you going to come up with for that? It’s just a mess, and results in some sloppy, bland battles, which is a real drag on an already poor book.
In Summary
The easiest way to sum this book up is to say that it’s a bundle of potential absolutely dragged down by horrible execution. The setting, and the setup, and especially the character designs all could’ve been used to tell a great story. But instead, everything is rushed, and underdeveloped, and undermined by weird choices and an awful flow, resulting in pure garbage. That flow in particular is the real killer, as it makes the whole book just feel off, and causes pretty much every gag or bit of action to fall completely flat. There’s just so very, very much wrong here, and it’s a shame, as it could’ve been something great… if it had an even halfway competent writer to match the current creator’s artistic skills and basic premise. Perhaps it’ll recover somewhat in the future, but for now this is just trash that isn’t worth anyone’s time.
Content Grade: C
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: Mature
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: January 24th, 2017
MSRP: $21.99
