Evolution just took a crazy leap.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Tomohiro Hasegawa
Translation: Paul Starr
What They Say
Third-grader Shota Aikawa’s pet beetle evolves from a larva to a pupa to a superhot human! The wacky adventures of the Aikawa family and the fabulous beetle who would be king now begins! You’re gonna LARVA this new comedy manga!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
A new series has gotten underway in Shonen Jump with it coming from writer/artist Tomohiro Hasegawa. With a sample one-shot out previously, Hasegawa has had a couple of other series over the years that amounted into a few volumes but nothing long-running. Moriking is the kind of title in that if it catches hold with the right audience could easily go along for a bit as it plays to kids with a young co-lead while also having fun things for the high school crowd with its other lead. And, of course, a weird insect as the title character in hot guy form. Hasegawa’s got a solid double-chapter opening here at just under fifty pages where we get some good designs, a very good sense of flow and direction for it, and enjoyable backgrounds that complement the world design so that you can immerse yourself in it easily.
The premise here is definitely interesting in that kind of silly way where I can see it being a good absurd comedy as needed while also playing to a fish out of water concept. The general idea is that our title character, Moriking, is a once-in-a-hundred-million-years birth out in the insect kingdom where he’s the lord of all insects. He’s able to connect and communicate with them all but in order to truly become king, he has to leave the countryside where he was born and face challenges in the rest of the world. Starting off as a larva, he ends up being picked up by a pet store where he’s sold off. Moriking then is taken in by a loving third-grader named Shota who is like many who wanted a rhinoceros beetle and has really gone all in on understanding him and how to raise him once he’s out of his larval stage. The problem is that the book opens on him evolving not into the beetle proper but a hot teenaged naked man with a few beetle parts.
With the family, we get only the first-blush basics here of the kids. Shota is pretty close to his older sister Shoka, who is a first-year high school student that had a fortune of spending her summer with hot god-like guys. Suffice to say, things are going to take some weird turns as she just thinks he’s some weird pervert assailant at first only to slowly come around as she sees what Shota has done to connect with Moriking. It’s got a lot of the usual panic-comedy material to it at first but it settles into a kind of familiar pattern by the end where you can see the makings of a weird proto-family of sorts between the three. We do get a glimpse of the parents so it’ll be interesting to see how they focus into it and just how much of the series will be about the three main zones it can play in. Shota’s time doing boy-things with Moriking, Shoka getting caught up in fledging romantic issues with him, and Moriking facing challenges or threats from within the insect kingdom that are testing him or challenging him.
In Summary:
With a second chapter coming up in two weeks, Moriking has a chance to draw in some good comedy-minded readers. It’s just weird enough to skew in a fun direction but working within familiar constraints so that it’s accessible enough to your general readership. Hasegawa’s artwork is pretty solid and I like the flow of the story while acknowledging that it has a lot to get done here with a flashback in addition to a burst onto the scene opening page – which has a couple of color pages as well. I suspect that the next installment will flow even better since the heavy lifting is done here and the intention of capturing new readers with the color pages having it structured as it is. I’ll probably give this two more chapters to see if the comedy is worth keeping up with and if there’s enough of a bigger story to sink your teeth into that’s more than just fighting other insects.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Shonen Jump
Release Date: April 12th, 2020
