Jagaaan

Just pathetic. Imagine if you mixed a good premise with inspiration from Parasite and Gantz and simply ruined it because you are terrible at writing narratives and characters, and yet you leave your sick fetishes so visible in the story that it makes anyone embarrassed to read it. I read all those 163 chapters thinking they could still have a decent ending, but no. Just disappointing and a waste of time. I could still say the art style is good, but it feels lazy in the pacing of the series. Also, there's a character in the beginning of the story that makes everything worse, andthose who read know who I am talking about (and if you think this is a good character although it's a villain, please seek help and I mean it).

Jagaaaaaan is weird. I was expecting that, but yeah, it's a fucked-up story. The art is crazy and really good, but the main character starts as a asshole, a loser, and a failure. From the beginning, it feels like a manga that could be a great fun time, but maybe not a masterpiece. It turns out to be a ride with constant, whiplash-inducing highs and lows. The core concept is awesome. A down-on-his-luck cop merges with an alien frog and gains the power to shoot his repressed desires out of a gun-hand, fighting other "fractured humans" whose own twisted desires have turned them into grotesque monsters.When Jagaan is good, it’s because of this. The monster designs are sick, the action can be incredible, and the art has some of the most cool-ass double-page spreads I've seen in a while. The potential for a great, edgy dark-action series is right there on the page. But here's the thing: for a long time, Jagaaaaaan is a dumpster fire. This manga has some of the worst and most forced aspects I’ve ever read. It constantly uses unnecessary rape and sexual violence as a plot device. It's not edgy; it's repulsive and feels like the mangaka is just indulging in some gross fetishism. It gets to a point where you wonder who hasn't been a victim of it, and it makes the manga incredibly hard to read and even harder to recommend. On top of that, the story often becomes a parody of itself. It seems to want to say something deep about dehumanization and the ugliness of the world, but the execution is so effortless and bland that it fails completely. Most of the characters are awful people you can't connect with. And then there's the Yadori subplot... a completely tone-deaf drama about a body-swapped character that takes up dozens of chapters and adds almost nothing to the main plot. It culminates in one of the worst, most idiotic chapters I've ever read, titled "Masturbation Planet." It's a massive, frustrating waste of time. But even with all that, the manga makes a generational comeback in its second half. Just when you're ready to write it off, the main plot gets really good. The "Deader Land" arc is easily the highest point of the series, with amazing action and story progression. The introduction of new factions and badass characters like Mikazuchi injects some much-needed energy. Jagaan's own development gets pretty sick. The art also hits a new level of quality. It’s a manga that constantly claws its way out of the trenches it digs for itself. The ending is... meh. It’s fine. The final fight is cool, but the last chapter makes some confusing choices that undermine what could have been a great, happy ending for the characters. It just sort of fizzles out, which is a shame. Jagaan is the definition of a manga with missed potential. The art is memorable and the action is fire when it wants to be, but it's held back by its garbage fetishism, a terrible subplot, and inconsistent writing. I don't know if I would recommend this to a casual reader. It’s an okay manga, a 6.5/10, that is memorable for both its highest highs and its absolute lowest lows.

STORY: 4 Meet Jagasaki, an average manga hero, who gets to lead a fight against humans that turn into monsters because of their overwhelming desires. Here's a series that starts strong.. and then quite suddenly turns mediocre with a plot that becomes boring and predictable. This is a seinen (for adults) title with horror and sex, but what spoils the manga is that the storyline follows a very cliched shonen progression: hero gets stronger along with the enemies, each battle to the death has the characters have a conversation like if they were sitting having some coffee, and of course power-ups appear when the fight seems over.Some enemies are even not far from telling you how their ability functions so that you can beat them, how nice. Near the end, the story becomes especially bad and we get to the point of caricature with the hero having to go through a ‘dungeon’, and defeat sub-bosses like in a video game before reaching the final boss for a annoyingly long fight. ART: 7 Very solid at times: backgrounds, objects, characters.. everything is well rendered and digital techniques are abundantly used without getting in the way. But the quality is also wildly fluctuating, it almost feels like the author is leaving assistants do everything in some chapters. Expect an edgy start with details and a cleaner, US-comic influenced, sometimes lazy art in the second half of the saga. POLITICAL POTENTIAL: 4 Some questions here and there about desire, the use of violence and justice. And mostly the usual overconfident nihilist antagonists that cannot stop blabbering about their evil projects even in the middle of a fight. FEMINISM: 2 Despite the story rapidly degrading to kids level with its shonen tropes, the level of sex is clearly for adults. Sadly, we get tons of softcore porn, abuse and rape, wrapped in a sleazy male gaze. Male characters don’t have a lot of depth, but female characters are clearly being drawn as a body or stereotype first, and not much else. This is clearly evident with Jagasaki love interest, whose personality is totally inconsistent through the manga, just being whatever the scenario needs her to be. The only female character that does get a bit of story time and development is actually.. a man that has entered the body of a girl. And she mostly has lots of sex. I think that says a lot about the author's interest in women. CONCLUSION: 4 Many readers thought of titles like “Parasite” or “Gantz” when reading this manga and they are indeed better. You can skip Jagaaaaaan, no woooooorries.