After reading the title or/and the synopsis, you may think this could be an interesting dark martial art manga. This isn’t completely false, but it has a lot of blind points. - Story (4/10): The story begins with a random person who challenges dojos. Few moments later you know, he will be the main villain, because he not only defeats our blind protagonist (Shinobu) but he also takes his girlfriend. So to take her back, he goes in a time skip, training like hell and then to a prison led by our villain. Of course, it’s a prison where you have to fight a battle royal, tobe exact, you have to gain 100 points to be free again, where 1 kill = 1 point.
This sounds interesting, yes (but battle royals are kind of overused), however our protagonist is way too kind… You learn very soon how kind he is, because he never kills and you hope for one of 2 options at this point: he never loses his kindness or he dives in this ‘Abyss Rage’... And now we already arrived at the big blind point. I don’t even have to spoil it for you and you still know which of these 2 options it will be. This destroys the whole tension.
But hey, it could be still dark, I mean we are in a prison full of criminals. And we talk about rapists, murderers and psychopaths, not just some little thieves. However, this prison specialized somehow in martial art, so everything they (or at least the bigger villains) do is either train or kill with their pure fists. So yes, it could have been a dark prison story with martial art, but it isn’t.
But hey, you get nice fights, which are good!... On the other hand, they are god damn slow… Each fight lasts 3-5 chapters and in each they make 2-3 blows, while of course the backstory for every villain can’t be missing, so another 3-5 chapters where the main story stops. And speaking of backstories, the rule in this manga is, you get someone’s backstory before their final moment. (Which don’t have to be their death, it is just they did what they have to, so they don’t have any use for the story). You may think I’m overreacting, but that happens literally every time!
Now you may understand what the big weaknesses of this manga is. The premise is good, but it’s slow, it’s not dark enough and the repeating plot destroys the whole tension completely. However, it also has a bright side. The backstories are nice and varied (but still somehow martial art related), and the fighting scenes are well written too.
- Art (4/10):
While reading this manga, I saw some comments about how amazing and realistic the muscles and bodies were drawn. I doubt that. Maybe I read too many more well drawn manga, but in my opinion the art was totally ordinary. The praised bodies looked almost the same, the characters like some bodybuilders and not like martial artists. And I wouldn’t call that realistic at all! Sometimes it was like they were put together of bricks.
Also to mention, the fights were definitely missing the dynamic. They were not just chapters long, but each panel felt so lame like you would watch it in slow motion.
Now I may overreact a bit, because altogether it was okay, but if 80% of the manga is fighting and the dynamic is missing, it gets boring ironically fast.
- Characters (6/10):
One stronger point of the manga is the characters! The main character is mostly boring, typical shining hero-like, yes. However! The support characters, including the antagonists, as mentioned are all very well-written, with understandable backstory and character development. You really get to know them, which helps to feel their pain and struggle.
Additionally, it has a big extra point for diversity. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but let me say it is way more diverse sexually than a lot of other manga.
The achilles tendon here is the rule of the manga, you get the backstory before their final moment. So if one character doesn't have fights, they don’t get a backstory, which is sad, because there are interesting characters which definitely didn’t get enough screen time, but if you are lucky, then they have some parts in someone else's backstory. It also means that we get the backstory for our protagonist at the end, and until then he is just a blind guy who tries to get his girlfriend back. Which might be enough, but you won’t really know him.
- Enjoyment (5/10):
It isn’t as dark as I expected, the action scenes were slow, but did I enjoy it? Meh~ It was okay. I may have awaited too much and got disappointed. But if you don’t have high hopes and don’t look at it as something dark (even if it tries to be) you can enjoy it more. In addition, if you don’t have to wait 2-3 weeks for a chapter and can read it continuously the lameness won’t be such a downer. And as I said, the characters and backstories are interesting.
- Overall (5/10):
Sadly you won’t get a dark prison revenge story, also it may be too slow for a lot of people and way too easy to predict. But even with weak art, the action scenes are mostly nice, the characters are well-written, with good backstories and developments. So overall: it was okay or average.
