XBlade

tl;dr: A messy battle manga with some good concepts but that doesn't resolve anything before ending completely randomly. This manga is one that seems interesting enough when looked at in terms of small story segments, but overall it feels quite lacking. The plot I feel in general isn't that bad, but the way it's presented is incredibly messy. Nothing major is ever properly resolved over the course of the manga. It just keeps introducing more and more new elements without ever having a moment where there's a definite victory, an objective is fully reached, or even just a mystery finally being solved. The issue isn't as much that the story gets unwieldy from this,because overall it is pretty simplistic, though the jumping around can get confusing. Rather, the issue is that it doesn't really follow any sort of rising falling path, and hence the pacing feels really messy. In terms of characters, it also felt really messy, where there seemed to be some sort of attempt at establishing characters towards the beginning, but as it went on it seemed to just throw around characters randomly with most of them feeling quite flat and arbitrary. Proper relationship development felt non-existent because even though there were some scenes that seemed to be trying to show it, ultimately they had no impact. The action is drawn well enough, but it lacks the structure and growth necessary for a shounen manga oriented around the action. He does get stronger, but it isn't framed well enough to seem substantial to the reader when it happens, and ultimately it doesn't feel all that exciting when it happens, which is a major issue because the excitement from these scenes is supposed to be a cornerstone of such manga. The way the manga ends is terrible, even taking into account that there's a sequel series, as it doesn't really end at a cliff hanger, or even suggest what direction the sequel series will take, but rather just ends randomly with a whole bunch of plot threads hanging around. The art was okay.