Yokai Girls

tl;dr: An action and ecchi filled manga that’s definitely messy, especially in the first half, but that’s ultimately still really good. This manga is an ecchi shounen battle manga that as you would expect from the title has a heavy emphasis on yokai girls. The core of it is that the protagonist Yatsuki, has spiritual powers, and thus he is asked by a fortune teller named Nagi to help deal with the various yokai causing problems around Akihabara. Along the way he picks up an assortment of yokai allies that help him out, eventually even gaining the ability to use them as weapons in battle throughethereal fusion. However, ultimately this builds up to a clash with GCUP, an organization that views all yokai as the enemies of humanity and wants to eliminate them indiscriminately. Yatsuki for the most part is a pretty standard shounen type protagonist in that he’s kind to everyone and does his best not to hurt anyone. He starts off being pretty wary of yokai, but he quickly realizes they’re not all bad, at which point he wishes to serve as bridge between yokai and humanity. He has some minor personality quirks that manifest at times, mainly in him being an otaku and pervert, which helps make him a bit more interesting, but they’re not prominent enough to make him stand out that much. Still, he works well in the role he’s in. The main yokai that join Yatsuki are also pretty solid. The best I would say was definitely Kirue. She has a really clear character arc and solid relationship development with Yatsuki. It’s not particularly unique, but it’s written pretty well and combined with her character being really likable makes her a great character. The main heroine Rokka’s story has more depth to it but it felt like it wasn’t conveyed very well. For most of the manga she isn’t really fleshed out at all. She has a pretty amusing personality and how her being in love with Yatsuki manifests is cute so she’s still pretty likable, though a lack of any ongoing character arc makes it hard to get all that invested in her. She gets most of her development towards the end including a lot of background which ties into the overarching plot, but it felt somewhat forced since it wasn’t really built up to properly. The other two yokai, Ichie and Nia, had more straightforward background and character arcs and they were good but not as good as Kirue’s and furthermore neither of the two had good relationship development. I also simply didn’t find them as likable as Kirue or Rokka personality wise. There were also a lot of amusing and very different side characters including a lot of enemy to ally type dynamics. A lot of their stories were really rushed, especially towards the end, but holistically it kept things interesting. Still, I do feel that it may have bit off more than it could chew as how the manga ended with a lot of character stuff unresolved was pretty disappointing, especially in terms of not really doing anything at all with Yatsuki’s relationships. The biggest problem character wise I feel is the presence of Momo, a girl that the manga starts out with Yatsuki having a crush on. She’s a perfectly likable character, but she’s just really not main character material and the mangaka continuing to try to keep her as one was detrimental to the manga overall. Her involvement with the world of the supernatural is simply that yokai are attracted to her and thus Yatsuki needs to protect her at times. She never gains any abilities. She never gets any background that plays into the plot. She also doesn’t have all that strong of a personality and thus doesn’t really play a part in any of the main characters character arcs. She’s just kind of there. The reason that’s such a big problem is that the mangaka put forth a considerable amount of effort to keep her in the limelight without actually giving her any reason for her to be in it. All that the attempts at keeping her relevant did was screw up the pacing and waste time that could have been spent better developing the other main characters. This is particularly relevant with Rokka, because a considerable amount of her presence in the first half or so of the manga involves an extended plotline where she goes to school and is in Momo’s class in what was clearly an attempt at trying to keep Momo as a main character, but the plotline didn’t really work all that well because of how disconnected from everything else it was, and ultimately felt like a waste of time that could have been better spent elsewhere. This also plays into another issue, that the manga in general isn’t paced very well. The plot moved pretty slowly for the first half or so. There are hints of a larger plot, but they’re very minor hints without any real progression. Once it gets going though it starts moving incredibly fast and rushes through pretty much everything. The plot in and of itself is pretty good with solid twists and turns, but I feel it would have landed a lot better if it was paced better. The action was also terribly paced. The actual battles were pretty great with a lot of interesting mechanics to them. However, progression was wack in the first half. The protagonist gets the ability to fuse with yokai pretty early on, so at that point you would expect him to fuse with a bunch of them in order to use a wide variety of abilities. However, for half the manga he only fuses with Rokka who has a really basic ability, so the battles definitely started getting dull. He eventually does fuse with another yokai which is the first good battle in a long time. But not long after he gains an entire assortment of powers in a single battle, and then immediately after that gains another major power. All of that really didn’t need to happen at once, and if it was spaced out amongst all the fights that happened before, the action overall would have been much better in the first half. Thankfully, the second half handles things a lot better. The manga takes place in Akihabara and has direct references to a lot of real-life locations. A lot of that involves direct references to other otaku media. And by that I don’t mean nebulous references but rather that the mangaka got permission to straight up use art and such from other works and there are copyright notices in the margins. There’s even a character that’s pretty much always in cosplay. The manga also has a lot of in-depth descriptions of yokai. The mangaka is pretty flexible in how he uses them because it’s necessary to do so for plot purposes, but there are appendices that make it clear what is being sources from legend and what the author was just making up or taking liberties with. The art is also really good. The style is nice and there are a lot of good designs for characters, yokai, and weapons. I really liked how ethereal fusion resulted in futuristic looking weapons, though rushing through a bunch of upgrades resulted in some great designs only being used once and never seen again.