Yeah, so about the feeling. all of his manga are both amusing(somewhat at times) but it also feels like it's severely lacking in energy and even feels a bit sad at times. It's a kind of weird mix between melancholy and comedy. I don't really like this feeling, it makes me feel fed up after a while. It doesn't feel focused. I don't feel like those two aspects mixes well. I'm here just for comedy and a little adventure, not because I want to feel a bit sad, it's like something off-putting was mixed into my food that doesn't make it inedible but rather just screws up the flavors. Hardly anything is TRULY funny here, the funniest thing is probably the record keeper that looks like a robot when he rants about with his perversions.
While I did like the characters to some extent and the setting was decent enough, I just can't stand this unpleasant mood. Seriously, it's as if you're watching a comedy while some moron is bawling his guts out or watching a tragedy while a retard is laughing. While comedy and melancholy isn't impossible to combine, you need to be good to pull it off properly. This wasn't so. The result is a manga that is kind of supposed to be a comedy but at the same time lacks all the energy and spirit that should be present, like someone sucked its soul out. It's hard to explain this feeling, but it's certainly there.
The art is also bad by the way. The characters all look almost exactly the same and the author rarely bothers to put in any details, he'll just keep eyes and stuff like that as mere black dots/ellipses without bothering with more. Everything is drawn in a half-assed way. Even when the author goes the extra length to draw proper pupils, they're disproportional and weird. It doesn't really bother me much as I don't care much about that stuff, but it's still something to think about.
Can't say I liked the plot either, it was really way too stupid and stale for my taste. While I did like the characters and their general personalities, none of them seemed to possess any proper will and spirit of their own. It was somewhat interesting to see a hero teaming up with the demon lord(even if unwittingly for the hero) but then she suddenly leaves for some random monster side-character glutton. The same suddenness and lack of commitment is true for the rest of the story as welll, while the basic personalities are nice, they're all lacking energy and substance, seeming more akin to empty shells that I just can't feel anything for than something human.
All in all, this manga is worth about 5/10. It's readable if you have nothing better at hand right now. It's nothing special at all and there are definitely tons of better manga out there. The author's lack of ability to make characters seem animated and the story feel connected and relevant are fatal flaws. It's just a very monotone read where it's obvious the author is trying to input comedy but the lack of good execution and storytelling just screws it all up, add on that the melancholic mood caused by this author's way of writing, it's just subpar. I actually feel like giving it a 5/10 might be too kind of me, perhaps 4/10 would be more in order.
Ah, on a last note I might as well mention that this manga felt very rushed as well. Everything just happened for no real reason and almost everything along the journey was skipped for a mere few small shots here and there, the "main points", the adventure/journey they had truly felt very, very short and worthless. They pretty much only traveled to a few towns, the maou place, a forest and then trained a bit and then we were almost done. All the way, we had no real grasp of their adventure either. This felt especially bad towards the end, it leaves much to be asked as there is no real expectation or feelings about anything at all. It was an insipid story, nothing more. I would never recommend any of this author's manga to anyone except if you have nothing else to read and are merely looking to kill some time. Yup, 5/10 in score was truly too kind of me... By the way, the hero powers up through faith from the people, if that's not enough to make one cringe, I don't know what is... The ending was also truly disappointing.
Nuff' said. Perhaps too much said.
