Exorcist no Kiyoshi-kun
Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi

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Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi is full of shonen tropes you have seen "a million times over." Shoichi Usui was once an assistant for Eiichiro Oda--the creator of One Piece--and with that comes many similarities with its contemporary. It's easy to find every reason in the book to drop this series. Yet, Kiyoshi has a lot of heart underneath. Usui has taken a lot of inspiration from Oda's writing style--many moments in the series feel very much like something out of One Piece. This is also due to Kiyoshi's story beats reminiscent of manga from the late '90s to the early '00s. It's still very early in ... the story's development, but Usui is finding his rhythm and bringing a story worth attention.

I want to like this. The artstyle is cool and there have been some great moments so far. Hitsugi and Nehan/Jack Joe have been enjoyable side characters. 46 chapters in, there was already a little bit of filler/gag manga moments, which was a bit offputting. It does some gags well, but it's kinda unforgivable to delay progressing the story this early on.

There was one big emotionally impactful moment throughout the story I can recall before the Black Parade arc that I thought was well done. As for the Black Parade arc itself, it's had some cool/kinda intense battles. They've been pretty close fights with ... some interesting matchups, though one of them felt like it ended a little too conveniently, which has me worried we might be seeing an axe. They had an opportunity to really surprise the readers in that fight, but they played it safe instead.

Anyway, this manga feels like it has decent potential, but the author hasn't quite found it yet. Also, it's a bit dumb how Kiyoshi and other characters are shouting off the names of their moves right from the start of the story. I guess they do that in One Piece, too, but it feels like the characters in One Piece worked up to it and earned the right to name their moves. Kiyoshi seems to have dozens of named moves and he just uses them all right away, almost like he's just trying to squeeze in as many as he can before the fight ends. They don't really have any meaning or impact. We'd get used to it eventually, but it's a bit annoying from chapter 1.

While the art is unique and it has occasional moments of originality, the grand majority of the content feels like a total patchwork of established tropes repeated verbatim. Frankly, even more than the unoriginality, it's the sheer gall to spend so much time on these tropes that's so offensive. I'll occasionally be almost in disbelief seeing pages of windup for some of the most predicatble scenes in manga. A lot of authors have at least some sense of shorthand for these moments that is totally missing here.

The main character isn't much of an exception, but the biggest problem is how often the manga goes out ... of its way to remind you how amazing he is. Not once has there been a scene even approaching tense, unfortunately, and it's to a point where I really don't have faith that there's any hope of that without throwing everything out the window.

Just imagine what this series is like in your head, and you'll get most of the experience.