Jul 27, 2026
Another u19 manga. This one was unique for having high quality art, not just for an axed series (it wasn't mediocre with a few interesting elements like Nigero Matsumoto or Otr), it was polished, dynamic, pleasant. Better than your standard 7/10 shounen like Fairy Tale, Witch Watch, the latter half of Naruto, etc.
This one started with a strong hook. The main character's personality and backstory were endearing. The side cast had good personalities, pleasant designs, you wanted to see more from them, and the protagonist being a wrestler promised interesting fight scenes that you could maybe learn a thing or two from.
After giving it his
...
all, he leaves his island village and succeeds at his dreams of becoming a pro wrestler champion. After many years, and bulking up quite a bit, he returns home, but his home village is now desolate. Everyone is gone, the traveller he met on the boat is suddenly beheaded by a blur, and he's forced into a desperate fight with a massive robotic creature that domineers even over him.
Everything about this is really cool. The aliens are scary, the fights are easy to follow and dynamic, you feel for and understand the stakes. He even finishes the first monster with a german suplex. The chapter ends with him getting stabbed by a monster.
Chapter two is about where the manga fails, and sets the tone until just before the end.
The monster that stabbed him, parasitized into him, giving him super strength. Ruining the interesting part about a human wrestler fighting and somehow overcoming alien monsters. I almost dropped the manga because of this. Every plot development concerning this sucked.
The action instantly devolves into them punching and throwing each other through concrete cracking bricks and steel with punches, etc. Just removing all weight.
The side characters you're invested in aren't reintroduced until close to the end, substituted by much weaker and forgettable side characters, a some boy (or maybe it was a girl? a child in any case) and his childhood friend.
The new enemies don't really feel like a step up, because of the removed weight of the action, but some of them (shark head guy and porcupine man) are cool and memorable.
It sort of sags until the final stretch. (Last 5 or so chapters)
The final stretch is pretty funny for how it speedruns manga tropes, the pace picks up, he meets one of his family members again, goes to the secret lab, his pet goat from the backstory is now a human woman, he's too weak so he eats more parasites "even if this kills me... I'll beat you!" (typical shounen stuff, no consequences later on, him being prepared to brain himself if he lost his mind was a cool detail though) beats needle man, his friend and the goat woman are too weak, so they power up by eating parasites (initially posed as a dangerous thing, but it loses importance later on (like kid trunks also turning super saiyan)). The second to last chapter felt like a parody of the namek arc from dbz, due to being tropey and extremely condensed, despite this, the art was good and it felt like a strong ending.
The final page might be my favourite ending of any axed series.
TLDR: Extremely good art, good opening chapter, ruins narrative weight with typical shounen nonsense, the pace gets too slow around chapter 4-6 and picks up right before it ends, in typical axed series fashion. Somehow Nue's exorcist is still publishing.
Akira Inui (the mangaka) is a name worth remembering, I hope he isn't discouraged by this. Moving him onto a different project (where the hook of the series isn't spoiled) might be a good decision from his editor. I look forward to his next work.
Premise: 7
Writing and pacing: 4
Characters: 6
Art: 8
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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