Baoh

nathandouglasdavis Jun 23, 2022

3

The first chapter was intense and filled with engaging, high-octance moments. But most importantly, it was narratively well-structured--even though its method of narration was very blunt, to the point that each new development felt very random. From the second chapter onward, the stories became much more repetitive and boring. Violet and Ikuro were on the run from an evil organization and they fight some new assassin or monster each installment. Chapter 7 especially felt reminiscent of Kamen Rider to me--what with the motorcycle and the experiment subject returning to fight the organization that had experimented on fem--and Walken's character design reminded me of Gao from Eyeshield 21 (though I realize that Eyeshield 21 came much later). The lake detail revealed in the epilogue combined with the egg-laying which was revealed in chapter 3 paint a very bleak picture of the future for this world. In fact, this feels like a plot hole on the part of the author. And I wish the author had actually had Ikuro grapple with the threat of the egg-laying more explicitly. It also might've been nice if there were more nuance to the bad guys, and if they had actually tried explaining the situation to Ikuro and asked fem to willingly kill femself. The artwork is quite unattractive for the most part. Everything just looks too fake and tacked on and misproportioned. The hairstyles are weird and raised up. We'll frequently see Ikuro randomly holding feir arms up in an odd position like a marionette. The animals are drawn in a very ugly way, especially the dog and tiger in chapter 3. The way that peoples' movements are drawn looks unnatural. Violet's eyebrows are thick and are placed too high on feir large forehead. There are a lot of depictions of melting or bubbling flesh. Gruesome and gory. And these aspects are drawn decently well, I guess.