Brynhildr in the Darkness - Reviews

Alt title: Gokukoku no Brynhildr

Brynhildr in the Darkness
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TimeFliesAway's avatar
May 7, 2023

Alright, enough. I’m dropping it.

I only continued this for the mystery part, because I really wanted to know about the aliens and all the stuff revolving around it. However, 100 chapters in, and there still isn’t much revealed. Everything that happens is so underwhelming, so I doubt I’ll be satisfied with the ending anyway.

It’s crazy enough that I could get through 100 chapters, even though it’s so energy-depriving. I feel like an empty plastic bottle right now.

The plot itself is a good idea, but the execution is so pathetic. It’s literally just a horny author, who gets turned on by gore.
Every character is shallow, their only personality being either whiny/arrogant or perverted. All the superhumans ("magic users") are female, because the institution used science as an excuse to see naked women and get paid for it. There’s literally no other reason why there aren’t any boys used for the experiments.

But the protagonist of course is a boy, so that’s why there’s a harem. You can’t have a male protagonist with only female main characters and not have a harem, right? Compared to other harems, the protagonist has already chosen “his person” before the harem came. Which is cool, but that isn’t stopping the perverts from forcing themselves on him. So many chapters & pages wasted with unnecessary “I want a child from him”-talk.
Or groping boobs. If the perverts can’t have him, they will let out their perversion on their same-sex friends. Who cares about consent? Because even if they say “no”, perverts don’t stop from that.
Just say you’re lesbian, if you love female breasts that much.
Literally every time they were taking a bath together, there’s at least someone comparing their size or groping them.
Do men really think that women don’t do anything else?
Is that actually a thing in Japan (women touching each other’s private parts without it being seen as sexual) or just fantasies, which somehow can be found in every single manga/anime, written by a guy?
I’m seriously considering to write a manga where men grope each other’s parts like that, just to show all the other male authors how ridiculous & pathetic it looks like.

Half of the series is just horny stuff, while the other half is gore. If you’re into that, you do you i guess, but definitely nothing for me.

Another page-waster is the unnecessary drama.
The protagonist keeps getting tragically killed with all the other characters being sad about it and crying their eyes out. Why? It’s very obvious the protagonist won’t die, especially not in the middle of a volume. And with 180 chapters; how would the story even continue if the protagonist died in the first 50 chapters? Absolutely nonsense.
The same goes for the other main characters. A main character either gets a heroic death or will come back to life again, if their death didn’t do anything for the plot. There are no excuses; every fiction works like that.
Yet the author keeps giving them dramatic death scenes, stretching it out through a whole volume sometimes. One volume was actually about a prediction of one of the main character’s death. Of course they didn’t die and it also didn’t get the plot going at all. What could’ve been resolved in one chapter, stretched 10 chapters, alas a whole volume, long. So dumb.

The last thing that really really annoys me is the “art”. If you can even call that art. The backgrounds aren’t drawn, but simply photographs with a cartoon filter put on top to make it look like it is. The author didn’t even try to make it look good tho. You can still see all the wiggly lines.
If it came out this year, it obviously would be that the bgs are ai generated images, but given it’s from 2013-2015, I guess it’s just a cartoon filter.
Look, I get backgrounds can be a pain, especially in anime/manga, where the artstyle is realism. However, it’s even more painful to look and read through this ugly laziness.
I hope the author at least took the photos himself, instead of taking random pictures from the internet to cartoonize, but the chances aren’t high.

The story came from horniness, there’s no creativity to be expected, after all.

5/10 story
4/10 art
2/10 characters
3/10 overall
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ReviewBonfire's avatar
Jan 21, 2021

Gokukoku no Brynhildr
Brynhildr in the Darkness

 

I have one thing to say. Anyone who saw the anime adaptation of this manga in advance like me and liked the concept, but found the implementation horrible. He should definitely recommend the manga. It is far from a masterpiece, but it is significantly better than this questionable anime adaptation.

From manga to anime, a lot of scenes were skipped and a lot squeezed together. Here you can see much more relevant dialogues and story-related details. Among other things, you can see a lot more of the characters, as well as the professor who was my favorite.

One of the main drawbacks of this work is definitely the SoL scenes that show her everyday life. Not only was their humor weak, but the content was always chewed through. There was a huge lack of creativity and often ended up with fan service and ecchi. These chapters were hard to read, but luckily they weren't big. The story-relevant chapters are solid and have kept me reading.


Story

The plot had a few twists and turns towards the end. There was nothing I would call a really significant plot twist, it was a minimal occurrence.

What did me most of all were the very well thought-out scenes and analyzes of the protagonist and some of the processes of events. These scenes stood out well from the usual.

The finale was not particularly impressive, rather average thought out and implemented. Everything that had built up for this was a little more interesting. In the end, the whole resolution was very interesting.

Drawings / pictures

The backgrounds are drawn quite interesting from time to time. Some details were hidden in the surroundings.

However, the characters are drawn very poorly, especially in relation to the finale. The distance between the eyes was almost amusing at times. With regard to this, it was mostly amateur drawings. But nothing that really bothered me.

Characters

The antagonists were at least interesting in their way of thinking. Nobody had anything particularly deep.

The protagonist troop was .. actually from time to time sympathetic. Especially Kana and Kotori were by far the best 2 characters. The protagonist had his brilliant moments, but mostly he couldn't convince me. The conversations between the characters were also very varied, between pleasant, interesting and downright boring.


Conclusion

It's been a surprisingly enjoyable manga. He had his highlights and also had a certain tension about the plot. I've seen far better, but it's definitely above average.

6/10 story
5/10 art
5/10 characters
5.5/10 overall
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MUDMAN2021Chall's avatar
Nov 4, 2021

This is a good enough series. You liked elfin lied? You'll be able to enjoy this. Read a 

synopses if you want a story review.

But the series is good, I read it all in one shot. Not special, it started shooting on all cylinders and ended a little worse for wear, but still sufficient.

A note: Everyone online seems to be overblowing the "Awfulness" of the second half of the series. Sure it could have ended midway through for that tragic ending, but then we would have lost extra context for everything. And I like being able to know why and what the aliens are, even if the ending is a little rushed, at least it makes sence.

?/10 story
?/10 art
?/10 characters
6.8/10 overall
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bolokun's avatar
Nov 2, 2020

It was almost great, just a bit more effort and it would get there... Pretty good up untill the ending. The ending is a trainwreck... rapid fire introducing new characters, Neko's personality gets completely changed (ok i get it why but well she should have kept most of her personality, as is she 180 in all her traits), way too rushed and many of the most important plot points don't get resolved.

?/10 story
?/10 art
?/10 characters
7/10 overall
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