Gakuen Chaika!

nathandouglasdavis Aug 1, 2022

2

The cover art for this interested me and it was only after I had already decided to read it that I realized that it was an offshoot of another series (which I haven't read). I will read it regardless and give my outsider's assessment. About half an hour later... Here's my outsider's assessment: It's not very good. In fact, one could probably say that it's quite bad. The gags are simplistic and often repeated multiple times, and honestly aren't even that funny to begin with. The main recurring gag is probably the way Chaika will accidentally deal damage to others because of the awkward bulkiness of the coffin fe carries around. There are also a lot of exaggerated mannerisms and poses, like with thumbs-up and winking poses, which are probably meant to be kinda funny and cute, but they just aren't to me. The faces for the girls are so generically cute that they feel devoid of genuine emotional expression, if that makes any sense. There is also some stiffness to the movements of the characters. The scene with the most action sequences--the dodgeball fight--had horrible choreography and a badly drawn flow of action. The characters are shallow and uninteresting. The overarching plotline of Chaika thinking that fe's gathering parts of a body (while actually gathering random shit) isn't brought to a resolution, which leads me to assume that this manga was either dropped or cancelled. It's quite possible that if you've read the main series that you would find this more enjoyable than I did, but the blandness of the humor, the shallowness of the characters, and the unimpressive genericity of the artwork lead me to give this two thumbs down and a frowny face.