I Kept Pressing the 100-Million-Year Button and Came Out on Top

nathandouglasdavis May 18, 2021

1

Think of it sort of like the zanpakuto bankai hoowoo shit from Bleach, except worse. Very much worse. First of all, the art is generally just very ugly and unappealing to look at. And the fight scenes don't consist of much more than action lines, blurred movements, and some explosions. The choreography is bland and the special moves just feel kinda dumb. And then the setting itself, the reasons behind the fights, makes everything feel that much more pointless. They basically don't have reasons to fight. Sword duels are being used to settle personal grievances and interpersonal drama. And there are also a couple sword fight tournaments where people are fighting simply to show off their prowess or whatever. The fights just feel so...inconsequential. Like every one of these fights could've simply not occurred and I don't think the lives of anyone involved would've been substantially altered. Especially when you compare these fights to the exceedingly consequential fights in a series like Bleach. It reminds me of that scene in Bakuman. where they're commenting on how a bunch of manga include swords and how it would be a bad idea to include sword fights in their manga simply because they're in a bunch of popular series. This manga feels like the author is just including sword fights for the sake of sword fights, because fe thinks that's what'll make it sell or something. But the fights just feel boring and pointless. All the more so because Allen is so dominatingly powerful. The manga also seems to struggle with creating discrepancies. The first one I noticed was how Allen's body looked almost identical before and after spending a million/hundred-million/billion years in training. At first, I assumed that fe had simply retained the techniques and the time-pause hadn't changed fem physically (which would fit in with why fe didn't age), but then we see fem somehow able to run at superhuman speeds. So fe was physically altered, but that then raises the question: Why isn't fe super bulky after intensely swinging a sword around every single day for such a ridiculously long period of time? There's also a bit of a discrepancy as to Allen's motives. Why exactly does fe want to be a swordsman? Does fe want the acknowledgment? Because when the teacher tries to acknowledge fem, fe shies away from it. Does fe want the personal knowledge that fe can best others? Because fe seems entirely uninterested in fighting others and proving femself, and strangely doesn't seem confident at all in feir own abilities even after being so obviously dominant. Does fe just enjoy the sense of personal accomplishment? Then why isn't fe doing swordsmanship as a hobby rather than whatever fe's trying to do with it? And as a bonus discrepancy: in chapter eight, the teacher says "using your own techniques is banned," and then both Ria and Allen immediately and blatantly go on to use their own techniques without the teacher even batting an eye. The romances are entirely uninteresting. Neither of the girls--Rose and Ria--are particularly cute or endearing, and the interactions feel more forced than anything. Leia is also quite annoying, for what it's worth. There is a little bit of intrigue and mystery around how Allen is connected to the Hermit of Time and that white-haired persona and stuff, but it's not enough to make the rest of the crap storytelling worth it. [Reviewed at chapter 11]

v1ad Feb 9, 2021

9

The plot is really original and I love hard-working mc. I just hope he will not keep being a clueless bastard concerning romance.

Raizel97 Feb 21, 2023

5

The problem I have with this story is that the MC has allegedly been training for 100 million years... yet his personality is that of a 13 year old boy. How? Only in a manga, of course.