Riot Girls

nathandouglasdavis Mar 3, 2022

1

All of the humor is built around a singular joke--where a serious thing (namely, war) is engaged with in an unserious manner. We see four high school girls acting super casual as they head into battle. They're ditzy, clumsy, and flippant. The dangers of being shot and killed are minimized and their opponents have difficulty coming to terms with their reckless demeanor. The twist--where it's revealed that everything that's occurred has only been war games and not an actual battle--actually seems to undermine the preceding jokes and makes them even less funny, since now the juxtaposition of serious and unserious is no longer relevant (considering that the setting is no longer actually serious). Anyway, the characters are annoying and unlovable, the plot is dumb, the action scenes fall flat, and the humor is one-dimensional and weak. The artwork is pretty decent, but by no means is it good enough to carry the manga.