Basic set up here is you have a young girl, Azuma, who leads a messed up home life. She suffers so much she’s developed a condition (‘Alice in Mirrorland syndrome’) where she’s starting to see things in reflections. Then the stuff she’s seeing – bizarre looking monsters – start wrecking havoc in the real world. Soon enough she’s pulled in through a mirror to this other world where she and a few other troubled individuals are asked to fight to keep their world safe.
So it’s a battle manga. Except it’s also a psychological drama. As well as a really funny, really dark-humored comedy. With these horror elements on top. It’s … a lot of things, actually. It all sort of works, too, just not all the time. The first third or so of Sekai Oni is pretty wild though – it’s very unpredictable, with its twists and random violent outbursts, and hits the reader with some super over the top fights. It goes from bad to worse to worst case scenario one right after the other and I found myself pretty into it.
It does lose a step as it pushes on, but there’s enough new revelations so that I never got bored, at least. The main antagonist is pretty fun as well. Unfortunately, dude’s art doesn’t really keep up. It’s only ever serviceable, and I felt like he was coasting as it went on. Sometimes he’d frame some things well, or come up with a dope design, or fill in a little extra detail, but he never really pulled it all together often enough.
And yeah, there’s some real schlocky material at play. While some of it actually works, like the sex addict who loses her cool after being repeatedly turned away (which very suddenly turns the story upside down early on), some of it is also pretty fucking dumb. Azuma being a basket case could’ve easily been reworked without the more extreme pieces of her home life. Then there are some characters introduced later who are poorly utilized and the ending, well, I guess I didn’t mind it, but it’s hardly the most satisfying sendoff.
So, basically, this is kind of a mess and I probably wouldn’t recommend it – but it was also creative and weird enough that it kept me mostly entertained. It’s one of those kind of reads.
Semblance, July 2017
Manga OT 