Reviewed in March 4, 2022 at 12:32 P.M. and read in 2021 in May.
Edited for grammar and update on the story.
I'm disappointed with volume 1 of Chojin X and the thing is I was actually expecting the story to be this bad but I still pushed on reading the story whenever Shonen Jump's app would update the chapters.
I feel a lot of the reviews on this series are bias because they either are a fan of Ishida's Tokyo Ghoul or just wants to join on the hype just like they did with Yusei Matsui's The Elusive Samurai series when people used to pretend to like that series on Goodreads a lot more.
Now I'm going to break down why this volume isn't a great start for a new series.
Now the volume starts off with two characters named Azuma Higashi and Tokio Kurohara. Right off the bat we are told that Higashi has great fighting skills,a strong sense of justice and also always gets good grades in his class and that the main character Kurohara is the complete opposite of Azuma:
he does not listen in class,is a bystander and coward when Azuma fights. Apparently despite the two being total opposites their "bond" is very "strong" when in reality Kurohara is overly dependent on Higashi.
They had a fallen out very early in the story and eventually Higashi became fed up with Kurohara being unbearably annoying, dependent on him and needing advice or protection from bullies.
Kurohara is a complete opposite from what was stated before about their friendship so far.
They live in Yamato Prefecture where the district has almost been destroyed by Choujins (humans with supernatural abilities) and almost immediately the two are returning home from school when they encounter a Choujin who threatens to kill them.
Kurohara and Higashi of course with no other way of escaping decided to become Choujins themselves reluctantly without knowing the side affects or what a Chojin really is.
During all this Kurohara once again needs help he doesn't even TRY to be independent or to think for himself it is as if the writer has this character in a loop.
The Chojin X concept is cool but the actual story is poorly written and weird.
When I read volume 1 for the first time in 2021 my mind was mostly blank because I couldn't get emotionally invested in characters because they were generic and spinless.
The villains who are in the story so far are very boring,drawn lazily and inconsistently and on top of that their goals aren't clear nor logical.
The whole time I feel like I was reading one of those indie gag manga.
First off I don't think the main character Tokio Kurohara was engaging as some of the "reviews" are saying on here.
This boy is a total coward,can't decisions for himself,weak,helpless,lacks confidence,loses his will power rather quickly whenever situation becomes too difficult for him to deal with and he's bland with a lack of a interesting personality or character design.
Second,the story is rushed with little to no reasoning for anything or direction.
The illustrations looks completely different than Sui Ishida's Tokyo Ghoul art.. seriously what happened?
After weeks of the story going nowhere and the chapters updating irregularly on the app I stopped reading at chapter 16.
The story is now on chapter 34.4 on Viz Media's Shonen Jump app.
At the start of the series in 2021 the manga on the app didn't update for almost a month or so making me think it was cancelled.
I kept coming every week to see a release hoping the story would get better and not end up like Yashahime(one of the worst anime sequels I've ever watched) and when it finally released the chapters were just going over the same situations again.
I like Sui Ishida's Tokyo Ghoul series but I don't appreciate people hyping up Choijin X when it's not well written nor has "great art edgy flare" or "engaging lead and story"
I only continued to read it to support Ishida and because I didn't want to drop the story when I already been reading it for months.
I wish the story was more fleshed out instead of jumping the gun to Kurohara getting special powers reluctantly with no goal in mind and still depending on Azuma for help on decision making only to switch to for help Ely a much more capable character despite being a little kid.
It's pathetic and embarrassing and I wish Ishida wouldn't emasculate his male leads and have them behave foolishly.
Maiko Momoa is a okay character but she already feels like a generic female character so I don't care about her,Ely Otta is a slightly more interesting character but she's very odd,let's see what happens with her and Simon Kagomura looks like he would be a interesting guy hopefully Ishida doesn't screw up writing him.
Tokio Kurohara has way less depth than Kaneki Ken from Tokyo Ghoul,but I'll give this manga another chance and still stick around for a bit to see if Ishida improves the story.
I hope the story doesn't end up like his weird mini manga series P*nis man,that was a horrendous idea for a title and focused too much on "edge"