Kaijin Fugeki Vol. 1

灰仭巫覡 [Kaijin Fugeki] #1

by Oh! Great

大暮維人が満を持しておくる完全オリジナル新作！　
敵は天災。抗うは少年少女……。漫画の常識を覆すファンタジー巨編開幕！

“夜”。それはかつて天災と呼ばれていたもの。
人智を超えた災害の襲来に対し、少年たちはただひたすらに舞う。神々の力を借りる為、“夜”の怒りを鎮める為、そしてこの世界を救う為――。日本の田舎町に住む少年・仭は、“颱の夜・キャサリン”により故郷を追われた英国軍人・ガオと出会い、“夜”の絶望と戦う運命が動き出す!!

Genres: Manga

200 pages, Paperback

First published August 16, 2024

About the author

Oh! great, whose real name is Ito Ōgure (大暮維人 Ōgure Ito) is a Japanese manga artist most recognized for the manga series Tenjho Tenge and Air Gear. In 2006, he received the Kodansha Manga Award for shōnen for Air Gear. Apart from working with manga, he designed some of the alternate character outfits in the PlayStation 2 version of Namco's 3D fighting game Tekken 5, and a guest character in Soul Calibur IV named Ashlotte.

His pseudonym "Oh! great" is a play on words. His pen name, written in Japanese order, is "Ōgure Ito", which is pronounced similarly to and can be romanized the same as the Japanese rendering of the English words "Oh great," ōgurēto. Furthermore, "Oh" can mean "king" in Japanese, making it possible to read the name as "the great king".

Reviews

[Phoebe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

What a mess. Sooo many parts of this make it feel like this manga doesn't know what to be. The artstyle is jarring - mostly realistic proportions and kind of elegant designs interspersed with really ugly expressions that are fail to be comedic, and Jin's character design, particularly the way his eyes are drawn, stands out as much too cartoonish amidst everyone else. Panels that would otherwise be fine or even pretty are annoyingly interrupted by a very uncomfortable focus on female genitals (which is made worse by most of the girls presumably being high schoolers). The same goes for the story - there are really weird fanservicey moments that seem sudden and unnatural and serve no real purpose. The atmosphere flip-flops wildly between slice-of-life and action-packed, with comedic moments not at all hitting. There is zero tension between scenes, things just...happen. I barely understood whatever the hell anyone was talking about; conversations progress extremely weirdly and no work is done at all to really explain the world of the manga. All of the female characters are written annoyingly or to fulfill the author's weird kink (like Micaiah being a stealth exhibitionist apparently or Natsu/Fuyu being willing exhibitionists), with the exception of Gao's mom who seemed cool from what little we saw of her (although the focus on her breasts and lack of bra was off-putting). I was promised futuristic science fiction crossed with ancient religion but honestly, very little of the setting feels like it's anything but modern-day Japan. Overall, very clumsy and the allegedly award-winning art does nothing to save it.

[InfiniteLibrary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Oh! Great and Netgalley for a digital e-copy of this manga volume in exchange for an honest review.

The first volume of this series was pretty wild! We get introduced to a large kooky cast of characters, including our two main protagonists (so far, at least), a Prince from Britain now living in Japan and a Japanese boy called Jin. In terms of vibes, the closest I could really think of was Chainsaw Man, only this manga is much more of a sci-fi story with found family vibes, though I could see this definitely going in more of a horror route in the future.

The story starts off with some gorgeous full colour art before settling into the traditional black and white style, but the manga's art is definitely one of its strong points. Not only are the daily life elements and characters drawn well, the more supernatural and sci-fi elements are particularly striking. We follow Jin, Gao and their group of friends as they have a normal teenage life and call on the powers of magic to fight devastating monsters. The cast in particular here feels super unique from a two headed shrine maiden girl, to a boy who can summon frogs from shrine offerings. It's clearly influenced by both western sci-fi storylines, but also traditional Japanese urban legends which is a nice blend that really gives this series a unique feel.

My only low points really, and why this first volume didn't get a five star is the perverted jokes that frequent the pages - some are genuinely quite funny and thankfully not all performed by the male characters (who are actually the more demure ones here), but the comedy did fit the more zany elements of the manga. Overall, this is definitely a manga to check out if y0u like action packed stories with cool and fun characters and I'll definitely be carrying on this series!

[SK.Reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

I fear this story is over my head. I read alot of manga and this story felt like an amalgamation of many different genres and stories in one. I had a hard time following it but the gist I got is there are natural disasters called nights and they are trying to destroy the world. Certain people can dance and summon god powers (or maybe like literal gods) to fight off the nights. The two main characters, Jin who is a Japanese country boy and Goa a British soldier who escaped to japan after his mom died, can use the dance to summon gods to fight the nights. I'm not real sure why the scifi tech is here and there yet or why there is a girl with two heads. The art was beautiful though and is this stories biggest redeeming quality. The long black hair was drawn especially well, it was ethereal to look at.

[Clara Lash · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a slow moving title, don't expect tons of shounen style packed action. It features life in a slow town, seemingly in Earth's future, since digital cameras are spoken of as how we would talk about things like records being aged. The spirits are real (as fae seem to be implied as well from our British characters), and sometimes are strong enough to be seen by the naked eye and perceived by the physical world. Our main character Jin works together with our British mmc Gao to work on saving the world. Not a lot of plot is given immediately in the first volume, but I found it interesting enough even with how sleepy it came off at times.

[ash ♡ · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was definitely not for me. other reviews kept mentioning the pacing and they were right. every two pages felt like a different story. i couldnt follow anything. it was just annoying for me to read

[Mersi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

This was really good. I really felt for Jin and Gao. I am hoping to see some great character development between them later on. Jin starts out as a tragic character, which hurts my soul in all of the ways. Also, Gao...woah!

[Mario · Rating 3 out of 5]

uffff raro de cojon*s
sentimientos encontrados

[Curious Madra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Honestly pretty boring, it’s your typical shounen with ecchi even though the art is good but that’s all it offers tbh…

Got this via Netgalley and publisher

[Simon · Rating 1 out of 5]

quasiment manga que je lis je plains les japonaises, force à elles