Nejimaki Kagyuu

This is my first review. I've read a good chunk that has been scanned, and finishing the 11th volume I had to get my feelings out.

To say that I didn't enjoy reading it would make me a liar, but I surely did. It's because, well, I'm a sucker for these kind of tropes Nejimaki Kagyu(NK) uses. Although, here's what I have to say.

1) Story: 3

I won't bore you the nonsense with any summaries, and I'll get right into the pork and beans of the review. The story is very, very messy. I frankly don't know where to start with this one. For one, if you really wanted to get right in under NK, you would have to have a understanding knowledge of the world NK is set in. The problem is, you're thrown right under the bus with NO exposition at all. You're given just barely enough to grasp the story, but even then it still doesn't make sense.
There's a few overarching tags the manga falls within, action, comedy, romance, and school life. If you've read a good chunk, you know that school life is a very loose term to describe this manga. To bring up exposition that was never introduced formally; Charaizm is the belief that characters that are stronger than others will excel. It boils down to individuality, strength, and resolve. i.e. natural selection. Why I say school life is a loose term, except the setting is in a school environment is that it doesn't flow like a high school slice of life manga would. It's as if action and romance had a love child, and for the sake of it, was in a school environment that had nothing to do with it. Many readers are confused because of this. Readers get a huge bomb dropped on them, expecting a light hearted school manga, but what they really get is a shonen-esque tournament arc, and we are just expected to go along with it. It's honestly like the author wanted to flesh out the story more than it should've, but really ended up dragging it out and beating it once or twice.
That's just a glimpse of it too. There's alot of asspulls in NK, and sure that may be excused with the "comedy" tag, but NK takes itself too seriously now and then. From here and there, you get light-hearted comedic interactions to then action you'd see in a shonen manga. These types of holes in the plot leave you completely dazed, throwing tropes at you left and right all willy nilly until it all becomes intelligible. Maybe it just be me, but I don't think I'm on that plane of intelligence to grasp NK.

2) Art: 10

The art is the saving grace of this manga. I've haven't read much at all, but out of all I did read, NK has the greatest artwork. It's a very unique style that you can't really describe unless you see it yourself. The greatest part about the art, is the facial expressions, and how they go from 0 to 100 within panels. NK can go from extremely simple, to intricately detailed scenes within the change of mood. Speaking of mood, the art is very much an indicator of mood. Comparing NK's art to the likes of JoJo is a great comparison. In the anime(jojo), whenever the mood changes, the color scheme does too. NK does a terrific job of enforcing mood within it's scene, giving off it's own aura in a way.

3) Characters: 4

The characters are pretty generic. You've got characters from every side of the trope section, to the point where it's not even funny. What's saving the characters tab from being a 2, would be character development. No spoilers of course, but characters do eventually get fleshed out. Although, they're pretty generic character developments, it's still alright. Yet what really breaks the score, is how weak character development can be sometimes. The girls who fall in love with the MC just fall out of interest within the first volume to make room for the plot. It all feels too silly, something you'd see out of fairy tail; where the bad guy makes the transition to good, it happens here too. It's all pretty silly from there out, a character is given their designated trope and that's all they are. It feels plastic and fake, it feels 2D. Yoh, the only outlier to this, is one of the greatest written character NK has got so far. I won't say anything else than that.

4) Enjoyment: 7

It was generally very enjoyable. It was kind of something you turn off your brain and just have fun to, that you laugh at it's ridiculousness. Although NK has it's time where it goes full retard, it is still pretty fun to watch as carnage unfolds. To top, the art is just a great compliment to all that. It's one of those reads that will illicit some sort of audible reaction from you, whether that may be "so bad it's good," or so funny, NK is great at drawing that out. What really killed the enjoyment, is probably knowing that NK has a long history of inactive scans. If you're like me by any chance, you prefer completed stories over ongoing, and NK is a story that's on it's last legs.

5) Overall: 6

To deliver the killing blow, NK has it's highs and it's lows. It's a very flawed story that you keep coming back to. I'd totally recommend NK, but I'm sure it'd be a hit or miss, and because the scans are still ongoing, it may be hard to pickup, and easier to drop. It's similar to a love-hate relationship some may have with another media. I'll end it on a high note, and say that if you are going to read NK then you'll be in for a rollercoaster beginning to end.

For starters Nejimaki Kagyuu is a very underrated manga that i think deserves more attention. This story is about a teacher named Negizawa Kamo who grew up protecting his close childhood friends and made a pact that he would protect the weak and one day become a teacher that would die for his students... yes a very deep MC. Kagyu Jubei the childhood friend falls for him and would do anything to become his wife. These two face alot of jealousy and hate from numerous people even the heads of the school. This story caught my eye because of its amazing art work and action scenes with great romance that gives off a good balance not to mention steady character development through out the chapters. I recommend this story to anyone who likes awesome fighting scenes and deep romance from the 2 main characters that make you enjoy watching their journey as it unfolds.

NEJIMAKI KAGYUU
This is my first review please be gentle~

It makes me go AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA and here's why:

Story NINE:
Gril protects Teache, Teache wants to protect his students. Gril is a student, but Teache can't protect her from fights. School administration: "imo everyone for themselves I want personas to break because something something," thus building a setting for great characters, and great fights.

Art TEN:
There are many fight scenes, each very detailed. What I love most is the way the characters overdo their emotions, (anger can be grotesque, cute is super cute). These portrayals is great for this kind of manga. It's definitely up there in terms of uniqueness.

Characters NINE:
Teache - At first I hated him, I thought he'd be like every other copy paste teache. Later on (midway from where I am now), he undergoes serious character development. I'd say Teache isn't the main focus, although he's sort of the main cause of everything that happens when he's in charge of decisions.
gril (main gril, probably main character) - CUTE! STRONG! She's probably more of the main character than teache. As you're reading through, know that she's still a cute girl and has girly emotions and such.
The supporting characters are really what make this manga great (later on, a couple ten chapters in things get serious). There's not that many in the beginning.

ENJOYMENT 10:
NOT PUTTING THIS DOWN ANYTIME SOON. WAITING FOR TRANSLATIONS.

OVERALL 9:
READ IT. SPREAD THE WORD. I WANT DOUJINS TO BE MADE.

Not many people know about this gem of a series, in fact, I knew nothing about the series before i went on a backpacking trip to Japan. In any book/manga shop the fantastic cover art always drew me to it and when i came home I was disappointed to find that the series was not scanlated.

But lucky for me and you it has just begun scanlation and with it the intense and comical world of Nejimaki Kagyuu has been opened of us. As i said in my off the topic introduction, the art is what brought me to the series, in the stores were I mean 1000s of series are on display it is no coincidence that the art stood out so much.

In the series the art is slick, polished and while lacking in the details of some more artistic series (especially in the backgrounds) the style of the art is what gets it for me. To me the style is the mix of seinen art and shonen art in a middle ground style which a lot of modern seinen series have seemed to sprung up recently using it.

The series is a comedy aimed at poking fun at the shonen harem style of manga. The main heroine of the series, Kagyuu is both a scary, powerful fighter while being a love struck, innocent girl. The comedy that the manga-ka gets from switching between the two extreme in situations always gets a chuckle from me. While drawing this seinen harem, the manga-ka focuses more on comedy and the "fighting" of this fighting harem allows for the reader to sit back and enjoy the series and not be turned off at the incombatability of the different themes. There is only a heavy dose of comedy with a plot based around the girls fighting over the main, male character.

For some draw backs to the series there is a fair amnount of ecchi-(ness) while i do believe that it is done better then most series. With the style of fighting that Kagyuu uses, involves ripping and destroy of clothes of the user and victim as it deals damage, it never feels put in there for "rating". You know its happening in a chapter and when, its not like the horrible "looking up" views on female characters or the lets have every girl character support a pair of hefty lumps of flesh that the harem guy happens to get sucked into their gravity fields every 5mins in series that claim o be more plot driven.

Also talking about story plot, here is another low part of the series but this is a factor of most comedy based series suffer from, its about the jokes and the situations not about the who, what, where and why of how this is happening.

I fully recommend this series for its entertainment values and its stunning/fun art style. Its a series that leaves me wanting more as i laugh my way through each and every chapter.

Well like I've said before i'm going to let out a bit more venom here as well. I do believe that there is a very small portion of AP(www.anime-planet.com) that can read(literally) most japanese, and even a smaller section that live in Japan(with access[easy access]) to some of these mangas. This is one of those that I know that there are few, 9 as of (12/23/17), that have "read" this fully. The only one i know for sure is, that is its function(EverythingWatched). So the rest are "suspicious" let alone true.

~SPOILERS~

One of the main themes of having the main protagonist being a chick magnet seems to have disappeared, or pushed back on a burner way far in the back barely visible. Anyway wimpy beta-male rekindles a friendship with someone he hasn't seen in a long time, ~10 years, she was six when she left and as far as we know she's a freshman high schooler in japan this is actually 15(1st years 15-16, 2nd years 16-17, 3rd years 17-18). She has promised to protect him no matter what as he did the same when they were younger and she "loves" him but i'm not sure this will stay true to the end. That's it really i mean she fight the morale committee her sister who comes to visit her, her "mother" which i believe was a mental opponent kind of like shadowboxing, and now we're at the student council and their crazy batshit plan. Only 69 chapters long, it is worth 1 read but just barely.

So far, there's only limited amount of translated chapters.
I was able to read the rest of the chapter because I know how to read korean.
I finished the whole thing.

1) Art: 8

I thought the art was pretty unique. All the characters are kind of weird, but it stands out really well. Fighting and everything is pretty cool.

2) Enjoyment: 6

I would want to give a higher rating if I only read through the half of the series. Fight scenes and everything is pretty cool, so I was able to enjoy it, but eventually, the whole thing went south. And the story part... I'll explain it later, but it turned me off so I didn't enjoy it as much.

3) Character: 6

Characters were pretty unique. The main dude, the main girl, friends, and the chairman. They were pretty interesting at the beginning. You know that when you are going through it, these people are kinda crazy. Well, as the story progresses, they kind of become even crazier. Except for the main girl and the friends, I really don't like any of the characters anymore. The chairman and main dude, especially.
I won't spoil anything. The chairman, we know he is crazy. Later on, it'll become apparent that he's not just crazy. You just don't understand this guy. He's like that one guy who pisses people off and doesn't do anything good, just because that's how he is. The story explains his motive, but honestly, it's not really something to my liking, and regardless of happy ending or not, I just didn't care about this guy at all.
Main guy. He's kind of generic to me. In the beginning, he's like this guy who wants to help everyone. That's cool and admirable I guess. But you kind of get that he's more of a guy that watches how people are doing, and gives that inspirational speech at the end. I can't say much about what happens without spoiling, but later on, something happens, and I just didn't care about this guy anymore. It's like his whole reasoning for change is ridiculous. And his choices are just ridiculous.
For other characters, I thought they were alright, but I never really liked any of them in the end.
It's like story kind of throws everyone out the window at the end, I think.

4) Story: 6

I think I'm being generous when I give 6 for the story. I'll say this. Currently, the english scan is only up to like less than half. I think about 3.5/5 through the story, it's pretty decent, and I would actually give it about 7.5 or 8. But the last 1.5/5 is just kind of stupid, and it really brought the whole score down for me. The progression of the story and what being revealed made me not happy. It sucks that I can't spoil anything because I don't want to ruin people's experience, but to me, at least, it was just not a great ending. It's confusing, how things led up to that moment, the message about love and all that. It just doesn't make sense.
I got confused by the ending, so I looked around to see what other people were saying, and it seems that most people are just outright confused too. I like happy endings, sad endings, and mostly endings that make me feel something and think of something. This ending didn't do that.
Overall, I felt that the author kind of dragged the story in the end, and just kind of finished it without really considering how a right message would be conveyed for the audience.
I really wished that it would've ended better than what I read at least, but it is what it is.

5) Overall: 6

If you come across this, when everything is translated, I guess I would tell you to go for it.
I'm not really recommending it, but at least it'll give you better understanding of where I'm coming from. Or maybe not.

If you are starting this, when it's still being translated, I think it's better to just read something else.
I finished the story because I hate not knowing how things go to the end, but this wasn't satisfying for me when I read that last page.


That ending, man... The whole story. THE WHOLE STORYYYY.

WHYYYY.