Being a fan of the battle shōnen type of manga, Fights Break Sphere certainly seemed worth a try, especially when taking into account the amount of positive reviews for the series. Although it certainly has some good moments, the manhua is rather disappointing as a whole, mainly due to the main character himself, as well as the main story in addition to the later part of the series. Allow me to elaborate.

The premise of the series is nothing revolutionary: a genius fighting prodigy who suddenly loses all his powers. Much to his dismay, a powerful spirit who possess him explains him the very reason for it: Yao, the spirit, needed it to materialise himself. Not only that, his fiancée shows up only to tell him that she'll only marry stronger fighters than her. Left with no options, the protagonist Xiao trains with the spirit to regain his lost powers.

The main story revolves around the young Xiao regaining his powers, while simultaneously displaying the setting itself, an ancient China, where society is divided into clans. The world has the need of powerful people, the Dou, who are actually quite similar to super saiyans and alchemists. This is because of the monsters that inhabit: dragons, medusa, you name it. The main story is nicely executed with its share of dark moments as well as more light-hearted ones, nicely balancing the two. It also has a somewhat consistent power level, meaning characters are not suddenly stronger should the case present itself. Sadly, after completing the main goal of the manhua, it degenerates into a generic piece with the usual school setting. Furthermore, any logic behind the power levels were just thrown out to stretch out the manhua. Now it must be said that it delves further into some of the loose threads, which is naturally a good thing.

One important characteristic of such type of works are the battles; these are certainly intriguing and have logical causes as well as consequences. However, these are quite tensionless because of one glaring flaw of the manhua: the protagonist obtains his powers way too easily and is thus constantly overpowering everyone without seemingly any effort whatsoever. Even when comparing it with numerous other works that have similar characteristics, it is way overdone. Naturally, power levels are showcased where Dou measures ones strength and gives an according title. It must be noted that gaining power is pretty much done as anyone would play a RPG.

Concerning the characters of Fights Break Sphere, these are generic and there is not really any interesting character to look out for. The protagonist Xiao is the usual stereotype of a nice and unbelievably handsome man who is the strongest of all. Not much character development can be seen from him, as he hardly changes throughout the story. The only one who could be considered intriguing would be Yao, but that is mainly because of his mysterious background as well as his seemingly unending knowledge. There are also a lot of other minor characters, but these are as a whole rather uninteresting, mainly serving to display the power of the protagonist, often left forgotten.

As for the art style, it is what is to be expected of a manhua, and it serves its purpose: detail is sacrificed in favour of colouring the chapters. Design of the characters in nothing outstanding, which could be said about the backgrounds as well. Regardless, the battles are well portrayed to the reader, giving a sense of the magnitude of the powers, as well as having a smooth progression between the different panels.

Fights Break Sphere was as a whole an enjoyable read, albeit nothing impressive. It clearly waned in quality towards the end with the introduction of a fighting school, in addition to the overpowered main character that left the battles rather tensionless. Regardless, readers who are in favour of the genre will get an enjoyable experience, but they won't find anything outstanding.

Thank you for reading.