You see and read all stories about how hard it is to get a manga published and then this crap ends up on your “plan to read” list so you spend 11 chapters realizing why you’ve never heard of it. Most manga’s tend to follow a pattern of character introduction > problems > goal in mind > working towards goal > resolution. In this case, Seiten no Hekigan (The Blue-Eyed Material), throws cookie cutter characters at you with no character development and kind of tosses them around a bit so they occasionally collide with a wall and make a funny noise that only remind you that there is no purpose or reason for throwing them in the first place.

Seiten no Hekigan was released in October 2013 and is Asaka Takashima’s first manga (and only as of now). The story is about a girl named Natsuki who feels that no one loves her. Unfortunately, her incredible gullible best friend since childhood and her also completely gullible parents, who are willing to buy her just about everything, have failed to bring joy in her life since a tragic and life changing accident that I am still trying to understand what exactly about it is making her depressed. Well japan comes in to play here and a jelly alien falls from the sky and makes out with her. After receiving a humans DNA and learning Japanese through a phone, the alien jelly girl now hangs with Natsuki because plot.

Story:

Looking at the story I could see what the author was trying to go for. And, had it gone well, I think this could have turned out far better than it did. In any story, the characters are placed in a world that is has certain laws. In this world, jelly aliens with super powers exist. The problem is, this world also has really convenient factors that try to fill in the oh-so-many plot holes that riddle each page. To keep things entertaining, the story is constantly trying to keep you on your toes hinting at possible outcomes when the truth is uninteresting and is used to fill in more plot holes.

Score: 4/10


Characters:

I’m not going to say much, the story was short but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t room for character development or at least some interesting characters. All the characters just seemed stupid and were only useful to fill up plot holes. There personalities are so black and white everything they say could have been straight out of another manga. The story attempts to introduce new characters but they only get a page of screen time. It would have been nice to see more depth in these characters instead of having the reader assume their motives behind their actions.

Score: 3/10


Art:

Hoping for a catch? Nope! The art isn’t horrible but it’s not amazing. The backgrounds and scenes are really bland with little to no depth. The characters are also really simple with few features that actually let me tell them apart. I can’t even remember what the main character looks like and I just reread this manga 2 minutes ago. When characters look good, you remember what they look like. But in this case I only remember that one of them has black hair and blue eyes. But only because that was mentioned 20 times in the 11 chapters.

Score: 4/10


Enjoyment:

The total time it took me to read the entire series was 20 minutes, but it felt much longer. I kept checking to see if I was close to finishing it only to see that I still had a good chunk left. Did I enjoy it? No. could I have enjoyed it? No. Is there something deeper about Seiten no Hekigan that I just don’t understand because I lack common intelligence? No. the only good thing I can say is that there were a few parts where I smiled. I think there was one joke in there that I thought was pretty good but I don’t think I had any other facial expression besides ‘bored’ throughout the entire reading session.

Score: 4/10


Overall:

If you got 20 minutes to kill and want to see a great example of “what not to do when making a manga” then you should read this. You can also hop in for the naked scene in the first chapter but nothing even close to a bare shoulder happens again. Also something I feel like I should say, for some reason Myanimelist and most manga sites says there’s 12 chapters when there is only 11. Had the author had more time to work and this I think it would have been really good. But has it stands the thing sucks.

Overall Score: 4/10