I'm kind of surprised that, at the time of writing this, there are no complete reviews for Big Order. The only two that exist are preliminary reviews. I can't blame them either. The manga honestly starts off engaging and strong, but soon fizzles out into a manga of nonsense, time wasting, and idiocy. The story itself spirals into shit almost immediately after like, the second volume. I, however, persevered through the trash, and can proudly say I finished the manga from beginning to end. This is the first "complete" review of Big Order.


Though story is listed first in the scores, let's start off with art. The artstyle of the manga is... poor, but average at best. For someone reading and reviewing it in 2020, the art looks outdated. The manga debuted in 2011, yet I've read older manga that have better art styles. Even with this outdated style, there are some choices I can nod to. On almost every scene with Eiji in it, his territory (I will "expand" on this later [pun intended]) is consistently drawn. This was a nice little feature, as it was always a reminder that other order users can always see his territory, and in scenes where Eiji loses his power, seeing there be no territory under him reflected his vulnerability. I did not like how the Orders themselves are drawn. The weird skeleton design they all have looks very bad, and it is reminiscent of the bad CGI of the anime.

Moving on to characters, throughout the manga, it is VERY clear that Eiji's companion, Rin Kurenai, is just a mirror of Yuno Gasai (even down to the hair color, which Esuno didn't even attempt to hide). Eiji Hoshimiya's character formula is also not too far off from Yukiteru Amano, except one (in a Powerpuff Girls-esque incident) got a little bit too much of the crybaby and idiot genes than the other. If you didn't already know, Mirai Nikki and Big Order were created by the same mangaka. These character similarities are NOT a coincidence. Big Order debuted only a year after Mirai Nikki, mind you. Sakae Esuno clearly thought, "If the characters are not broken, don't fix them" because reading two volumes of the manga will show you that Gasai and Amano's personalities were just transferred over to Kurenai and Hoshimiya, but then Esuno realized that they didn't fit well with the story, but it was too late to turn back, so their personalities got worse in an attempt to make them better. Main problem is I really hate how Eiji acts. Even when it is clear to literally everyone in the world that the bad guy is [SPOILER], Eiji still has that "they can still change themselves!" mentality that all protagonists have, except this character is proven evil and cannot be turned good. Eiji even goes so far as to want to kill himself numerous times to potentially save this character, even though they don't give two craps if Eiji dies or not. My secondary gripe with Eiji is that he doesn't fully take advantage of his Order. Eiji's Order is Bind Dominator, which gives him the power to command any living being or inanimate object to do anything. Wherever he walks, that space permanently becomes his territory, and if he encircles an area, everything in the circle is under his control. Honestly, when watching the anime (and at the beginning of the manga) I thought this ability was badass. Even though I hate the series, I do still think Bind Dominator is one of the coolest abilities a character can have. Unfortunately, Eiji only encloses an area once in the series, and after learning what he can do, every other character is smart enough to not get caught under Eiji's dominion. The rare occasions they do get caught, instead of giving them creative commands like, "Become my ally and do not betray or try to harm me" (like he did with Rin) or "Tell me exactly where [spoiler] is right now and how to defeat them" he says something dumb and useless like, "Stop shooting". Bind Dominator has so much potential, but Eiji never quite learns how to use it to its full power. It takes him about seven volumes to figure out he can manipulate air too and create shields from air pressure or whatever. I would have loved to see Eiji find out more about his abilities, but as someone who has read the entire manga, I can tell you, there is nothing.

Okay, now we're getting into the story. There are going to be a couple of minor spoilers here and there, but if you're considering reading this in 2020 or beyond, then you clearly need to do something better with your life. Big Order starts off making no sense. I only stuck around for the action and clung on to the hope that Eiji would use Bind Dominator in a badass way. After being disappointed in both of those areas, I honestly don't know why I kept reading. Probably because I didn't want to leave another manga on my eternal "reading" list. A lot of the things in the novel could have been avoided if the characters weren't so fucking dumb and one dimensional. Eiji literally has nothing on his mind other than to protect his sister for the entire fucking manga. Esuno even tries to incorporate some romantic elements into the series, but Eiji IGNORES the two women who love him and instead pursues his sister more. There is even a very odd scene in volume 9, I believe, where Sena suggests to Eiji that he loves her incestually (which, if you didn't know they were siblings, is totally plausible) but he denies it. The ending is so, soooo stupid. Like, the story is shit in general, but the last two volumes made me want to put the manga down altogether and delete it from my list. Initially, the plot is: Bad man wants everyone to have their wishes granted (Everyone to have Orders) and Eiji has to stop them. Then, it turns into: Bad man wants to turn the spiritual energy of God into the material world and kill everyone, and somehow Eiji must fight God. Yes, you heard that correctly. Eiji Hoshimiya has to FIGHT GOD. Oh, but get this: Yoshitsune Hiiragi just SOMEHOW predicted that the enemy would summon God, and has the perfect plan to combat him. Seriously? How the fuck do you predict someone is going to summon God and fight with him? That's such a random move that no one could possibly predict, nor refute, it. The story is so incredibly stupid, what made Sakae Esuno even want to write this? Surely, this is a bad April Fools joke. There are a hundred things wrong with the story, but that would deserve an entire review itself.

Enjoyment factor is very low, a two. Sometimes it's stupidly hilarious, like so bad it's funny. Other times I just don't want to read it anymore. I won't spend too much time talking about this, because the review is already long as is, but I think you can tell how much I enjoyed it based on the previous paragraphs.

Overall, Big Order starts off very actiony and promising, however, it becomes apparent that it is a Mirai Nikki clone and that Esuno just wanted to cash cow out the same characters in a different story. I'd actually recommend watching the anime over reading the manga. At least the anime ends your suffering after just twelve episodes, but the manga drags on for ten volumes (which is actually not too short but not too long, but this story could have ended way sooner than it did). This is probably the only case where the ANIME is BETTER than the manga. I know, shocking. Anyway, if you've gotten to the end of this review, thank you for reading, and I hope you don't read this manga. Like, seriously, don't read it. Please don't. Save yourself from 10 volumes of misery.