Holyland End
A girly looking guy with some real teenagery problems(and some real deep, though confusing problems) decides to start street fighting. He beats a lot of people up. He gets his ass kicked a lot. He makes some friends. And along the way he gets super buff, handsome and takes his shirt off a lot making me swoon hard. Repeat for about ten arcs and youve got Holyland.
-Biggest complaint first: The manga slums hard in the middle where it gets stuck in an awful shounen-like repeating cycle where every arc is essentially the exact same thing.
Yuu is content but then someone challenges him and he loses bad-Causes him to go off the rails-Trains a bit and gets advice-Beats the guy in a rematch-Goes off the deep end and murders the next couple of guys he fights before calming down-Then revert back to step one.
I have no problem with Yuu losing a lot, but the fact that he never seems to display much hindsight or learn from his mistakes is a big issue for me. Its a case where the short-term character growth is somewhat sacrificed for the long-term, if that makes sense.
+There essentially is no plot expect for people want to fight Yuu. Its more about characterisation, watching the characters come to grips with themselves and growing up. Admittedly it is a mixed bag, for example while Yuus seemingly endless struggle against himself is interesting it gets dragged out way too long and constantly feels like its repeating itself (his character feels like its in a constant state of one step forward, two steps back, though that is sort of the point but its still frustrating.)
+While not having too much depth to them, the side characters all have really fun personalities. Only Shougo and Masaki get any hefty development. They are very shounen that they become friends with Yuu immediately after fighting him. But Tschuiya and Shinichi are two of the bestest bros ever.
+While the art isnt really great and I never got over the weirdness in a lot of the character designs, the actual important scenes, ie the fights, are really well laid out and you can follow everything perfectly. Nothing mind-blowing but I appreciated how cleanly laid out everything was.
+Yeah the fights themselves are awesome. Im a sucker for it I know, but seeing two guys with different martial styles clash against each other and using everything at their disposal never got old for me.
+The mangaka really knows his stuff or seems to have researched thoroughly different styles of fighting and thought out how to implement them in as much a believable manner as possible to a street fight.
+Lol after the rocky middle it picks back up for the last arc where Yuu kind of becomes a mix between Batman and the Punisher
its awesome I swear. And the last fight did manage to illicit a few emotions from me in spite of its cheesiness.
Overall: An uneven series with a great start, meh mid-section but a surprisingly good conclusion. Ill admit the initial premise of the series was strong enough to push me through some of the rougher parts which will not hold the same interest from everyone.
and guess what..... I love LewdGAF. Lol
