REVIEWS | TrueManga

REVIEWS

IvernRocks on I Became the Tyrant of a Defence Game

🏅

Death is a simple thing, if you think about it. The end. A dissolution. Dissolution of someone's mind. Of someone's body. Of their memory. But death is a difficult thing to represent in fiction, because its impact on people is actually incredibly complex.

Most of the time, death in shonens is just... clearing an obstacle. A success, an elimination from the game. A tool to escalate conflict, at best a way to trigger a revenge, or a flat, negative emotional response from the cast. In reality, it is misery, it is relief, it is pain and it is companionship. It's the end, and the start. Warmth amids the rain or absolute loneliness. It is, most of all, an human phenomenon.

Trust me when I say, rarely a manga has been able to narrate death and struggle this well. This profoundly. Not in a overly solemn way, but with full meaning. Most of all, humanely. And by göd, of all things... it's a fücking videogame isekai. LIKE, okay, BUT IT HAS NO FÜCKING BUSINESS BEING THIS GOOD? HOW DARE YOU? I WANTED ACTION, NOT TO PONDER ON THE VALUE OF THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE!

Anyway, the writing is shockingly mature. The characters are literally videogame archetypes and they still pi** on the head of most drama casts on this site, if we are talking nuance. The art, while a bit cartoony on the faces, it's positively feral. The action and the monsters are... Beastly. You can feel the struggle, the onslaught, the violence of the assault, in every panel. And the sense of scale of the locations is maybe unparalleled. Like, period. In fuc**** general.

By all means, this should not be this good. But fu** you, it is. It is, and I'm giving the GAI. (Grand Acolade of Ivern). I can tell already, no need to wait.

(12)(2)