## 2025-07-16 An unbearably mid piece of work. Even after trying my best, I couldn’t stand it. I caught up with it, too! But it’s just so goddamn boring LOL. Any other action manga will treat you better. Doesn’t help that I read [[Gachiakuta - Manga|Gachiakuta]] before this too lmao. Easy skip. ## 2026-01-08 Okay my apologies **Kagurabachi**, I didn’t recognize your game. I dunno what compelled me to do a reread of this six months later, but it’s actually pretty saucy. Like way more than I expected. I wish I had stuck to it a little more, because it really picks up around chapter 10. To be clear, nothing about it is deeply impressive — it’s no [[Chainsaw Man]] — but it effectively plays out like **Jujutsu Kaisen** but not bad, or **Demon Slayer** but…also not bad. There’s more to the plot than you’d expect, and more to Chihiro as a protagonist too. It is still mostly hype moments and aura, but it would seem mangaka Takeru Hokazono has some…let’s go with *controversial* things to say about Japan. >[!WARNING]- Said spoiler-y things >I’ll admit, I did not have “the enchanted blades are a metaphor about Japan’s complicit attitude and subsequent cover-up of the massacre of Nanjing” on my bingo card but here we are. We need to make sure Hokazono doesn’t “disappear” for that one. Who knows if it’ll stick the landing — shonen battlers rarely do — but I’m happy to stick along for the ride until it’s over. It’s now on my regular check-in manga list, along with the aforementioned **Chainsaw Man**, [[Sakamoto Days]][^1], and [[Gachiakuta - Manga|Gachiakuta]][^2]. [^1]: completely gone of the rails, but in an entertaining way [^2]: kind of falling apart in front of my eyes right now tbh