Anime Meta-Review
Legend of the Overfiend Manga
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Title Info
- seen: 1-12 of 12
- type: issues
- grade: burnable
- Other elements of this title:
- This title should offend everyone.
- genre: hentai
- made: unknown
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
I'm sorry...I should have known better. But when I saw that CPM had translated this for the western market, and I could get access to some, I couldn't resist. While the anime was an exercise in perversion it did have a certain epic feeling of doom. Since the source manga is generally better than the anime version of a story I wanted to see if perhaps the manga had something to offer.
For those who don't know this series is about two things. The first is the re-birth of a powerful figure from legend (the `Chojin') who will cause the nature of the world to be changed. Various demons and powers from alternate worlds are very interested in finding, and perhaps influencing, this development. And unfortunately for the majority of humanity the time for this re-birth is now. More important than this is the fact that this title has a very important place in the history of western anime. The perverse sexual cruelty of the title assured it of huge sales, as well as giving it the chance to largely create the reputation of anime as another form of pornography. If some moral crusader decries the evil anime you can be pretty certain this is going to be evidence A.
So how does the original manga compare to the anime? Well, strange as it may sound it gives me more respect for the anime...because this is just a complete waste of paper and ink. The story is largely absent and what remains is fragmented and contradictory. The characters are ugly both in character and appearance. Ugly in what they say and what they do. The whole atmosphere of this manga is of a completely incompetent creator trying to be maximally shocking to hide his complete lack of story telling ability. It's cold, cruel, degrading to its characters (who are largely without personality) and totally without any value. The only people who should read this are psychologists who want to try and guess what childhood trauma left the creator so f***'d up. The Urotsukidoji OAV's (volume 1-3 at least) are a masterpiece of character and atmosphere compared to this mess.
This isn't much of a review...and it actually was intended more as a warning. Don't buy this manga unless you really get off on badly produced manga by an author with something badly wrong upstairs. It is not even erotic, since the characters and situations are so cold and hateful. There's more I could say, there are examples I could give to support my position but this material simply doesn't deserve it.(And I get the horrible feeling that there's a group of people saying, "cool, gotta get some of that!").
No other reviews of the manga. Of course you can always go to CPM's web page and watch them pimp this little money spinner, "This is the one you've been waiting for! CPM Manga is proud to launch its CPM MANGA X line with one of Japan's classic adult manga titles, Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend!". On the other hand I did get to find out that there are only 12 issues, which means that the `story', as if there is one, neither really starts nor finishes in this confused and turgid mess of a manga. Sadly the final joke is on me, as the manga release was `sold out'.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:20 WST 2009