u/c0med

I read KSBD in a single night and it was really good! So there's that. I'll read it again though, some other time.

First off, I think I am incapable of finding good shounen lately. Of course, philosophical and religious musings are a bit 'high-brow' for your average shounen, never mind for a story, but come on, after all the cool fights and aura farmings, your work should have something to say! Right? Like I'm just not insane here, guys.

But comparing KSBD to a shounen is blasphemy, anyway.

Where was I again? Oh right, Chainsaw Man Part 1, of course. The part of that manga whose author didn't yet lose all his enthusiasm due to burnout. In CSM, there was a character named Makima, the Devil of Conquest. She killed people without blinking, utterly unhinged due to her nature, and cried while watching a movie in a near-empty theater. She would do that, Miss Horseman of Conquest, because having all that power doesn't really exempt her from the fact that she wants someone to be there beside her. Someone who would hug her completely of their own volition. And so she cries.

KSBD does this very openly! All(except one) demiurges have their own sorrows, their past that binds them to the ground. Mottom with her trauma, which made her more cowardly than every being of the Wheel, Mammon's dementia made him forget that he was supposed to have excised all manners of empathy within him, and regret picks upon his corpse. Even the God of Red, who once was defiled by violence, and who was infinite in violence and worshipped it, let that violence take away his mother's face and the warmth of bread, and let it shape his worldview so utterly complete that he wants to destroy the world. I can go on with Incubus (Abijah Fowler), Jadis (self-explanatory), Maya (Someone here wrote something along the lines of 'She is attempting to write the longest suicide note in the multiverse'), and dare I say even JISUN. Yes, JISUN had also suffered.

These are warmongering, powerful gods amongst gods who have lived for centuries and even then it was not enough. Even their names and titles will not save them. Suffering does not care that they have murdered billions and ruled millions, it doesn't care about the inklings of Royalty that they know, nor their ability to create energy out of nothing. It will come for them, and they will suffer.

The only one that doesn't fit this description is Gog-Agog. I don't know why. There was supposed to be a backstory, but I am doubtful that even she would give a shit anymore. She's the most I don't give a shit character I've seen, and perhaps the only one who is untethered to anything but the cycle. She has stopped being mortal completely. Maybe Alison gets to boss her around, but you know, she's the God of Suffering, like of course.

As you can see, this type of character study makes me happy much wow.

Let's just get this out of the way, CW is probably just the Vinland Saga/Vagabond of the OI genre. And choosing to read it first out of all the stories in the genre is akin to eating a banquet prepared by the finest chefs, and then getting your tongue cut off.

A bit of background here, hi, I'm a newbie coming into this genre with pretty much non-existent expectations. OI for me was always going to be somewhat of a guilty pleasure, a few shots of cheap angsty emotions and revenge plotlines and occasional love triangles, even though I don't think I'll ever be the main audience that gets to enjoy them. I came because I was getting intimidated by the stories that I actually wanted to spend time on, like [The Heart Invisible Furies], or [Goodnight Punpun]. Stories that promised an insane amount of depth on its core, so much so that it turns into this bottomless pit of grief and anguish, which is what I wanted in the beginning.

Paradoxically, I wanted to expect this sort of writing for OI. And I sort of just, kept flicking recommendations after another, patiently waiting for this mythical beast that I know will never happen, to keep delaying reading what I wanted to see. I think back then, I was biting more than I could chew, so I came here to see if I can actually chew anything.

CW is special in that way. It doesn't expect me to be anything, infact. It welcomes me in with this bubbling art style and that same premise out of a hundred that I've seen, and throws in one final big smile, daring to be innocent.

First off, it's short. Less than 150 chapters short. It's very compact, you see. This actually plays into its strength more, because there's less mucking about and meandering between plot points, which is always nice to see. Some stories feel like it was made to be a waste of time for both the author and the reader; this is not one of them.

Second, genre-wise, I think this manhwa definitely outdid itself. Sci-fi and Otome Isekai. There's a lot of exposition here and there due to the nature of the former, which is unfortunate. But the moments where it all comes together, it manages to be really profound.

Characters were really, really good. Fleshed-out, dynamic, and have their own sorts of skeletons inside their closet. One of the things I have to point out, though, is that they are endlessly fighting, endlessly raging on against the dark. They went through and suffered and fought and loved and clenched their teeth and came out of the story irrevocably changed and still holding onto hope. That is one of my favorite tropes and the authors deserved their flowers for this.

One major flaw of CW, though, is that it takes conflict-solving in a very strange way. I think this is because of the nature of its short narrative, because every conflict kind of just got explained away. In a few plot points, FL and their crew explained that they did this and that and suddenly wow the problem got solved, wow look at the shocked face of their antagonists and then cut to flashback of said action. Admittedly, this took me out of the story for a while, but I stuck through because things like this were bound to happen within the genre.

But the last 30 chapters though... holy shit.
Pacing was definitely the star of this manhwa. Might be better than fucking [Chainsaw Man] and [Jujutsu Kaisen], I'll be honest. It started as a sort of gamified political intrigue, but soon devolved into a complete shitshow for all sides. And this is a compliment. I've never seen a story set up all its pieces and knock them all down in such a short amount of time and with so much payoff. The last 30 chapters definitely were a ride.

And yeah, now I'm stuck feeling empty. That's that, I guess.

The sorrows of gods