RED SPRITE

DESCRIPTION

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

• 

  SpikeWasAlreadyTaken

  10/100
  A valiant attempt at innovation that crashes and burns into a typical battle shonen flop faster than lightning

  Warning: contains chapter one spoilers
  Towards the end of 2016, a manga would begin in Shonen Jump that would completely defy expectations on what could succeed in the magazine. Featuring a band of kids fighting against a world that was set to use them as resources, it avoided falling into stereotypical shonen tropes (for the most part) and would go on to have an acclaimed 20-volume run and spawn an anime. That manga was, of course, The Promised Neverland.
  Just a few issues after The Promised Neverland began, another new manga would begin in Shonen Jump. Featuring a band of kids fighting against a world that was set to use them as resources, it hit just about every shonen trope possible in just two volumes and was swiftly axed. That was Red Sprite.

  It's difficult to avoid drawing parallels between The Promised Neverland and Red Sprite. Aside from starting at around the same time, both of them have very similar premises. Both start off with the happy lives of kids in an orphanage, and everything quicky gets dark. In Red Sprite, after the orphanage is attacked by an armada of fighter planes (in what is the first, but not the last display of Red Sprite's completely over-the-top approach to storytelling), our main character Tatsu discovers that he and the other kids were created as government experiments to create large amounts of electricity using a substance called plasmarrow, and the government has come to recapture them so they can be used as human batteries. Tatsu decides to try and save all of the enslaved electric kiddos, and the series then cuts to six years later so that we can watch Tatsu do typical shonen protagonist things.

  There are a few points that I think Red Sprite does a really good job on. For starters, Red Sprite is set in a sort of dystopian steampunk world, and is the second axed series by the author to revolve around airships. This works really well with the military-themed antagonists, and is just overall something that Shonen Jump manga don't do very often. Red Sprite also doesn't use that setting to create some sort of crazy futuristic world, instead just using it to make it clear why the electricity generating kids are so important. I really appreciate that subtlety, even if it's pretty much the only time the manga has any subtlety whatsoever- on the military side of the setting, there's a bunch of unsubtle "hey, look, an evil nation!" things- random killing, slave camps, etc. And yes, it does seem like a direct analogue to 1940s Germany.
  Second, the antagonists themselves fit the story extremely well. Red Sprite's antagonists are definitely not good people; you can tell because the manga falls all over itself trying to show you that they're terrible people. Aside from the utter lack of subtlety of "look, they're enslaving children and smiling about it", the way that they're written shows some of them as having a few screws loose, and others as just being typical Stormtrooper-esque military puppets. In both cases, Red Sprite's art gives them some really creepy faces and clearly unhinged dialogue- oh, and also makes them basically Nazis, right down to concentration camps and discussing spreading their just empire across the world. It's not subtle by any means, but it does make them satisfying punching bags for the protagonist. They're not deep or even that interesting, but for an axed manga just making them creepy is enough for me at least to be satisfied.

  Unfortunately, that's where the good points end. Though it's not a complete soup of recycling other manga like Our Blood Oath, which I left the most flattering review known to man, Red Sprite has a lot of flawed shonen tropes. To start off with, the main character is very much a happy-go-luck, power of friendship, utterly overpowered "special one". One of the reasons that TPN worked with a similar premise was that the characters were very much reliant on wit and, for the most part, at least a bit pragmatic. Even in basic battle shonen, there's normally more to the MC than being tropey, even in series that are quickly axed. Thing is, despite being in an obviously terrible situation, with a military empire after him to try and enslave him, Tatsu is just smiley and pretty unchanging. Despite the decent job the author has done creating this militaristic, evil army steampunk world, Tatsu may as well be the product of a lifetime spent in utopia, and it doesn't work. Pretty much the same with the side cast- they're kids that feel one-sided and don't fit the rest of the story. There's not much attempt at character development (though of course the series was cut pretty short, so you can't entirely fault it), but what there is feels rushed and sloppy. I can't entirely blame the axe when stuff starts feeling rushed four chapters in. As I've already touched on, despite being in a setting where you'd expect change, Tatsu doesn't really change whatsoever, the other characters may as well be robots for all the development they get, and it doesn't work well.
  The plot itself is also a couple of pretty boring battle shonen fights and a basic emotional scene, to try and put it without spoiling the series. The powers in the series are all based on the electric "theme", but they don't feel especially creative. There's also the militaristic setup of the story, which could have led to some really cool more strategic battles, but I supposed in Shonen Jump that wouldn't have been likely to succeed. Overall, I would have liked to see a simply more creative plot. The worldbuilding could have lent itself to more of a war manga, which might've been interesting, but the series decided it was going to be a basic battle shonen and suffered for it.

  As far as art goes, it's okay. The steampunk and military elements seem to be something the author has a love and talent for drawing, and they're nicely done. The more brutal style that the soldiers are drawn in also works well, and overall pretty much every element that builds up the world is drawn in a way that fits into that world. The character art and designs are less impressive, but good enough to tell what's going on. It's unimpressive art overall, but it's good enough.

  I do think that Red Sprite had potential to be something unique, with a darker take on shonen than Jump is used to or a more strategic military story, but it never manages to break away from basic battle shonen. While this may be in part an attempt to not compete directly with The Promised Neverland, the series doesn't have much going for it as a battle shonen, and fails because of it. It's not a terrible concept, and has multiple points where it could have made itself into something unique and refreshing, but the series just never bothers, and, ultimately, is an utter flop.

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