HAGURE IDOL: JIGOKU-HEN

DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

MANGA ComedyHagure Idol Jigoku-hen Gaiden: Princess Sarah
MANGA ComedyOnce Again!
MANGA ActionMikarun X
MANGA ComedyVoice Zaka
MANGA ActionCYNTHIA THE MISSION

REVIEWS

• 

  femboydirt

  56/100
  The Tale of Two Mangas

  Overview:
  This Review will be in 3 seperate parts. It will become apparent why later. The first section will be a general discussion of the manga, its themes, its issues, its characters, writing, etc. The following sections will be split by chapters and tone.

  This manga feels like two completely different stories at points, but again, that will become more apparent as the review moved forward.

  Before the review starts proper, Trigger Warnings (Rape, suicide, incest, scat, graphic violence, graphic abuse towards women, forced prostitution, and gore)
  Some are more prevelant than others. If you are a veteran of edgy Sienen manga than you likely don't need this warning, but I feel its important. This manga markets itself as a comedy ecchi and chapter depicting torture and rape often happen suddenly.

  I am wiritng this while there are 89 chapter released. The manga is on hiatus, however the latest arc has concluded definitively. There is a complete enough story here to comprehensively review the manga. If it ever comes off of hiatus and the next arc is incredible or shit: it would not change much if anything about this review.

  Section 1:
  Let's start out with my general ratings for this manga.
  Visuals: 8.5
  Manga is a drawn medium afterall and the art is stunning. This managka has done art for more popular IPs and its obvious why. The art hovers around a 7 or 8 out 10 but often can reach a 9. Now art is subhective, but the manga is nice to look at.
  The fight scenes are the obvious highlight of the manga besides the girls. Action is fast and dynamic and a lot of passion is put into research for these martial arts. There is a great range of body types, faces, and styles. The only knock against the manga is that no panel blew me away. A 10/10 in visuals means I was consistently in awe of panels and spreads.
  Story: 4
  The story is one of the worst parts about the manga. While I will delve into the structural and tonal issues in the next sections, I will use this rating to establish in general terms why the story just doesn't hit like it should. The manga's story is about our main character Misora being a gravure model and using her karate skills to further her career in the shady entertainment world. Howeverm the manga only decideds to have an actual plot line happen until just under halfway through the manga.
  Characters: 6
  Overall the characters in this manga are fine. There is a clear improvement in character writing by the end as well when an influx of new characters happens. The MC is very likeable and her immediate side cast are servicable enough. The real reason the manga gets a 6 (5 being average) is because of the rival fighters that appear.
  Enjoyment: 5
  While I found myself generally entertained, I also found myself skipping panels or dialog. The manga in general is not very well written and this becomes unbearable during the darker moments of the manga. Its almost unreadable with how contrived and forced the conflicts are or how shallow the reasoning for events happening are. The abs, tits, and sex can only distract you from the paper thin plot for so long.

  Section 2: The first 40 chapters
  The first 40 chapters are a mess of tropes, bad writing, and weak plots. The first couple chapters sum up the first half of this manga pretty well.
  his is the point of the review where I will describe the plot in order to accurately construct my narrative (idk why I said it like this) so spoilers for the entire manga. That being said, I will do my best to keep events vague when possible and not reveal any major developments or twists.
  The first chapters start with our MC showing up to a film set. Misora is then told by the director that her being a normal lewd model would be lame so he instead has 100 dudes there. She has to fight all 100 people or be gang raped for porn. This is how the manga starts...
  There are a few major things to point out with this introduction.

  1. It shows us that Misaro is a badass, but also a bit of an airhead.
  2. It sets up her journey to overcome her modesty and embrace her own sexuality.
  3. It shows us the first bit of bad writing and would foreshadow the coming fetish and kink pandering that plagues the first half of the manga
     These scenes do some good, Misaro's character and motivations are established and clear. The fights and art are as mentioned, great.
     But this scene is flawed in so many ways. The stakes are immediately set to an insane degree from chatper 1. Yes, you want your story to start off engaging, but escalating the plot to an almost comedic level is not the way to go. "The manga is a comedy" is a defense a finge group of peoplee would likely counter, "It was supposed to be comedic."
     To counter that, I point to the MC being groped almost immediately into the manga. It is not played off as a joke nor is the threat she faces ever treated as a joke. She is strong, but not comically strong.

  You wouldn't believe how many times the MC or her friends are kidnapped or sexually assaulted in one way in these first 40 chapters. Risk of sexual violence is often the main point of tension and conflict in these chapters and it gets old very quickly. This a common bad writing trope in seinen manga. Because of the mature rating, the mangakas will force in sexual violence to make the stakes higher or to create fake tension. Once you've read enough sienen manga, you quickly pick up on manga that rely on this.
  This is not to say rape and sexual asaault don't belong in media, they definitely have their place, but when included it needs to be done carefully. In dark stories, these kinds of events can be heavy and disturbing and lead to meaningful dialog or character progression.
  That is not what happens in this manga. The mangaka attempts to make the entertainment industry look shady and dangerous, but there is no subtly to any of it. Each sleezebag and villain is horrid and so openly abusive.

  The first 40 chapters are a lot of the MC meeting someone new, she gets a new offer to be on tv
  or something, shady people get involved, the MC and/or her friends are captured, she beats up people and any trauma or fallout from the previous events are concluded in 1 or 2 chapters. Yes there are some sexy adventures and moments, but they are overshadowed by scenes that are obvious fetish content. The MC gagged and almost raped, the mc shitting on someone's face. The MCs friends being treated as sex slaves, sleazy ugly producers groping the mc or being creeps. There is an incest sub plot and it becomes a love triangle between a side character, her half brother and uncle. This same girl is a loli who can eat a lot and her stomach inflates.
  Its fine for ecchi to have a distinct style or preference that it caters to. This manga has a lot of muscular girls and almost all of them fight.
  The only reason to even consider reading the first 40 chapters of the manga is to be introduced to the side cast and main love interest. My honest opinion is to read these chapters with one hand and skip any scene or chapter that has stuff you wouldn't want to see.

  Section 3: The last 50ish chapters
  Spoilers for most of the manga, I will continue to keep events vague and and not spoil any big events or reveals.
  The stage is set, our MC Misaro is a semi popular TV personality and model. Her unique look of tanned skin, big tits, and muscles is a hit. Finally the president of her company tells her that an actual fighting tournament will be held with her as one of the members. This tournament makes up almost every single chatper until the end.
  If the first 40 chapters were for Misaro to understand and accept her sexulity, then the 2nd half of the manga is her learning why she fights. The manga until this point was barely a 4. It was approaching just being bad. This changes the entire story. Edgy plot lines are almost entirely gone, the side characters and villains that caused most of the bad shit in the first half are barely around.

  I have to talk about this now, but Misaro ends up dating another girl. The manga too often got very close to fetishizing queer relatoinships. I don't think it ever crossed the line into that, but with how much the manga fetishizes other things, some might definitely read thier relationship as bad repersentation. I think its ultimately fine.
  But spreaking of representation, there is a trans character introduced into the story and just imagine what a degenerate online would say about a mtf trans person. Misgendering them, invalidating them, etc. But the manga does try, some of the characters are supportive and the character herself is good representation for trans women.
  Although another problem arises, Japan and its creepy obsession with high school girls strikes again. A shockingly high number of minors are heavily sexualized as well as many characters just being 18, the MC being one of them as she is 18 at the start of the manga. Its not gross enough or distracting enough to ruin the manga at least for me, but it still wasn't something I enjoyed reading through.

  The tournament itself is honestly very well done. All of the characters are distinct with great designs, each with different styles of martial arts. Their body types, weight, hieght, and personalities are all factor into the fights. Here arises an issue tho, there are a lot of new characters introduced. Most of the tournament are new faces. And this is why this manga is ultimately dissapointing. Those first 40 chapters could've been used to build up to the tournament and establish most of the fighters.

  When I titled this review A Tale of Two Mangas, I meant this. The fact there is such a clear distinction in the manga. It often feels as if there are two writers fighting each other to be able to write each chapter. One is obsessed with martial arts and drawing muscular women having cool fights. While the other is a degen who wants to see boobies and write their characters into different wierd feitsh and kink situations. One writer who wants to subtly explore sexuality and character motivations while the other is an overly edgy ammatuer writing in rape and gore to make the manga more serious.
  Let me be clear, the mangaka could have written a Martial Arts Ecchi with comedy and it would've worked. He could have written a gritty manga about the evils of the entertainment industry with more brutal fights. The fact they half hazardly smashed both ideas together is what makes this manga a mess overall.

  Final Thoughts and Conclusions:
  I really wanted this manga to be better than it actually was, There is more than enough good in there to be a great manga. Maybe the mangaka's other work fulfill the potential of this one or maybe they will come back to this one and write an incredible arc about fighting. I have my doubts for both tho.
  I would recommend this manga to martial arts nerds and degenerates. Each for entirely different reasons. Skim through chapters and find some of the wonderful art. If you love girls with muscles than this manga will be a joy to scan through.

  If this manga ever comes back from hiatus, I will likely not come back to it. I feel satisfied with the conclusion of the manga and have no real want to see where it goes.

  Continue on AniList

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