You see, I don't mind retarded characters if it's just going to be a comedy manga, but when you bring "enemies" into the mix, it does bother me when the main cast and the mc himself are retarded and easy to make use of, especially when the mc is way too much of a wimp that acts like a moronic doormat but has a lot to yap about whenever he's confronted with his own ninjas' antics. He's the kind of moron that doesn't take thing seriously and doesn't consider the circumstances and other people's feelings even if he is so "nice" all the time, at least that's the case until the very end where we get some very predictable plot twists towards the end which was rushed and very obvious. It's just a disappointment.
I'm reading this purely for the comedy as the story itself is subpar at best. However, the mc's actions whenever confronted with enemies, the rare "serious" scenes, pisses me off way too much. Stuff that should've been solved easily becomes huge obstacles and even the "smart" characters are so stupid I don't even know what to say. I guess this is what you should expect from a shounen manga, things are just way too simple and unrealistic, the schemes of both the enemies and ally side are low-level crap that any teenager could think up. How it's played off as "cool" and "amazing" makes it even more frustrating when all you can see are two kids playing around, one slightly more moronic than the other. Even the most intelligent person in this story can only be considered as average in intelligence but slightly more cautious than the rest.
By the way, the rules are stupid in the first place. Everyone has shogi pieces that represents them and if they're taken, you have to follow the enemy who took them without complaints. Personal relationships or thoughts doesn't matter. It also doesn't matter that the "masters" usually doesn't really know any martial arts or ninja arts so they can't really protect these pieces properly in the first place. Technically, if you drop it by mistake and some random kid picks it up, you're forced to treat that kid as your master. Just how utterly foolish isn't that setting? Like the main girl(the first ninja to be introduced), she pretty much loves the mc and is utterly devoted to him, this has nothing to do with any piece of wood, it has to do with the past. So, she would need to stop serving him just because the piece was stolen? As if that'd be possible. But that's the rules, I guess? It would be more reasonable if the rules were to win over the ninjas instead, the one who can win over the most of them wins. At least that wouldn't be as retarded even if it would still be simplistic. What's even the point of a token if the ninjas doesn't serve the master wholeheartedly? How stupid.
This is made even worse because the mc is really too much of a stupid piece of shit, he is assaulted by enemies and then told they will come again, yet he, in all his "genius" glory, refuses to do anything properly, instead leaving the ninjas alone at home to meet the enemy while he goes to the enemy base to "talk it out" with the enemy because he "respects her", so he promptly rushes to her house with one middle rank ninja and leaves the strongest behind, but it all works out because this super intelligent enemy didn't keep a single ninja by her side to ward against a possible attack. That is, if she didn't happen to be stronger than a middle rank ninja for some retarded reason despite just being a yakuza's daughter and thus the mc almost gets killed. But then he still refuses to flee when faced with death and just stays there saying shit like "I will fight until you agree to a truce" or something. But then it succeeds! Wooh, he won over the girl with bullsh'it and simple-mindedness! Then they spout some crap about people being drawn to him(which is so cliché I almost passed out from all the blood I coughed up in anger). All of this made me want to strangle the stupid f*cker to death. I guess that this is pretty normal for a shounen manga though, the mcs are often peace-desiring mongrel airheads who tries to win with love, justice, friendship and luck. Makes me puke, but I guess I should've expected that from a manga like this.
So, if you look away from everything but the comedy, it's a decent manga, but right now I can at most rate it at "4/10" for below average. It's simply not worth more with this character cast and story line. If the author had been intelligent and realized that serious stuff in a stupid comedy manga like this was never going to turn out well, it would've been worth way more. But since he decided to introduce this shit and make it serious enough that you start to judge it by the similar standards to other "action" manga, it pisses me off too much to enjoy it properly. Sigh. When you start taking this even a little bit seriously, that's when you stop enjoying it. Seriously, should've just made it similar to "ninin ga shinobuden" where there's only comedy and foolish ninjas. That's how to do this setting properly. Having foolish ninjas, a foolish master, foolish characters everywhere and then trying to turn into half-a-shounen battle manga just turns makes it turn into garbage, ruining all the possible value it had.
It sadly comes across as a forced try-hard that does more than it's supposed to and thus fails badly at it. Things doesn't flow properly and nicely at all. Kind of like someone adding chocolate and ice-cream to a pizza. It just becomes a disgusting mess because it doesn't fuse together well and the flavors aren't complementary. It's actually POSSIBLE to fuse action and comedy together, making the drama and serious stuff into something to enhance the comedy value, but this one failed at this, it just feels half-assed, sloppy and rushed along with not fusing well.
I'm not sure if I could recommend this. I feel like it'd be readable for younger people, at most teenagers. If you're older than that, you'd have to be able to not mind the issues I've mentioned or perhaps you could just skip all the "serious" scenes. So, just for the comedy alone, it's decent enough to be recommendable, even if only barely because the comedy wasn't really that good either, but as a whole, I wouldn't recommend it to people over 18, or perhaps even anyone at all. There are many better manga out there. It might be decent if you power-read it, that is, skim on most of the dialogues. You can finish reading the entire thing in a few hours or so then.
(-37)
