EDIT: To Helzagore's review above mine: When does poorly written character development and huge plot holes equal making characters "more humane"? Is it when people just simply forget about how other characters have turned students into mind slaves or into stone and decide that they're no danger to the student body and can still teach? Is it when villains go, "Hey, Tsukune's right, and I'm wrong, even though he's feeding me a poorly executed apology, and thinks that if one person comes up and apologizes for what ENTIRE CIVILIZATIONS have done, then it's alright"? Or is it where characters act like the complete opposite of the monsters they're supposed to depict, and therefore suffer more from monster decay than benefit from being "more humane"? I'll tell you where the more humane part comes in. It's from the mangaka doing a sloppy job with this manga and deciding that the only way their failure of a plot can move along is if they make certain characters lose IQ points without any explanation just so that the plot could move along.
Wow...just wow.
One of my friends told me about how good Rosario + Vampire is, so I was looking forward to reading this. I will never take any suggestions about manga from her again.
The only way this manga could be enjoyable is if you shut down your brain and go "Look at all the pretty pictures!" Apparently, some members have done that seeing how they gave Rosario + Vampire a 9 or 10 just because of the art.
Anyway, there are several flaws that made me enjoy it less and less as I went on. The first being THE LACK OF COMMON SENSE. The main cast keeps saying to each other "We'll be friends forever!" But then one of them will then leave because "Oh, they don't understand how I feel!" or "I have to betray them in order to protect them!". It would've been okay once, but it happens in almost EVERY CHAPTER. And it always ends with the main cast saving the character that ran off with them saying, "They really are my true friends! I was so stupid to run off!" You'd think that somebody in there would get tired of all this betrayal that seems to happen all the time in their universe and say "Fuck you" to the main cast forever. But they don't because of what I mentioned before, THE LACK OF COMMON SENSE.
The second thing is the plot, if there is one. Like someone mentioned before me, none of the enemies or situations that they go through seem to have a lasting effect on their lives, because as soon as they beat them, it's back to the women fighting over Tsukune exactly how they were fighting over him before they even met the enemy. Most of the time the villain's motives conflicts don't make any sense as is Hokuto's case (Just because my father beats me and I get attacked by monsters, I now have this desire to destroy the world and recreate it in my image!) or Rubi's case when she was first introduced (I hate all humans because just one of them was drunk and killed my parents in a drunk driving accident, so I must help kill all the humans!). And they're all anticlimactic as the villains succumb to Tsukune's friendship speeches near the end. When it happened twice, I had a feeling that the main theme would be "If you don't have any friends, then you must be evil and you suck!" Sadly, I was right about that, as every villain (Save Hokuto and some villains-of-the-week) who have a change of heart don't even need to rethink what they believe because they're actually right (Like Rubi’s former master and her reason to kill all humans because they destroy nature by building cities on top of it). And there are tons of plot holes in this story. Like how people get stabbed through their neck or stomach, and yet they’re still able to talk as if nothing happened, how people get ENGULFED IN FLAMES and yet their clothes look like they just came from the cleaners, how there’s a barrier that’s supposed to tell the difference between humans and monsters and how it’s supposed to keep humans out, but yet Tsukune, Tsukune’s cousin, and Hokuto were able to get in, or how some people that endanger the entire student body get punished with a slap on the wrist (Like Gin who should be expelled from all of the sexual harassment he's done, the math teacher who brainwashed countless students, or the art teacher who turned students into stone, and was finally put in jail once she LEVELED MOST OF THE SCHOOL.) Just another example of lack of common sense by the characters in this story.
The final thing is the characters. After they’re introduced, there’s almost no character development for them. None of them are original or interesting and the only ones I could tolerate in the entire story were Rubi, Yukari & Mizore. And that’s because they didn’t act like total dumbasses.
Tsukune should be dead all of the times he rushes in to save people. And he’s a hypocrite because he says that friends should always respect each other’s wishes and trust each other, but yet he go and fights enemies that should kill him instantly even if his friends say that they’ve got it under control and are beating the villain’s ass. When he gets his vampire power, him running into danger like an idiot and not getting killed makes a little sense then, but he’s still a hypocrite when it comes to helping friends when they don’t really need it.
Moka serves as nothing but the damsel-in-distress even though it’s been shown she still has some strength in her weakened form. I don’t understand why she just doesn’t fight back against the villains who try to rape her until help arrives (And it ALWAYS arrives.) And I have no idea how she's even alive seeing how she’s wearing a rosary that should’ve killed her, how she can walk around in the daylight like it’s nothing, or how she's weak to water that hasn’t even been blessed or that's running like in a river or an ocean. It’s a long shot, but I think that Moka is actually an android, because whenever a bit of water touches her, electricity starts sparking everywhere on her body.
Inner Moka serves as nothing but the tsundere of the story and is ridiculously overpowered as most of the fights in the story end with her saying “Know your place!” and kicking the villain once, usually in the head. It makes me wonder why the mangaka even tries to make most of the villains look so menacing if Inner Moka can just beat them with a single kick. And here's something else I just thought of: Inner Moka wants her body back. She gets it back when the rosary is taken off. But for some reason, whenever Inner Moka outlives her usefulness for the plot, the other Moka just comes back. Why doesn't Inner Moka just find some way to get rid of the rosary that locks her away instead of somehow getting it back on her choker off-screen? Tsukune said himself that Moka is Moka, no matter what form she's in, so she could just tell him to get rid of the rosary, so that she can stay as her true self. She doesn't because this mangaka can't write for shit.
And Kurumu is the worst of them all. She’s a succubus that has feelings and cares about people. WHAT? A succubus is a demon from Hell that takes the form of a woman and seduces men in order to steal energy from them to stay alive. What the hell is she doing being all friendly and fighting for people other than herself? And from the chapter after she’s introduced to the end of Volume 10, she doesn’t successfully seduce or take the energy of ONE male from any race introduced in the story. There’s no reason why she should still be alive! And I know that other writer’s versions of monsters don’t follow other monsters’ histories perfectly, but at least they follow all the basic rules of the monsters they’re using.
Since this comment is already too long, I’ll end it by saying that it’s like a lonely little boy with no friends who just discovered shounen manga wrote this as his very first story just for the fun of it. It has no stability, you could break your legs falling in all of the plot holes, almost every character is too unbelievable, and it forces the belief of “Having friends is everything in this world” down your throat. Unless you hate thinking for yourself and like to be spoon fed everything, then don’t waste your time with this joke of a manga.
P.S. I know that some people will be like “Well, if you hated it this much, then why were you still reading it?” The reason why is because it would be stupid to read just part of a finished manga (Or to not read all of the chapters of an ongoing manga that are out) and give out an opinion then. Who would listen to someone give their opinion about a finished story if they only read one part and didn’t read the others?
P.P.S. And to people that are like “You’re taking it too seriously. Enjoy it for what it is.”, I refuse to. Why? Because manga and anime like these are the reason why most people outside of the manga/anime community (And some people inside) think that manga and anime now is nothing but childish crap since crap stories like these get exposed the most to the public than the ones that need to be shown to prove those people wrong.
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