-And yes, I read around 30 chapters. Somehow I was expecting it to actually develop and become good. So I skimmed the rest.
Despite this whole manga REVOLVING around on the concept of war, this manga generalizes the concept and oversimplifies all the aspects. The characters' ideals strike me as stunningly superficial and ignorant: wow, 'love, peace and crossdressing' sure are great mottos to stand by.
No hard-- NEW ideas are put forth: Even though they're in a war, there's no trauma, no soldiers drowning in guilt etc. No one on their side of the war seems to KILL and feel bad... Of course, you can 'win' a war without killing--but this is no cold war. This is peppered with fight scenes between good and bad.
There are no thoughtful ideas on war; everything basically fits in the typical shounen formala--
'I'll save the guy who has been trying to KILL ME from bleedin to death or sumthin, just 'coz I'm a hero like that! I know he definitely won't backstab me, because this ain't no real war, right? I'll always see hope in the eyes of a deranged lunatic trying to kill me (who has slaughtered ppl before, mind you) and be a hero and SAVE THEM.'
Not just that, the manga tries to be serious one moment, and then comedic the next. It's like it's bipolar. After a 'touching, sad' scene during a battle there suddenly is comic relief and humor.
It's not subtle/new humor either, it's the 'obvious, overdone, humor' . I suuuure love Nana's crossdressing antics. Even though I've got the gist and it's been repeated several times. It's amazing, simply amazing! The mindless fanservice is definitely entertaining...
Well, if I want fanservice, i'd read an ecchi manga!!
And the characters. Hardly realistic at all. For people with such 'deep' backgrounds-- witnessed the trauma of war etc (i.e, everyone has similar back stories of blablabla ohnoesthiswarishorriblycrueltomewah), I would've expected them to be more cynical, and join organizations that actually HELP distribute resources to those stricken with war, expose the truth about it etc, instead of joining some pseudo peace organization which 'will stop all wars'. Who believes in that? It sounds like a shady cults which chants fervently to a strange relic of some sort, and holds baby-sacrificing rituals to 'cleanse the world'.
Also, the characters are flat. Shiro is the typical tsundere. Nana is your typical idealistic, cheerful idiot hero with a supposed twist (a dark past). They're unrelatable. I have no emotional connection to them. I feel fairly neutral when they're fighting in a life-or-death situation or crying or laughing or striking some cool pose etc. They're boring. I was hoping one of them would just die as a random plot twist.
So if you like watching people shout their war-eliminating mottos with belligerence whilst fighting boring villains, and drooling at a hot cross-dressing boy, you'd enjoy this.
...I enjoy shounen. I like the heroes with messiah complex. But even I like my characters with back bone and backstory, my fight scenes with some sort of complexity and some sort of conceivable; consistent plot. Unfortunately, Tripeace lacks all that.