The beginning held a "promising" set up, as our high-school girl protagonist enters the dark, illegal underworld of assassins. Although she's become one of them, she refuses to join their organization, thus sparking a big competition for pro assassins to go after her head.

Now bear with me... You have no living relatives, no friends, no money, no roof over your head, no valuables to sell, and barely any food/water left. All you have is a special weapon for performing assassinations, the skills to use said weapon, and a bounty over your head that has assassins coming to kill you in the future. If you were in this situation, would YOU go back to high school the next day, not worrying about your current situation? Well, that's what the protagonist does.
Maybe she did it to "blend in" with the other students, as after all, it is a public place.

However, the series has currently become a cluster-fuck of numerous shounen-style battles, one after another, that are all taking place in her high school during the day.

Take something like Darwin's Game or Underdog, both about a protagonist that must learn "to kill or be killed" as part of a deadly game he gets stuck in, making anywhere he goes in Japan unsafe to tread. That gives the opportunity for the protagonist to meet +interact with all sorts of new friends and foes in different kinds of environments.
Arachnid though can't seem to stop clinging to its incredibly standard high school setting, having each and every battle take place in either an empty classroom, an empty nurses office, an empty hallway, an empty pool area, etc. And remember, this all takes place during the damn school day...

I'll admit, I do like some of the things the series does, where it has a female lead, insect/arachnid-themed powers, and several of the character designs that seem pretty interesting. Still, I would certainly not call it a seinen, given how poorly the characters develop, the ridiculous number of battles that seem to act like that of any other action-based shounen series, and the incredibly preposterous ways the characters manage to overcome the odds against them in a fight...

... Last updated on November 28th, 2014, 7:24pm

I thought it was dumb from the beginning, so I don't have the disappointed expectations that other people here have. It's fine if you realise that the whole premise of a spider-themed child assassin whose special power is magical-autism is stupid and take it from there. It's not good, but it's entertaining enough.

What I don't like though is the rape/sexual abuse fanservice. It's creepy.

Theres not much to say here. The story starts off great with child abuse, murder/hitmen/assassination and the seedy child usage of the underworld.

And then throws the main character into a cliche high school setting shounen style. Instead of being an ultra-rare, ultra-awesome child fighter/assassin, its revealed that there are countless other ultra-rare, ultra-awesome child fighters/assassins yet they live perfectly normal lives within human society... in high school of course.

The story gets progressively typical from there. Theres the manipulative president (who has superpowers of course), the jock with a deranged sense of justice (who has superpowers of course) and the over-the-top pure maiden who has to be protected by the main character.

Have to agree witht he poster below who said that its a bit silly but entertaining and that its marred by all the rape/sexual abuse stuff. Someone is nearly gang raped or implied to have been gang raped in every volume generally for no narrative purpose whatsoever

It started out nicely and made me interested, but it quickly turned into pure garbage. Idiotic characters, stupid motivations, retarded actions like staying in school all the time, cringeworthy insect trivia and pretentious rape scenes galore.

It's a shounen disguised as something else. It had great potential but turned into waste. It's incredibly edgy and just feels forced and weird.

Just read something else.

So, so much rape and unnecessary nudity. The fanservice seems less of the typical annoying ecchi variety (where the girls are sexual objects with soft, jiggly parts) and more of the creepy, this-is-what-serial-killers/rapists-would-Like variety (where the girls are attacked and actively violated). Not to mention the underage fanservice/the lolis.

Just. No.

Two stars for the art style that I like, & the idea of a strong female assassin MC.

... Last updated on September 2nd, 2017, 10:21am

As far as badly written, relying-on-gore-and-fanservice with-psychotic-characters seinen manga go, this one's actually pretty good. By good I mean enjoyable of course, the outlandish insect-based powers these assassins come up with and the OTT action/deaths and damn weird nutjobs kept me entertained enough despite the fact that the plot and characters are pretty shallow. Or perhaps that's the point, many of the best action movies have bare bones plot and characters, so I just think this is a great stab-smash-kill fest.

Also many, many Worf Effect moments. TvTropes - "Want a quick way to show how dangerous one of your unknown characters is? Simple, make him do well or win in a fight with a character that the audience already knows is tough." So many of these that it gets amusing when they do it the next time. And how!

Many will dislike this and that's fine, it's not for everyone, the plot and character development is basic at best, bad at worst. And it earns its seinen tag. But for me I think this is just pulpy fun.

this manga is simple. simple plot simple characters simply great. sometimes you just wanna read something that doesn't require logic or deep thoughts. that's why i love this manga. i like bloody, gory, implausible mangas like these. after death note and a few others that left me feeling like i missed the point because of all the insane illogical basic rambling, this was a refreshing change. who'd have thought learning about insects could be this entertaining and easy to understand outside of the discovery channel. it's like reading about some violent insect kingdom except all the insects are in the shape of people. FUN STUFF at least for me

The beginning was very promising. Dark atmosphere, killers, apprentice surpassing her master, etc.
But then it steadily became more and more pointless fanservice and clichee. The 'roach' and the 'grasshopper' are gross clichee-characters with no real substance, there are no killings anymore (very inconsistent with the atmosphere in the beginning), no real dark ambience...
In a nutshell, this manga is headed towards crap ending at full speed. What a waste...

Volume 1 encompasses a strong plot arc. Assassins who are men with sneers or whose faces look like death, Alice experiencing good character development while being "raised" by Kumo, and a real sense of dramatic tension. And aside from the whole "no one cares about a poor cute orphan schoolgirl" noir setting, no obtrusively unrealistic parts.

But suddenly starting from the second chapter of volume 2, the assassins are hot young women who have some insane or fetishistic obsession with Alice / killing, who is constantly taking clothing damage, and as of the most recent chapter might be threatened into performing some fetish acts? With the irresistible (to mangaka) cliche of (spoiler for a plot development in early volume 2)
You could compare this manga to Karakuri Circus in many ways. The early conflicts are great, (spoiler for overall tone the series has started to take, roles characters play, and predictability)

Still, the first 6 chapters were gold, it's just the last 3 that have been mediocre. Anyway, this manga starts out quite awesome, and is still pretty good, but it's turning more and more into Cynthia the Mission, a bit hard to take seriously. But by volume 4 it at least hasn't gone downhill enough to be canceled, so I expect the story to not fall below a certain level of quality. I'm not dropping it when the next chapter promises to be the assassin version of Nana to Kaoru anyway...

... Last updated on October 21st, 2011, 9:54am