Interesting story so far...
A policeman with the looks of a middle schooler trying his best to fight crime even though his looks work against him.
Quite funny ,the female police officers treat him like a toy or a doll to mess around with since he resembles a cute kid,and has a hard time getting anyone to take him seriously.
Though it still has a seinen feel to it with its mature topics related to drugs and child abuse.

This manga was cruel to me. For the first time manga almost made me cry because of....happiness? Like wtf! I never cry for those reasons. I feel toyed with. I may not have cried, but to be pushed to a teary eyes...... Anyway, it ended the way I expected it to. Shibatora is enjoyable and does explore many moral concerning teens, but most manga are like that. Naruto is nonstop morals and integrity. Shibatora is a little deeper though and not recommended to all.

What I learned
1. Behind every sinister child is a sinister adult
2. Believe and you shall achieve
3. Everyone can change, but not everyone is blessed with equal opportunities to change
4. Children are cruel
5. Shibata Taketora is AWESOME and a GREAT person of saint status!

... Last updated on June 28th, 2014, 5:38pm

I like it a lot. Plenty of action and humor and some surprisng plot twists. Also a little mysterious what with his unrevealed past and everything... and every character's so interesting. The humor parts crack me up!

This one jumped the tracks for me. The beginning was really enjoyable with a balanced mix of humor and seriousness. Later on however in volume 8 (maybe 9 or10 in the raws? can't remember) it drops the lighter elements and humor in favor of mostly heavy drama and serious topics taken to extremes. I can't say to much without spoilers, but the shift robbed the enjoyment and even the feeling of realism from the story for me. There was too much over-drama and too many things happen to the people Shibatora knows for the story to keep its flow and impact.

At first, I thought it would be a GTO clone type of manga, but it really finds its own way as the plot develops. Shibatora might be a naive and idealistic cop, with issues about his appearance, but he has the determination to stick with his ideals no matter which situation he is involved in.
I'm looking forward for more releases, and as well, to know about his past.

... Last updated on July 21st, 2008, 7:36am

The manga touches upon a lot of problems faced by today's youth: drug abuse, bullying, dysfunctional families, gang violence, and school pressure. It starts off lighthearted, and while the main character carries that tone throughout, the topics it touches are all very serious and dark. On one hand, the main character can be thought of as naive and foolish; but those traits are exactly what make him likeable and helps him gain the trust of others. I really enjoyed the entire cast of characters, their back stories and their interwoven connectedness. The author weaves a great plot that involves everyone's skills and strong points.

The realist in me is deeply cynical towards many parts of this manga, where people just change to do "good". As some other comments say, it does get preachy, with many scenes where there are tears streaming down someone or others face. These parts were definitely overdramatized. That being said, I still agree with the core: sometimes people are just thrown into unfortunate circumstances and don't know the way out, they really just need a helping hand to guide them.

Overall, while this manga paints a cruel world, it's extremely optimistic about people's true nature and intentions. Decent art, enjoyable plot and likeable characters. Not much character development for the main character (except that the audience knows more about this past), but that wasn't the focus of the manga in the first place. The focus was the ability for someone to make a difference, and change people's lives. So there was definitely character development for the side characters.

art: is pretty good, everything looks well drawn, worked out nice
plot: the twists are ok, not bad at all. The characters are easy to like, their skills and powers well shown, you "believe" the story and then it hits you. The plot is sometimes so constructed that it gets hilarious,i personally hate manga/manwha/stories wre enemies have to be the enemies for the sake of the conflict, when they have no real reason to be suspicious or an enemy at all, if this isnt explained well the story just gets hilarious, this is a DRAMA story very much so, if u like me need convincing characters and even more convincing enemies be not surprised with this one
i would give this series a much, much, much higher rating if it would convince me of the reasons for these suspicions but its just unbelievable at times (see spoiler <.<")
the only thing that kept me going are the characters which i started to like



... Last updated on June 23rd, 2012, 6:37pm

By the author of Kunimitsu no Matsuri (I've read over half of that and i love it), this manga's good. It touches various serious topics with a light-hearted art. The main character's lovable and despite his childish appearances, he's a full grown adult. Like kunimitsu, he's an idealistic man of some sort, but he's smarter and more mature. Some of the storylines may be a little bit shounen-ny but it's executed beautifully. I want to comment more about the story but my language skill's doesn't allow me, ha-ha. With 39 chapters scanlated, i hope that i can read it more in the future. I gave it 10 because i want the rating to go up.

... Last updated on January 13th, 2011, 9:27am

This is absolutely a masterpiece. Well, at least from my point of view. All the talks about morals, and nowadays problems caused and happened to youngsters this days are pretty well covered in this series. The unbelievably kind main character also gives quite a lot plus point to the whole manga itself. Well, this is totally recommended for mystery manga lovers.

Starts off great, but by the end of the series it devolved into a overly dramatic (though violent) morality play, full of "life lessons". I half expected Smokey the Bear to show up and tell me to help stop forest fires.