Overall, the story accomplished what it set out to do, with the poster character's journey from start to finish. Fear is one character the author does right, and it shows. Frankly speaking, if her character was screwed up, the story would not have been nearly as good. To do this, the character has to be likable and endearing. Yes, Fear is the resident Tsundere, but since when are tsunderes automatically considered a bad character type. It depends on the execution. Also, Fear has other qualities that don't limit her to the character type. Naturally, the story follows her journey to lift her curse while meeting an assortment of people and gradually learning to become apart of a family, school class and neighborhood. Her arc conclusion is very fitting and heartwarming.
As for how the story spreads out. The volumes usually consist with one incident each, beginning and concluding in the same volume introduced with a few exceptions. With the conclusion of each incident, Fear learns more about the world and establishes relations with a character introduced in that volume.
Now, hold on, I keep mentioning Fear, the poster girl of the story. While she is an important character, isn't there an actual protagonist of this story? Yes, there is, and he's one of the reasons why despite the earlier praise, I rate the story a six. As much of the good is present, there's plenty of bad too, and very notable that it can't be ignored.
Our protagonist is Haruaki Yachi. While the protagonist, he has no reason to be such. Haruaki rarely does anything of plot relevance. He's also the generic MC, who's kind to a fault, and has no personality. Whether it's Pakuaki Yamimagari, the school superintendent, Maximilian Pendragon, one of the token classmate characters Taizou, or even the restaurant worker guy that later Kukuri has a crush on, they all have more personality than this guy. If that wasn't enough, his kindness includes scolding Fear or Kirika, because they risked themselves too much, even though he'll risk himself when his powerlessness gets to him.
For instance in volume 5, he whacks Fear on the head a few times, until she stops him, even lampshading it as domestic abuse. What she did wrong in his eyes? She used her torture instruments on herself. To explain, Pakuaki made a deal with Fear that he would give up on Kirika, if she let him see her torture tools in action. He even has Alice Bivario who used to be an enemy captured at the time for Fear to use as the subject. However, even if she was an enemy, Fear refused to use her tools on someone else, so making a compromise she subjected herself. She could have tortured Bivario, or could have refused, and basically leave Kirika to be taken. However, she made the best choice possible without compromising her morals or abandoning her friend, but does Haruaki respect that? No, he whines about did she think about how he would feel seeing her hurting herself. In the same volume, he does the same thing to Kirika after she purposefully gets hurt to stop Un Izoey, despite the fact she's wearing a cursed bondage suit of immortality, and it's her choice of how she uses it. Unlike Fear, she's happy he's getting angry for her sake and scolding her, when there a multitude of better ways to express that without Haruaki coming off as unlikeable and a hypocrite. In volume three, he got loose from being handcuffed by forcible pulling the hand out, naturally with the skin too. The examples are not limited to that case. Again, kind to a fault to the point of hypocrisy.
The only reason Haruaki is the protagonist, instead of Fear is because of the harem. To be honest, it's just a lame attempt to get fanservice and common genre cliches in the story. That's all it serves. You have the love interests get jealous of the slightest bit of touch between the protagonist and one of them or another girl. They're divided into classic character types. The author plays up every known cliche and in the most annoying way possible. I already mentioned Fear being the tsundere. However, we also have the childhood friend with big "assets". Next, you have the class representative. Unlike Fear, these two never get any development outside being love interests. Kirika's biggest development was to stop being content with watching from afar, and seriously enter the battlefield with her rivals. I really wish I was joking, but no, that's really the only big development for her. Despite the fact she's used to introduce the Lab Chief's nation, nothing else comes from her about it once she leaves the organization. Silver-lining, it brings in another character Un Izoey, who takes up Kirika's position as the connection to that side. IMO, she's one of the best characters of the story. Konoha just doesn't change. Period.
All these fanservice and harem cliches mix in with serious plots of the story, but they don't mesh well. Some of these lighthearted situations come in rather less than ideal parts. For example, it's a high stake situation; the tension is so thick you can cut it. Then suddenly something ecchi happens for no reason, and the tension is all lost. Why can't I get any consistency here? It doesn't help the fanservice isn't arousing simply from text descriptions, and the comedy from harem situations are stale. The fact the same type of situations keep happening over and over doesn't help. Any reader will quickly get tired of it.
IMHO, Fear shouldn't even have been in this harem. She would have served better as a sister-like character for Haruaki. Being in the harem detracted from her character. There's this plot thread, where she wonders if she's capable of feelings of love. It develops in the later volumes that she wants to seriously search for the indulgence disk to confirm those feelings. Why does it become a problem? It didn't start out that way. Fear's main goal is to lift her curse. The indulgence disk help by sealing away her mechanisms of torture and execution. Previously, she wanted to fully blend in with society, and experience human concepts of comradeship. However, since she's part of the harem, hence destined to fall in love with Haruaki, this later becomes wanting to confirm these feelings of hers, and wanting to stay by Haruaki's side forever. That her previous desire of developing comrade-ship with others gets lost in the process is what makes this a huge problem.
It gets worse when in volume 14, Fear gets sidelined to focus on Konoha. Many problems occur in this volume. One, Fear's character backtracks. She's driven to commit suicide again. Something she hasn't tried since the very first volume. The reason was mental and emotional turmoil over Konoha's disappearance. Konoha was reawakened as Muramasa by Nurashaaki, who shaved the last 200 years of memory. Right now, Konoha doesn't remember anyone from two hundred years ago. Plus, she'll never regain those memories, because the cursed tool doesn't erase memories, but reverts a person to previous state, meaning right now Konoha is the Konoha from 200 years ago. Haruaki also contributes to it by acting with tunnel vision to save Konoha, willing to work with a former enemy of the Knight's Dominion, Lilyhowel, and is being trained by her to fatally injure someone. Something he's never done before and what the girls want to prevent. He's single-mindedly following a plan the former enemy devised, and believing the the cursed tool she's giving him to use does what she says. It doesn't, and her real plan factors in his death. However, he's so focused on saving Konoha he never questions anything. Kirika becomes too wrapped up in wanting an answer to her confession that she fully supports Haruaki in getting back Konoha, so afterwards, he can focus on that. Fear is one of the few still sane enough to notice that very serious things are wrong here. However, again, her character regresses to the point that she loses her blunt tongue to tell off people when they're doing something stupid. She forgets the other friends she's made over previous volumes that she could ask for advice or assistance. She's overcome with such disparity over the current events that she faces Nurashaaki alone trying to get herself killed, and would have if the other person still sane, Kuroe, had not come saved her. When Haruaki finds out the state she's in and what she did, in his P.O.V., he found what she did understandable but also foolish. WELL, WHO DO FREAKING THINK IS PARTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT!? AND HE STILL WANTS TO GO THROUGH WITH THE ORIGINAL PLAN! It took a massive amount of plot armor to have him survive the final encounter. Also, Konoha, once saved, doesn't get any new development at all, other than a haircut, making the whole incident almost completely pointless, if not for the two indulgence disk retrieved.
Because of this lack of developing or digressing characters, the author has to dumb down the final arc's antagonists, so the protagonists are able to win. Particularly, he dumbs down the lead Auxiliary of the Knight's Dominion Taciturn Chatterbox, spending much text about her taking the school's student and faculty hostage, and later, not using them. Also, in the end, he has the heroes win via Dues Ex (though it was a very awesome Dues Ex; Gurren Lagann fans will be happy).
It's a story you're going to need plenty of patience to read. In order to get to the parts that make the story worth reading, you're going to have to shuffle through some sand. I recommend it to those who won't mind the ecchi and overused cliches.
(-33)
