I read all the chapter until the end, and sadly I have to give it 3/10
I read many different kind of manga , and Ares definitely falls into the category of dark medieval fantasy genre. First thing, if you want to read a really good dark medieval story , read : Berserk, Vinland Saga, and Historie . That's some perfect example of how a really gritty dark medieval manga should be written and drawn. When I read this manga , it has :
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Bad dialogue
I don't know why, but the dialogue in this manga is just plain shallow and weak. There are so many conversation that is just waste of space, not giving any useful information, and just plain nothing.
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Bad artwork
This is why I mostly don't like korean manga. The art sucks ass , I am having hard time to differentiate face in between the character. The mangaka is a fucking lazy, and doesn't spend time on drawing character. Especially if you really looking at the war section. There are so many characters that look exactly the same, you cannot tell which one is A , which one is B.
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Bad fighting scene
The way the fight scene drawn, was kinda confused me too. I cannot make sense when I tried to read between first column, and the next column. The fighting scene doesn't seems to be in cohesion together. I didnt understand if this particular character getting stab or slash from vertical or horizontal , or diagonal. There's also lack of "death face" of the character that got killed , the mangaka solved the problem by just drawing every grunt with full helmet so he can have the excuse to not draw the agony face. And really, it kills the hype. I never really get immersed with ANY battle scene throughout the story.
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The mangaka tried so hard to make the characters to be cool, but failed hard , because apparently the characters cannot look cool without smoking or atleast have something to suck in between their lips.
This is seriously pisses me off, people are really smoking while in they are in the war killing people? Even in one battle scene, there was this character that tried so hard to be cool by picking up his "cigarette" even though he was in the bad situation? give me a break. There are a lot of way to make character cool, and the worst way to do it was by giving the character "cigarette" to make them cool. It really ticked me off because the credibility of the character just went down dramatically because of this shit. From war veteran persona to become high school delinquent persona.
SPOILER SECTIONS HERE, BEWARE:
5. Weak ass plot, the mangaka made the plot as it goes .
There is no really good plot in this manga, everything is predictable. Even the main antagonist ( Michael ) had a weak motivation as to why he went in the killing rampage , and it never really gets explained until the end. Yes, he protected Ares , but why killed all the citizen and used his soldier very inhumanly? What made Michael went a drastic change of his character from being neutral evil, to chaotic evil? there was no any single explanation to that. The mangaka just wanted the plot to go that way without proper planning what kind of background motivation to make Michael to do what he did after he left Temple Merchenary. After that, the story went downhill to the battle of attrition without any good motive than just : I want to rule the world. Its just plain weak , dear korean mangaka.
6. Naive, gullible protagonist
Not that I hate naive character like Ares. But in this particular case, this is how you make a BAD naive protagonist. Ares is just plain shallow, there is nothing memorable about this character. Even in the last two battles , he is still being a pacifist idiot when he supposed to be taking his revenge against his nation, his people, and his master. There's too much misguided chivalry being committed by this character. it really getting into my nerves.
I do understand the question: why do I kept reading this manga even though I said it was bad? Well, its like watching bad soap opera drama, you hate it but at the same time you want to know the ending, so I kept reading it while still being pissed off just so I can get done with it , know the ending, and not looking / reading this manga ever again. In conclusion, do not read this manga.
(-3)
(+12)
