[Egao, Egao Everywhere]

Synopsis:

When Wischtech threatened to invade the fiefs of Szaalanden, the Emperor dispatched fourteen youths. Of these, the Seven Heroes halted the invasion to herald a time of prosperity while the four Lances of Betrayal were supposedly defeated.

Two decades later, the Lances of Betrayal have reappeared and formed a bandit militia near the frontier fief Gormbark. A man with the black sword and a scar over his left eye slays an entire troop of that militia. He is identified as a boy, Kóinzell, and becomes as much an object of fear as of hope even as his own past, motivations, and purpose are a mystery to those he meets in his travel.

So I just read and eventually caught up with this manga. I'm not even sure how I got through the first couple of chapters because it's full of random sex scene and a minor case of boob fetish. They were very brief enough for me to forget about them fast and laugh about it. Knowing that it was obviously a marketing to get male readers into it, I thankfully reached to the eventual depth of the story.

I love it in all honesty. It starts out incredibly fast-paced. It really just starts and ends an event in one chapter (and srsly random sex scene it's funny there was even a quick sexpository.) Then suddenly something was revealed then it all makes sense and my expectations from the premise just skyrocketed. I realized the mangaka was merely rushing through the introductions to ready the stage for something epic.

I heard a lot of people compare this to Berserk, a "newer" version of it. Berserk art kind of scares me so I think I'm sticking with Übel Blatt for now.

For some reason, I doubt anyone else read this so I'm not going to spoil much. But this is must-read for those who like character development (though it doesn't seem to be happening at all at the start), sympathetic villains (though they don't start showing up at all at the start, but the manga does better eventually about it. It made me teary-eyed), suspense (because you're rooting for Kóinzell), interweaving plots (diverse cast of pretty realistic characters with their own motives and thoughts not referring to Kóinzell's peers but to the soldiers you'll see), war, politics, and the-world-isn't-black-and-white (happens pretty early on. It's what made me fall in love with the manga because it was just...complicated). You really just need to get past the Lances of Betrayal arc at the start aka volume 0 (you still need to read it though) because it's not what it seems.

The best part is that it looks like it gets updated once in a while! So I'll just sit here alone in the thread and see if I've managed to sell the manga to someone.

[darth vader]

gimme a link

[redox-kun]

amb tanz: professional manga reviewer