As you know if you read Okazu regularly, I have been following the Light Novel series by Mato Sato, The Executioner and Her Way of Life, and the resulting anime. I haven’t, however, had a chance to read the manga at all and wanted to see how it holds up. Since I know the story, I felt it was perfectly acceptable to jump in at any volume. Thanks to the generosity of Yen Press, I have a review copy for just that purpose. So, here I am, beginning with The Executioner and Her Way of Life Manga, Volume 5, with character designs by nilitsu, illustrated by Ryo Mitsuya.
Also, as you may remember, I have not been a fan of the art for the Light Novels, as they until recent volumes favored portraiture over illustration – a common enough issue in Light Novels and artist alleys alike. Overall, I find the manga artists for Light Novels have to do a great deal of work – especially in early arcs – to build up the look and feel of a world. I say especially, because in many cases, Light Novels that began as webnovels aren’t really fully featured in the writing, either. But now, having gotten to the 8th volume of this series in Light Novel and finding both story and character settling in to a fairly rich narrative, how would it feel to step backwards to those early days?
It wasn’t bad, honestly.
Mitsuya-sensei does a very solid job of conveying both the horror of the Human Error “Evil” and the action of the fight, in a way that the narrative did not fully communicate. The art still does not portray Menou as an unusual beauty, although Akari’s chest is portrayed as prominent. I do think that going forward the use of the word “boobs” is going to have to be a point off, though. Like “spicy” for a book with sex scenes, breasts, chest, decolletage even, but boobs will always feel infantile to me. As does the portrayal of said breast tissue moving in ways that they certainly do not naturally move. That said, due to the original character designs being followed pretty closely, it was easy to recognize everyone on sight.
A story like this, with a great deal of fighting, action and dramatic spellcasting really seems to do better with a more visual medium. I had enjoyed the anime, which did a decent job of paring down some of the early story building. Jumping into the manga at this point, might not be something a new reader could do, but I was able to skip a lot of the clumsiness of the early arcs. This story still is an isekai, but it is not just a “game world” or a simple reflection of generic feudal life. The history and politics – and the magic use – in this world are worth delving in to.
Ratings:
Art – 7
Story – 7 (not my favorite arc, the story will get better from this point on)
Characters – 7 People’s motivations are still a bit muddy, something else that will become clearer as the story progresses
Service – Besides the aforementioned breasts, shockingly little in this volume
Yuri – 4 Momo’s feelings for Menou, toxic as they are, Menou’s feelings for Akati, as unfocused as they are
Overall – 7, but I hope to move quickly past this arc into the Mechanical Society arc, which I quite liked.
