The Horror of Akuma na Eros
Hmm... It's been getting long inbetween posts, hasn't it? I should really do something productive... but instead I'm going to rant because that's just what I do.
What am I going to rant about today? A horrible trainwreck of a manga called Akuma na Eros. Details of this attrocity can be found here. Why did I even start reading this in the first place? I was going down Anime Eden's list of completed manga they had stored. It was only four volumes long. Even if it was bad, I knew I could finish it. I just hadn't anticipated how bad.
So yeah. Sakurai Miu is our generic heroine for this story. She has no redeemable personality traits or personality traits in general for that matter. Her only accomplishments are defiling Christianity and having sex with Satan. But more to that later. Basically, Miu wants this one crush of hers - this weird religious classmate - to notice her and, after praying to God with no apparent success, finds a book of dark magic in a random backwater bookstore. After she buys it, because they always buy it, she preforms a ritual and actually summons Satan. That's right, Satan.
I would like to take the time now to point out that I don't think this mangaka knows pretty much anything about Christianity. I think she skipped all of the particulars and honed in on the fact that since Lucifer used to be an angel, he therefore must be redeemable. And what happens when evil characters are redeemable in Shoujo? That's right; they up being bishounen. Don't get me wrong; I have nothing against evil characters being sexy. My old computer had Lucifer/Kira from Angel Sanctuary on its desktop for the longest time, and just until recently I had a really awesome picture of Alucard from Hellsing for a desktop. (And don't even get me started on young Walter.) It's just... so many times in shoujo manga, bishounen lose their spines. And it saddens me.
Also, I don't really think that this author gets the whole idea behind Satan. You know, the epitomy of all evil? Because in this manga, he's pretty much reduced into a nonthreatening pretty-boy youkai. In fact, I don't really think she gets the concept of God either, but that's a whole 'nother story. Moving on with the "plot."
So, Miu summons Satan and eventually forms a pact with him. In exchange for her virginity, Satan will make Miu's crush fall in love with her. Which I don't really understand because I thought "lust" would be more of his thing but... yeah. At this point, the manga was already trainwrecking, but I just couldn't stop because it was that corny. But... it got even worse.
For some reason Satan decides to drive in the whole shoujo-ness of it all, and disguises himself as Miu's brother and joins the school, making Deus Ex Machina with everyone's memories. Stuff happens. There are jealous haters because there are always jealous haters of the main heroine. There's stupid drama, and then the inevitable happens. Miu starts getting a crush on Satan *headdesk* Of course, this all culminates until Satan and Miu start making out in a chapel (WTF!? O.o), and Miu's crush/thing barges in and plunges a sword through Satan's chest. It goes through the right side... and in the next panel it comes out the left. And in the panel after that, after Satan has taken it out all blood and tears in his shirt have vanished. By this time I'm not knowing whether to laugh or to cry.
Then Satan says that only two people have injured him before, and they were God and the Archangel Michael... and suddenly Miu's religious crush/thing turns into a wigged-out version of Michael... and I can't stop laughing. XD Even now I shudder at the memory.
Of course, things continue to take a turn for the worse after Miu pledges her eternal love for Satan, Michael says he can't fight against love, leaves, and the two proceed to have sex in the chapel. (WTF!? O.o) At this point, my mind just couldn't take the declarations of "true love" anymore. The words just morphed into "lust" as soon as they reached my brain because that's what the whole relationship was, lust.
Then Satan gets a mental call of "Mrs. Peel. Mr. Satan. You're needed." (And no one probably got that except for me.) So the two travel down to hell, and it turns out that the call was from other than one of Satan's sex partners. Miu is shocked that Satan would do something like have sex casually, while I am appalled by the character designs of the various demons that all look like they stepped out from some really strange emo rock concert. There's more sex that's passed off as love, and Satan's sex partner causes some drama that's extremely annoying and is only there really to glorify Miu as the "nice" heroine.
Eventually, and this is in the last volume, thank God, Satan decides he wants Miu to stay with him in hell and to do so, she must die and cast away her previous life. While she's doing this, Satan's old sex partner kills her, Michael takes her soul up to heaven (WTF?! O.o), and Satan kills his old sex partner in revenge. Satan decides he won't lose her so he invades heaven, which is extremely easy in the manga despite protestations that it isn't since he just pops up there. Meanwhile, Miu decides that heaven isn't heaven if Satan's not there. Head meet desk. Nice to meet you. Michael tries to come onto Miu (NOOOO!!! Isn't anything sacred anymore?!), but is stopped by Satan. There's cliche and annoying heroic sacrifice and an unclimatic ending, and Miu and Satan both escape. The epilogue contains a scene where Miu is able to continue to spend time in the human world and hell, and various short stories. Don't ask me how this works when everything for the past two volumes has been contradicting it. Apparently it just does.
I think it is necessary to say that my mind felt so contaminated by this manga that afterwards I had to clutch my Angel Sanctuary volumes close to me and change my desktop from Alucard and Integra to the four Archangels from, you guessed it, Angel Sanctuary. Every time a new biblical character was introduced, a part of my soul died, and that's never a good thing. I suppose that I must be happy that Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel were spared the torment that Michael had to endure though.
So yeah. Between Satan falling in love with shoujo bimbo #203959 and the massive Christianity mutilation... I have no love for this series. Whatsoever. I'd recommend it if you're looking for some unintentional lulz or a trainwreck that you can snark at, but other than that it deserves to burn. Horribly. If you're looking for an awesome near-sacrailigious manga that makes you question your faith at times, I recommend Angel Sanctuary.
So, in total.
Plot/Originality: 1 out of 5
Realistic Characters: 1 out of 5
Lulz Inducing: 4 out of 5
Snark Worthy: 5 out of 5
Engrossing: 2 out of 5
Re-readability: 1 out of 5
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Total: 2 out of 5 (And that's being lenient.)
What am I going to rant about today? A horrible trainwreck of a manga called Akuma na Eros. Details of this attrocity can be found here. Why did I even start reading this in the first place? I was going down Anime Eden's list of completed manga they had stored. It was only four volumes long. Even if it was bad, I knew I could finish it. I just hadn't anticipated how bad.
So yeah. Sakurai Miu is our generic heroine for this story. She has no redeemable personality traits or personality traits in general for that matter. Her only accomplishments are defiling Christianity and having sex with Satan. But more to that later. Basically, Miu wants this one crush of hers - this weird religious classmate - to notice her and, after praying to God with no apparent success, finds a book of dark magic in a random backwater bookstore. After she buys it, because they always buy it, she preforms a ritual and actually summons Satan. That's right, Satan.
I would like to take the time now to point out that I don't think this mangaka knows pretty much anything about Christianity. I think she skipped all of the particulars and honed in on the fact that since Lucifer used to be an angel, he therefore must be redeemable. And what happens when evil characters are redeemable in Shoujo? That's right; they up being bishounen. Don't get me wrong; I have nothing against evil characters being sexy. My old computer had Lucifer/Kira from Angel Sanctuary on its desktop for the longest time, and just until recently I had a really awesome picture of Alucard from Hellsing for a desktop. (And don't even get me started on young Walter.) It's just... so many times in shoujo manga, bishounen lose their spines. And it saddens me.
Also, I don't really think that this author gets the whole idea behind Satan. You know, the epitomy of all evil? Because in this manga, he's pretty much reduced into a nonthreatening pretty-boy youkai. In fact, I don't really think she gets the concept of God either, but that's a whole 'nother story. Moving on with the "plot."
So, Miu summons Satan and eventually forms a pact with him. In exchange for her virginity, Satan will make Miu's crush fall in love with her. Which I don't really understand because I thought "lust" would be more of his thing but... yeah. At this point, the manga was already trainwrecking, but I just couldn't stop because it was that corny. But... it got even worse.
For some reason Satan decides to drive in the whole shoujo-ness of it all, and disguises himself as Miu's brother and joins the school, making Deus Ex Machina with everyone's memories. Stuff happens. There are jealous haters because there are always jealous haters of the main heroine. There's stupid drama, and then the inevitable happens. Miu starts getting a crush on Satan *headdesk* Of course, this all culminates until Satan and Miu start making out in a chapel (WTF!? O.o), and Miu's crush/thing barges in and plunges a sword through Satan's chest. It goes through the right side... and in the next panel it comes out the left. And in the panel after that, after Satan has taken it out all blood and tears in his shirt have vanished. By this time I'm not knowing whether to laugh or to cry.
Then Satan says that only two people have injured him before, and they were God and the Archangel Michael... and suddenly Miu's religious crush/thing turns into a wigged-out version of Michael... and I can't stop laughing. XD Even now I shudder at the memory.
Of course, things continue to take a turn for the worse after Miu pledges her eternal love for Satan, Michael says he can't fight against love, leaves, and the two proceed to have sex in the chapel. (WTF!? O.o) At this point, my mind just couldn't take the declarations of "true love" anymore. The words just morphed into "lust" as soon as they reached my brain because that's what the whole relationship was, lust.
Then Satan gets a mental call of "Mrs. Peel. Mr. Satan. You're needed." (And no one probably got that except for me.) So the two travel down to hell, and it turns out that the call was from other than one of Satan's sex partners. Miu is shocked that Satan would do something like have sex casually, while I am appalled by the character designs of the various demons that all look like they stepped out from some really strange emo rock concert. There's more sex that's passed off as love, and Satan's sex partner causes some drama that's extremely annoying and is only there really to glorify Miu as the "nice" heroine.
Eventually, and this is in the last volume, thank God, Satan decides he wants Miu to stay with him in hell and to do so, she must die and cast away her previous life. While she's doing this, Satan's old sex partner kills her, Michael takes her soul up to heaven (WTF?! O.o), and Satan kills his old sex partner in revenge. Satan decides he won't lose her so he invades heaven, which is extremely easy in the manga despite protestations that it isn't since he just pops up there. Meanwhile, Miu decides that heaven isn't heaven if Satan's not there. Head meet desk. Nice to meet you. Michael tries to come onto Miu (NOOOO!!! Isn't anything sacred anymore?!), but is stopped by Satan. There's cliche and annoying heroic sacrifice and an unclimatic ending, and Miu and Satan both escape. The epilogue contains a scene where Miu is able to continue to spend time in the human world and hell, and various short stories. Don't ask me how this works when everything for the past two volumes has been contradicting it. Apparently it just does.
I think it is necessary to say that my mind felt so contaminated by this manga that afterwards I had to clutch my Angel Sanctuary volumes close to me and change my desktop from Alucard and Integra to the four Archangels from, you guessed it, Angel Sanctuary. Every time a new biblical character was introduced, a part of my soul died, and that's never a good thing. I suppose that I must be happy that Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel were spared the torment that Michael had to endure though.
So yeah. Between Satan falling in love with shoujo bimbo #203959 and the massive Christianity mutilation... I have no love for this series. Whatsoever. I'd recommend it if you're looking for some unintentional lulz or a trainwreck that you can snark at, but other than that it deserves to burn. Horribly. If you're looking for an awesome near-sacrailigious manga that makes you question your faith at times, I recommend Angel Sanctuary.
So, in total.
Plot/Originality: 1 out of 5
Realistic Characters: 1 out of 5
Lulz Inducing: 4 out of 5
Snark Worthy: 5 out of 5
Engrossing: 2 out of 5
Re-readability: 1 out of 5
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Total: 2 out of 5 (And that's being lenient.)