The Best to Worst Ranked Manga: Part Three

Welcome to Part Three, where I tackle the next two series on my list:

No. 49: Chainsaw Man (with a score of 8.71)
No. 14,622: Momo no Musume! (with a score of 5.42)

For the first article in this series, please see here.

Chainsaw Man

With a name like Chainsaw Man, I should have expected this to fit more into the horror genre then I initially did upon starting the series. I was admittedly a little fooled by this series having been originally published in Shounen Jump (home to other big titles such as One Piece, and Naruto), but Chainsaw Man sits more on the horror than action side of things. As such it was an unexpected surprise when I expected to read an action orientated series about a teenager who turns into a chainsaw demon, for it to turn into a surprisingly nuanced character study and introduce some pretty mind-bending concepts.

The series starts off fairly formulaic, with the protagonist Denji making a contract with the devil and becoming the titular Chainsaw Man, before then joining an organisation of other devil hunters. Things are fairly standard fare for a while but somewhere around the halfway point the series takes a sudden twist into more psychological horror. The final villain is easily predicted but the journey to get there and the fallout from their actions really packs a punch. The body count is high but the series surprisingly manages to end on something of a happy note, with the promise of more to come in the future with these first 11 volumes making up the first ‘arc’ in the series.

With an upcoming anime which is sure to be a big hit, this is a series well worth checking out and despite having a bit of a slow start, once the engine finally revved up on this one it became something truly memorable. It’s understandable to see why this series has gotten so popular and been hyped so much and whilst I don’t think it’ll be for everyone it does reward readers willing to commit past the first first few chapters.

Momo no Musume!

Onto the worst rated manga and compared to last month, there is definitely a clear distinction in quality between these two – for starter’s, Momo no Musume! sits at only one short chapter and as such what little story is sparse and quick. Interestingly, Boichi, the author of this work has penned the much more popular shounen series, Dr Stone, but it’s easy to see why this short manga has been practically forgotten. Originally written in 2012 a good four years before Dr Stone, it is actually the author’s fourteenth work.

The manga follows a teacher who accidentally ends up adopting the two high school daughters of a woman he marries whilst he’s blind drunk. The day after his drunken night, he wakes up to find his new wife has disappeared and left him to look after her two daughters. What follows is a comedic series of events which inevitably just revolves around the teacher and his two new ‘daughters’ life together which ultimately ends up with the two of them forming a more… intimate relationship with him. If that wasn’t problematic enough, it turns out he is also their new classroom teacher.

The manga’s art is fairly average and tonally it sits more on the comedic side, with lots of caricatures’ and deformed chibis throughout which makes the whole manga feel fairly juvenile. Plotwise there’s not a lot to say either – this series is borderline porn and the chapter ends abruptly with no real resolution to the situation the characters are in. Ultimately this manga just felt like the author had a ridiculous idea and ran with it for a chapter before realising he had nowhere else to go with it.