Inferno

I kind of have a hard time deciding if I enjoy this manga or not, even though it held my interest enough to continue reading and I plan to continue doing so, and I think it’s actually okay-ish.

It seems that the bond between the main characters is meant to be the draw of the manga, but I have rather mixed feelings about that. The main reason being that I can see that the characters care for one another and seem to have a strong bond, but I can’t really feel anything about it. It’s like I’m being told they have a strong bond, but it doesn’t really evoke much emotion from me nor do I truly understand how it even came to be that way, or fully get behind the reasoning for it, which kind of disconnects me from the impact of the happenings emotionally. Somewhat like seeing scenes of “my life belongs to you” etc and wondering what made the characters feel so strongly about things... because I don’t see it. Well, there are some parts here and there that make me appreciate their interactions and bonds more, but not nearly enough for me to be satisfied with their behavior.

The characters themselves are okay. The character development is a bit of a hit or miss for me, though. Noel reminded me of a capable butler character at first (like black butler’s Sebastian, except he really likes his master(father) here for reasons I can’t actually understand well), but luckily it seems that there’s more that meets the eye with him as well. The characters in general don’t really feel deep, but due to their different positions and roles in their story they evoke enough interest for me to want to know their actions. Not really in a I-enjoy-the-character-way, but more of I-want-to-see-how-they-affect-the-story-way though.

I’m probably most interested in seeing how the story plays out. Less because the story is engaging but more because I appreciate some of the plot points and possibilities, and hope to see what goes from there. The extreme class(?) divide, mafia setting, plotting behind the scenes, shadiness all around, and the whole strange illness setting is rather interesting. So far there’s only teasing and setting up for future events, so I can’t tell yet how things will wrap up, but I hope it will be able to tie up the plot points satisfactorily because these are some rather interesting things to cover. To be honest I’m not expecting much, but I’m still reading rather hopefully because there’s some good potential to be had from this, which alone is enough to have me interested in reading on (along with some action here and there)

The art is nice, probably the one thing I can confidently rate this manga positively on because I really dig the art style.. and is the reason why I picked it up in the first place.

Overall, it’s a manga that brings up some interesting plot points, but doesn’t really seem to be able to use them to tell an engaging story so far yet. It’s pretty, and has some action, but halfway in and it’s still hard to tell if it’ll be good or not. It’s one of those that may or may not be worth your time... so I suggest you wait for other reviews with more translated chapters out and see if it manages to tell a good story by the end of it. For now, it’s somewhat enjoyable to see how the plot plays out, but you might also easily find yourself losing interest and questioning if things are even heading in a proper direction. Regardless, this has some qualities that might appeal to you so no harm trying out a few chapters.