I picked up this series a couple years ago at the library and since then it's become one of my favorite manga series ever. (Right behind D.Gray-Man, which is also amazing! Go check it out!!) At the beginning it's very playful and fun with some innuendos thrown about here and there, but it get's extremely intense. The character and plot build up is very similar to shonen manga like Blue Exorcist and D.Gray-Man. All of which have a have a fun and goofy beginning that eventually builds up to become extremely serious to the point of self reflection. I absolutely love stories like that so if you liked the manga for those two, you'd love magi. (The Blue Exorcist manga is way better than the anime btw).


Story:

Like I said, it's got an amazing build up. It's very friendly and bubbly at the beginning, but towards the end it gets super serious. It's heavily influenced religion and politics creating controversy through different perspectives shown in the manga. It really reflects politics in real life where it almost seems like an opinion sounds amazing, but then another opinion is told which makes you completely contemplate your likening in the previous one and the cycle continues. It's very eye opening and makes you much more aware of everything that's going on around you. Magi's story, plot, controversy along with it's extremely good representation of people's different views and the research that must have gone into it is all terrific. (I really wish the anime kept going because it just started getting good with the Magnostadt arc)

Art:

The simplistic, unique, bubbly sort of art style holds extraordinary use of detail to bring out an intense scenes and movement throughout the series. A little bit similar to the dramatic faces used in Assassination Classroom (the manga, I'm not sure about the anime), Magi uses gruesome facial features or other characteristics besides the face to emphasize certain characters and scenes. My only problem is that with adult faces (mainly Sinbad) seem to be a bit wonky in the volumes and on the covers, and out of everything from the manga, I do like the improvement. (but yea *cough* volume 35 *cough*) Otherwise it's great.


Character:

I basically talked about the characters when talking about the plot and art. All I'm going to add is that the characters in magi really bring out the fact that we are human, and remind us readers of the basicness of being human and our needs, wants and naturalness. Besides that, the development is great and although I don't really like Sinbad (he's hella scary!!), his character is extremely well done and is the face of what I talked about with the plot.


Overall I enjoyed it immensly. I have about five more volumes to go, but I've been reading it for years (I wait for the library to buy more volumes instead of reading them online or buying them) and I reccomend it along with D.Gray-Man to everyone because of how amazing it is. The only reason I wouldn't recomend it is if you are a light reader and don't want to have to read about deep topics that make you self reflect and contimplate. If you have watched the anime, read the manga, it's better. If you haven't watched or read it, read the manga first. Like I said, the beginning is light hearted and possibly a little bit cheesy at times, but it builds up to become one of my most favorite manga of all time.