Manga 99377 Kenja No Mago

The recipe is easy and efficient, just put a ridiculously over powered character in a fantasy world with monsters. Well that sound déjà vu. But this one is clever enought to make it well. By that, I mean the universe is kinda mature. The MC can't use his powers all the time to not break the balance between the countries, he may be invincible but he has weaknesses. This is not just a "school boy", he evoles during the story, will eventually have a wife, found a family. The bad points I would put on the series is that beside the MC, his best friend ... and his girlfriend, you don't really care about others. This problem can't be solved since the MC take all the place and it is what it make this serie's force: The MC is damn Badass, there is a true work on how to show how the MC is powerfull. The "Isekai" looks really out of nowhere, it actually is only used to justify why MC is so powerful. I found is really enjoyable especially since the serie is mature enough to make us fear for the MC's friends.

There isn't much to say about Kenja no Mago, so I'll get straight to the point: if you're tired of the reincarnated OP MC stories, ignore this Manga.

The story, the lore, the setting and the characters are all by-the-numbers cutouts and, in terms of originality or uniqueness, the Manga doesn't have anything going for it. Comedy is slightly off, although I did chuckle a few times (mainly due to the exaggerated faces), but other than that it isn't that funny.

Art is quite good and detailed for the most part, and action scenes are portrayed as well as in any other action manga. ...

That being said, Kenja no Mago is a meeting of all the cliches: OP MC who steamrolls through everything without any true struggle (at least so far I suppose), a whole heap of maidens fawning over him, pretty generic setting and lore of the world, and that's really it. Nothing new, nothing unique, but if you enjoy these stories just for some quick giggles and power-fantasies, it's pretty good in that department. If not, you best just ignore it.

For some reason, i dont dislike the isekai genre even after all those years of overuse. Thus I gave kenja no mago it's chance to shine on my manga list and... Well you see the ranking I gave it.
Let's not lose our time, reading the summary is enough to convince oneself that this manga is generic. Once again we've got the loner loser boy. Then he saves someone from an accident and then dies (well I guess it's what happened cuz everything was so fast and poorly explained...)

Like Mushoku and The beginning after the end (two excellent mangas/manhuas I highly recommend plus they're both highly ... similar to kenja), MC reborns as a newly born kid without forgetting his past life. Unlike those 2 examples, we dont see the MC growing up and understanding how this new world works nor how he trained to gain his astonishing strenght. And that's the first red flag about kenja.

As a reader, I dont know what is this world, how the magic elements work and the outcome is that i'm already bored, lost and more than anything, fights feel like trash because there are no explained limits. In those 2 examples previously quoted, there are elements that divide magic casts = fire or water for example. Or healing, casting abilities, strenghtening abilities. In a nutschell, we understand how fights work and what the MC is doing when he fights. He doesnt come from nowhere and there is no need to explain it in the middle of the fight which is very annoying (gonna come back on later on dialogues).
In kenja, there is nothing. The MC casts things, he is strong and we dont know why, we dont know what he does nor why what he does is special comapared to others. In the end, fights are just a mix with random abilities without any strategy.

Now let's talk about the narrative aspect (dialogues). God it's a hell. Dialogues are everywhere, we cant rest I feel like i'm reading a light novel which isn't normal because picture and drawings in a manga should explain things. We're constantly bullied with rhetoric questions by the characters, useless bubbles (wow MC how did you do that ? that's impressive !!!) and long explanations for nothing. It's crazy how the fighting mecanic and the world were both ruined by the lack of explanations but the author still found a way to give us random explanations about useless elements we dont care about. Explaining how the theory about general relativity from Einstein does work is useless to someone who cant even do an addition. That's the feeling I get from this manga so please stop it's uninteresting.

About characters, well the MC is your random dull boy. The main girl is the cliche of the shy girl who fell in love with the MC quickly for no real reasons without even knowing him. For those woh read/watch nantsu no taizai, she's the princess. It's exactly her. I dont even know what to say about other characters cuz they gave me no feeling at all. They're bland.

Another interesting point, i've hardly critized negatively art in mangas till now but we need to talk about it. First thing first, it has been made on a computer or i dont know what kind of modern tech, maybe a tab. It's not the first time I read those kind of mangas and it's not a shame, dont miss my point. But god it's bland aswell... Characters are poorly detailed, colours are bland (not any mix of colours, there is some white, some black and a sort of grey made using some kind of ugly pixels I dont even know what this is but it's disgusting to see). Backgrounds are white, there is no detail whatsoeve. Hairs are just made using the painting bucket and an eraser to make a "cool" white effect on hairs to give the feeling that it's been worked. The perfect example of quantity over quality. It also explains why it's so full of dialogue. Believe me, if the quality choice had been made, the author would have made more straightforward panels with shorter chapters aswell and it would have been way better that way.

Overall, kenja no mago is probably one of the worst isekai manga i've ever seen. I was bored since the second chapter which is a first not gonna lie... Absolutely everything feels bland and generic. Drawings, fights, characters, the story. I honestly and objectively cant find any way to be positive about it. It's not just the story in itself and its characters that are poor. The whole manga is poor. Even if the story were great, I would have hated it because of how unbearable those overused and uninteresting dialogues are. And EVEN with good dialogues, I would have given up reading this because of how bland the art feels. Sorry but if you wanna see a similar story in 100x better everywhere, go to read the beginning after the end.