Review: World embryo

World embryo

World embryo is a scifi mystery manga series written and drawn by Moriyama Daisuke, it is currently serialized in young king ours and is ongoing at 11 volumes. The plot centres on a boy who finds himself thrown into a mystery involving an elusive villain called “the source of infection” and mobile phone attacking monsters.

World embryo is one of those manga which starts out with a lot of promise and intrigue, the art has improved somewhat since Chrono crusade, another work by the author, the relationship between the protagonist and the mysterious young girl is nice and theres a good build-up of the central mystery surrounding everything and a pretty cool serial killer character who isn’t all that he seems.   The antagonist is eventually revealed with decent enough results and there is a backstory in here somewhere that shows potential, the action scenes can be good also. However none of it contains the same level of endearment, attachment, emotional or otherwise as with Chrono crusade. As the manga continues onward and becomes more action orientated, the plot also starts unveiling itself more after the villain leaves the stage and that’s where the whole manga begins falling apart at the seems, fiddly, overtly dense, clunky explanations, tripping over itself with convoluted exposition and forgoing the sense it had beforehand, what began as an attention holding seinen manga becomes an overextended, drawn out shounen affair and a shadow of its former self for the greater part, leaving you wondering just where did your new potentially favourite series go?  It’s a confusing, far cry from what it was and could have been, things still happen mind with some degree of interest but last I read it had descended into an incoherent mess of   a story, I started getting my answers, however I’m not sure I was happy with how I got those very answers presented to me. Somebody needs to get hold of this manga, adapt it like Gonzo did so back in the day and correct the errors with it like which was done with chrono crusade but also remembering to stick to the manga's strengths.

Verdict: **