Apologies as always for the wait, my fans.
Wow, it’s 2024 already. Who would’ve thunk it? Where does the time go, eh?
Okay, that’s probably enough platitudes.
Last year, I managed to find Volume 1 of Mashle: Magic and Muscles on my local library shelves, so here I am to review it.
You all know the story by now, right?: Magic or supernatural world where everyone has a power except for one young boy, and we watch him grow stronger and stronger without any powers until he can challenge and eventually surpass those at the top.
Wake me when it’s over.
Or, at least, if this weren’t also a comedy, I would be saying that.
Hero Mash Burnedead (pronounced “Burn-Dead”, not “Burn-eh-Dead)’s Father Regro made his adopted son Mash train his body hard, because the boy has no magic and his physical strength is all he has. Plus, this world is so heavily based on magic that all those without magic are out-and-out destroyed.
And I’m like, whoa-Nobody in the Clover Kingdom wanted to cull Asta. No one wanted to cull Izuku for being Quirkless. (Granted, Bakugou came close, but, still…)
Anyway, the absentminded Mash wanders his way into town and accidentally causes some trouble, leading the Magic Police to track him to his home and threaten his father. After a brief battle, Mash agrees to a deal with the cops’ crooked leader to join a magic school and become a revered Divine Visionary in order to change society from within.
Mash is not like Asta or Izuku in that he doesn’t let his lack of magic get him down. In fact, Mash is a hero more akin to Mob from Mob Psycho 100: he is aloof and flat-faced and deadpan, always ready to put things in plain terms and to remark on others’ oddities as if he didn’t have any of his own.
And, of course, there are those with incredible magic who look down on him. One such man, a man in charge of the school’s admissions test, sends another student named Lemon to slow Mash down, but he winds up saving her life and she falls in love with him (albeit while, as of Vol. 8, becoming just another flat love interest who never gets any screen time or cool fights).
As I stated earlier, Mashle is a comedy manga above all. Over-the-top personalities, lots of Japanese-style humor, low-skill level of art. Every battle involving Mash is basically him pulling off impossible, magic-less feats with sheer muscle power and everyone else reacting to it. (I mean, how else do you describe flying on a broom by throwing it like a javelin and then running to catch it so that you can ride the thrown broom in mid-freaking-air?)
Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.
The series also leans into its magical fantasy roots by setting things in a Hogwarts-style school a la U. A. High from MHA, and every chapter follows the Harry Potter style of “Hero’s Name And The BLANK”.
Though I will grant that the series is a tad slow to start. Many of the first few volumes are based around student vs. student fights, leaving the Big Bads of Innocent Zero to show up only around Vol. 7 or so.
Also, while I did enjoy the early-series gag of Mash always being too absent-minded to wonder whether a given door is a “push” or a “pull” and simply breaking the damn thing, it was sadly dropped after a couple of volumes.
Too few females is also a problem in this series, as well as a lack of fanservice (at least as far as I’ve seen, up to Vol. 8), but the story is decent enough and the humor is en pointe.
I suppose you could call this a manga for the Black Clover fan who wanted more gags.
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