The manga starts off strong. Amazing art, a conflicted compelling protagonist, and a fresh perspective on the usual Isekai fantasies. But ultimately the story and character development undo nearly all great groundwork laid out for the sake of a "dark war" story.
Highserk Chronicles is a character centric dark fantasy story that focuses on war and all of its ugliness but fails to follow through. Rather, it becomes just another Isekai with a coat of black paint.
Walm is a reincarnated Japanese salaryman who had to become a soldier to feed his family. In the early chapters he mentally struggles with killing despite his proficiency at it, but ultimately steels his resolve so that he can put food on his family's table.
He starts off as a normal but skilled soldier, but quickly grows in strength as expected of Isekai protagonists. Walm becomes a load bearing soldier in his battalion, a key piece in which battles are won or lost by his actions.
There are many grim scenes of carnage reeked by Walm paired with his face tortured by what he has done and a giddy fellow soldier driving home a sense of the tragedies of war.
Walm's characterization falls on it's face once his battalion is wiped out in an attack. While it is understandable that he immediately sought revenge, there is no moment where someone with his struggles would reasonably stay employed in the Highserk military.
Despite becoming Highserk's ace-in-the-hole and the sole reason for their immense progress he doesn't leave. Had he not immediately and fervently sought revenge he could have escaped the war altogether. He doesn't even lament the missed chance of being thought dead to whisk his family away to a country that can only subsist itself through war.
He holds no sense of duty to Highserk, nor does he express any belief in the cause of, "Domination by might". But still he remains in the war.
His core motivations are nothing but a prop for gritty, dark war porn. And the rest of the writing appears to follow the same pattern.
It follows the Dark Fantasy standard of "Everyone is a Bastard" with a few nicer naive characters who are props to show how dark and tragic the world is, and how the main character is the sensible one for giving in to the darkness of the world.
Walm's tortured mind seems to only be present where it wouldn't cause him to have a strong change of heart. He will lie to himself that he gets used to bur ing people alive but will not react in the slightest when hearing other characters have Japanese names or about the existence of other otherworlders. He doesn't hope for a chance to commiserate about being thrust into a cruel unforgiving world or even think about the possibility that he can return to Japan. Instead he wades further and further into the swamp while crying that his boots are filled with mud.
And even then the swamp is shallow because beyond his battalion dying, he doesn't pay the price of war, instead he grows stronger and is rewarded for it.
This manga is dark for the sake of being dark, twisting itself in knots to desperately maintain Walm's torture chamber. Without Walm's inner conflict there is nothing left but an edgy war Isekai that leaves no lasting impact unlike the likes of Berserk, Vinland Saga, or Vagabond. If you like battles for the sake of battles then this title might be for you.
