Year 526 of the Liturgical Calendar. The world knew that witches existed, and that they practiced the notorious art of sorcery. Nevertheless, the world did not know anything about the study of magic.The story follows a half-man, half-beast mercenary; humans mockingly call his kind the "fallen beasts". He always dreamt of becoming a human, but one day, he met a witch who would change his life forever. "Do you desire a human form? Then be my escort, mercenary!"The witch introduced herself as "Zero", and explained that she was searching for a one-of-a-kind magical tome that bandits had stolen from her lair. Entitled "The Book of Zero", the grimoire supposedly contained valuable magical knowledge that could be used to effortlessly bring the world to its knees. Thus, in order to realize his dream of becoming a human, the mercenary must accompany Zero on her journey despite her being one of the witches he so loathed. 2n6432
6 Volumes (Complete)
It's not anything exceptional, but it's decent enough. It's the story about a 100+ year old witch who spent her whole life inside a cave and made a grimoire with magical spells that made it possible for anyone with magic talent to use magic easily without the need for rituals or demons. She and the mercenary "fallen beast" main character.
It's the story of her trying to get this grimoire back after it was robbed and how she travels together with the mercenary and a lot of comedy which is built on her lack of common sense and everyday knowledge along with the fact that she's seemingly completely devoid of shame(like not minding spewing lines that would make normal people blush in shame or undressing in front of others). Seems there'll be romance between the fallen beast and this witch as well.
It's not really a bad manga(or novel), but the author is spending too much time on descriptions that close to everything seems to be trivia about this world and magic. It's hard to get absorbed into the story when we're just getting spoon-fed descriptions and explanations all the time. Feels like the author lost sight on what's important in a story when it's less about the plot and characters and more about world trivia.
I kind of like the idea of this story with the beastman mc, witches and clear goal, but it sadly feels quite lacking in "punch", it's hollow. I fail to feel anything for the characters and I don't really care about their adventure, nor do the characters that show up feel alive, it feels more like a game where they just meet events and bosses and everything else is just papier-mâché that serves as a backdrop.
This author needs to understand that you should show, not tell. Info dumping a lot is never going to be interesting, especially not in a manga that is very limited in how much information you can convey. A novel would be better for info dumping now and then, and it's needed because it's harder to "show" everything, but even then you need to be sparse on the info dumping because it's much better to show things when they're relevant, otherwise everyone will just waste their time on reading things that might not be relevant and will surely be forgotten and repeated by the time it is actually relevant.
I feel like this is good enough to read, but don't expect anything really awesome and be prepared for the info dumps.
... Last updated 6 years ago
