666 Satan (Also called O-Parts Hunter in the Western world)

Because it's done by Kishimoto's twin brother. I actually did a double take when I saw the name Kishimoto Seishi at the bottom of the first page >_>.

I'm only 22 chapters in at the moment but I can seriously recommend this for people who enjoy Naruto but prefer darker themes and a heavier plot. The art style is almost exactly the same as Naruto, though he does better with women than Masashi ever could.

The premise is similar to Naruto in that a young boy has a demon sealed into him (no idea how that happened, yet, but it's completely so you'll find out eventually), only this demon is based on the Judeo-Christian belief structure and as such is called Lucifer... Yeah. Fuck the Kyuubi, he has the Morning Star.

The actual plot and world though are completely different. It's set in a world where an ancient civilisation created a fuck load of powerful magical weapons (though it's not called magic >_>) but ended up getting wiped out by some sort of cataclysm, and the next set of sentient beings to come along found these weapons and decided to use them. Only a few people have the ability, and the protagonist is one of them.

It kind of reminds me a bit of Fullmetal Alchemist in a way, through the general feel of the story as it progresses. It does fall into the typical shoenen pitfall of sudden power-ups, though it does it in a good way, and establishes a sort of credibility for how it happens beforehand so I wasn't too bothered by it.

All in all I'll give this a good recommendation to anyone searching for a new manga that is in a familiar style with a good plot/world.

 

He has a zipper in his ear so he can unzip his face.

 

I found this manga incredibly entertaining up through the end of Part 1. Part 2 seemed really rushed though, and don't even get me started on the ending.

All in all definitely worth a read.


The absolute best part of the manga though is the main character's stated goal. No it's not something lame like "protecting his precious people" or any crap like that.

Jio is in it for world domination. Excellent.

 

Like Naruto, the manga goes down hill in Part 2.

Wasn't really my cup of tea. =/

A manga like "Naruto" imo would be Soul Eater... where the character Black Star and Naruto are a like...

 

If Soul Eater wasn't so stupid I'd like it better.

 

666 Satan is a pretty good manga, but the second part was rushed and not fully developed. The ending wasn't much good to me. Nice read regardless.

 

Hehe. Why can't you stand about it?

The Shingami is kind of funny, same for Kids OCD and Black Star.

 

Black Star is annoying as hell, as is the majority of the main cast. For some reason, the male leads (Death, Black Star, and Soul) really piss me off.

Another problem is that it is similar to the first season of Full Metal Panic in that it can't seem to decide whether it should be semi-serious show or an excruciatingly painful attempt at a comedy.

As for 666 Satan, I tried it back in '04 and couldn't really get into it; it just didn't interest me all that much.

There are a few redeeming qualities about it; I loved the first major villain, Medusa, and the second isn't all that bad either. The art style combined with the music track make for very interesting and entertaining fight scenes.

 

I'm really liking Kekkaishi

http://www.onemanga.com/Kekkaishi/1/01/

Shounen written by a female author... and it shows, for once it appears as though someone has at least put a little effort into considering a plot... though honestly 225 chapters in and it's still not clear what's exactly going on. That might be its strongest trait though, the unexplained nature of the world and the forces that govern it.

Kekkaishi starts off a little slow, but Yoshimori is a great protagonist, I think. He starts out with a similar personality to Naruto (not very serious and kid-like, trying to show off) but becomes... fairly more mature (I guess dark, too) as the story goes on. Kekkaishi avoids a lot of common shounen cliches, and there's even a surprising amount of character death (*edit meant depth here... though death isn't wrong either) in this one.

The "powers" are nice too. Yoshimori and Tokine can only protect "shields" near and around themselves, but it's used cleverly enough that the fighting has evolved quite a bit (unlike Naruto who is still kage-bunshin'ing his way to victory).

The art is pretty good too, the quality hasn't fluxuated at all.

 

A huge problem that I had with Kekkaishi is that while it's always interesting, it very rarely gives you any reason to care in particular about the current plotline. You want the answers to some of the mysteries that you mentioned, and the story only ever seems to give vague glimpses mixed in with a lot of what seems to be chaff. I didn't really read past 100 or so chapters (I think I stopped at 150), so that might not be an issue, but you seem to agree with me that there's almost no indication as to what's actually happening in regard to the main story this far in. So far, from what I've read and your comments on the series, it seems primarily as an entertaining distraction rather than a series to really follow.

 

Hmm, I think the problem is that the story seems to get larger and larger as it goes on. I don't know if it's a "distraction" I'm following the story -- the relationships between Yoshimori, his mother, his brother, Tokine, and his "allies", the fellow human-demon hybrids... It's interesting. Plus, I love the setting. The gods and the shrines are very mysterious and I suppose sort of lovecraftian (if you see the god with the bloody rain and the umbrella, I think you'll see what I mean).

If you ever get bored I reccomend you take up the story at 150 again, I don't recall if that's before or after the prophecy is given, but it's pretty interesting now, how some gods have gone mad, the history of the shrines developed a little more... if Kekkaishi is a distraction, then what's Naruto? I would call Naruto a distraction, Kekkaishi an intrigue.

Of course it's hardly perfect, but it's enjoyable. The plot is developing and whether it'll be resolved eventually is a matter we can't speculate on.

Manga authors tend to aim for "let's keep this shit running forever" -- so we may never know, but maybe that's why I like the world? I was actually wondering how I could cross Kekkaishi and HP, though considering Kekkaishi is set in Japan, I know that could never go over well.

 

I liked this manga but when Yoshimori, Tokine's grandmother, that God's helper with the leaf like/devil's tail like thing on his head investigated a God's realm that was collapsing I got lost somehow and stopped reading.

Haven't felt the need to find my place again since then.

 

That's generally the reaction to it I think. I've recommended Kekkaishi to a few friends of mine and they mostly reacted the same way "lol it's good enough but I'm not interested enough to read 200 chapters of it". I guess it's slow? Erring? Whatever.

 

Well, I think that Naruto for most people is something along the lines of; "I've read 400 chapters of this shit already. I deserve to know how it ends." Or, that's the way it is for me, since it was one of the first series I ever got into back when I was still in elementary school. I honestly don't think that Naruto even merits a title of "distraction", as there seems to be very little it would be interesting enough to distract from. Regardless of that, Kekkaishi is interesting primarily because it is esoteric for a shounen series; but because of that it's a lot harder to get caught far enough in the plot line to want to go forward. I think that my reaction to it was a lot like your friends'; that it was a good series, maybe even better than that, but it was a bit too drawn and elaborate to really keep my interest for that whole two hundred chapter ride. Especially when I consider how wide my selection is.

I don't remember anything about a prophecy though, so I probably will take up your advice when I have some free time. I'm reading Yakitate!! Japan at the moment though, which is another two hundred or so chapter undertaking, so it may be a while, since I don't have very much free time.

 

I actually read the entire 666 Satan series. It was really similar to Naruto in style. It could be because that 666's author is Naruto's author's younger twin brother.

 

I finished reading it a while ago, had trouble because there's 20 chapters of shitty Engrish translating.
I enjoyed most of it, partly because I've got a hard-on for Judeo-Christian mythology. The ending was just annoying to me though, epilogue aside surprisingly. I mean fuck,

Spoiler

it's Armageddon and none of the main characters die? The survivability of shounen characters is pretty much a requirement for it to be considered shounen, but still, noone?