I personally don’t like hero characters that have no flaws or weaknesses. I particularly like the fact that no character is flawless, they all have a side of them that isn’t perfect and for me that kind of characterisation draws me deeper into a book. I enjoy this book for its detailed characterisations, something that can be overlooked in manga. This book is the most action packed in terms of battling and initially I didn’t really enjoy that. So far I have enjoyed Btooom! I have found it fun and an interesting take on a well used genre, but with book 6 I found that I needed more than one read through before it won me over.
It will be interesting to see where this series goes, but personally speaking I liked it a lot. It just leaves you with smile and it does make you laugh. For those of a certain age I would say that this manga is what the Benny Hill Show would be if it was converted to manga, but with the girls being mythical beasts and not human. This will be a manga you either love or hate depending on your stance on fanservice, but it is certainly worthy of being looked at as its fun is deeper than that, and it does have interesting things to say on how we view those that are different to us. It is just a fun read and yes it is heavily laden with sexual fanservice, but it has a tongue in cheek feel about it and you can’t help feeling that it will never take itself too seriously.
There is not only sexual comedy but also lashings of slapstick comedy. It reminded me a lot of comedies shown in the 1970’s and early 1980’s before political correctness got in its way. A strange thought did occur to me on reading this manga was how English the humour was. This does leave the reader with the wonder of how a human male could have sex with a completely different species, but that thought doesn’t linger to much as the main feeling I got from this book was fun. The other important fact that needs to be taken into account with Monster Musume, is as the title suggests, none of the principle female characters are human. A lot of the nudity is of the clothes accidently falling off at in appropriate times and although there is sexual intent from the females it usually means the male character ends up in pain. To its credit Monster Musume is never too serious about its sexy side. For an older teen manga it is very much in your face with sex based fanservice, in fact I have come across tamer mature rated books than this. This leads me to the first issue with this story. They seem a fun bunch and as with most harem manga the female characters all have some kind of romantic or sexual feelings towards the male character. This first book, as most first books do, focuses on introducing us to the principle characters in the story. I have come across my fair share of harem style but I certainly haven’t come across anything like Monster Musume.