Slightly Biased Manga

This series is SO BAD, but it’s still got the thin sliver of something I can appreciate hidden amid all the confusing art and terrible jokes.  When I started this volume, I remember thinking that it was getting better about taking things slowly and emphasizing relationships more, but I don’t know if that was the case here… it seemed to take a step back.

To be fair, it did a good job covering the sad background of one of the demon assistants.  That chapter was probably the best in this volume.  What goes from a story about Shirayuki turning into a cat and being held by the demon goes into another wild rampage from… well, Kuroyuki and eventually reveals the sad backstory about how the man lived his life (it sounded vaguely like he was supposed to be a Nazi, but it didn’t come right out and say it).  In addition to finding Shirayuki, Prince is also charged with sending the souls of his three demon assistants back to Heaven for good since they’ve finished their punishment in Hell.  The demons are never shown as evil, even though they’ve obviously done something to be transformed into monsters and kept in Hell for so long, and a lot of the more glaring errors that appear in other chapters, like chaotic and confusing storytelling and plots that go all over the place are toned down here.  The plot takes several unrelated twists and turns, but still manages to be fairly coherent and entertaining.  Well, for Go Go Heaven, anyway.

One of the other stories… um.  It involves octopus aliens, but only because one escapes from Hell and Shirayuki and Prince go to the octopus planet.  The octopi take the form of other characters in the story, including the demon assistants, and the octopus queen takes the form of Shirayuki and tries to marry Prince and mate with him.  It was really, REALLY bad.  The concept, the execution, the storytelling, the characters, everything about this chapter was really, really terrible.  There was a kiss at the end, and not even that saved it.

The last chapter had the former King of Hell, Prince’s grandfather, making a nuisance of himself at Obon.  It was kind of bad, but begged the question “what happened to Prince’s father, then?”  and foreshadowed trouble between Prince and Shirayuki.  Of course.

Really, I want more romance between Shirayuki and Prince, less terrible jokes per page, and maybe some sort of power exchange again so that Prince can go back to being an adult instead of having to run around as a little kid all the time.  It winds up being creepy in a lot of situations.