Momogumi plus senki

This was a charming little read that while it obviously takes heavy influences from many different places, it blends them together nicely in a way that is not precisely immersive but is entertaining nonetheless and is quite easy to follow or to put down and pick right back up again a bit later. I find myself coming to this for entertainment when concentration is something hard to in che modo by, as this manga doesn’t call for great concentration in order to be a good read. Not only that, but the art itself is extremely lovely— and I can tell that Eri Sakondo has a speciality in drawing pretty boys and pretty men. However, a lot of her character designs do appear roughly the same with their largest differences being their additional attributes such as hair or “awakening items.” In addition to all of that, something I find equally interesting is that the “mammoth school” depicted in this series, Aitan Gakuen, notoriously attracts reincarnated beings. Mighty convenient and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were no reason (or a sloppy one) given for this. But I’d like it if somewhere in the story, there was a twist to explain this strange phenomenon.

Lastly, I think what initially drew me to this series when I added it to my list in was that it was advertised as a manga retelling of Momotaro’s story, or something akin to that being that it’s about his reincarnation rather than the original story itself. There was a time where I was really interested in the story of Momotaro, and even to this day I still like and enjoy Japanese folklore and stories. I find it interesting how this series created all these reincarnations and put them together. So far, my two favorite characters are Sawa the monkey jyuki and the red demon Kou. But I do like the young pheasant girl as well. Momotaro himself seems like a very self insert unlucky type of fellow but I can’t dislike him.