in general the action is alright and falls neatly into shonen archetypes of power ups and power of friendship tropes. Characters i do NOT enjoy considering they all have the drama filter on, especially the main cast. Cockroach girl is particularly guilty of this, the dragonfly second, in how NEITHER seems to be able to string together two events despite being college students. The setting even given the leeway of "ohh suspense, ohh mystery" remains unsatisfying as the reader, much as the protagonist is, is kept in the dark regarding the motives that could potentially explain happenstances that are otherwise silly or contrived when reading for the first time; by stripping the dramatic irony inherent to the contrast between a reader's omniscience and the characters' perspective, the author is instead taking away from tension that would otherwise be built and replacing it with confusion. Did I mention how extraordinarily it falls into EVERY shonen trope? It hits all of them. Every single one. Bullshit last second powerups, creature inside (Hollow/Kurama/whatever), the singular most generic fmc possible (because vanilla appeases the masses the most).
In honesty the distaste i feel is probably in part compounded by my general dislike for the pseudosciency nature of setting this sort of story in modern society. This I think was done well for the antagonists in their use of actual guns (wow) and in general, their plan of attack. There are obvious occasions where they hold back or do this or that for plot convenience though. The protagonists, on the other hand, feel far more bland. After dragonfly goes on his Deku villain arc his original teammates are effectively left to the backdrop. My main issue is, again, the character writing and how that ties into the plot. I can generally look past inconsistencies in world building because that can never really be "perfect". However, the amount of times the protagonist pussyfoots around until shit is bad enough that he HAS to act as hero is incredibly annoying, and so is roach girl in how nearly every moment of hers is never of her own achievement but rather thrust upon her. The drama with Mihee (Kissing Bug) of the more recent chapters exacerbates this feeling for me; he's been shown to have an armored carapace that he can use and strength SIGNIFICANTLY stronger than other hybrids, but he's somehow still nearly taken out by a girl who's recently been hybridised and cannibalised? Even taking into account the power boost and emotional damage (which I think is stupid, as well; can't believe he just STANDS there all shocked instead of idk apprehending her??) she seems too strong. But that's the power scaler in me talking.
More fundamentally, the protagonist (and many others') motivation. Becoming human again. Beyond the almost caricature-like depiction of human society (He has fucking wings man thats cool as shit), the "ohh we need the cinderella potion to become human again and fit in!!!" is fucking stupid. Roach literally just has two hairs. She just has a deadpool healing factor. You CANNOT convince me that she's the only one who's like that. I mean, if you look at the silk moth and many others, there are PLENTY who just have very accessory changes that they could easily live with (or without). Tbh all this stems from my bias that the protagonist's original motivation is bullshit. It would have been nice to see him, throughout the story, develop and come to accept himself or whatever but THAT DOESNT HAPPEN! He just "overcomes a trial" on the way to return to being a human - nothing of his character has fundamentally changed. This forgoes the traditional heroes journey and all aspects of storytelling - he ONLY gets the power up without the character change.
tldr; 6/10, would be 7 if not for how downright annoying the characters are written and even then it's for the pacing and safe writing, not for any actual memorable story notes.
