Subete no Jinrui wo Hakai Suru. Sorera wa Saisei Dekinai. - Vol. 18 Ch. 71 - Our Gathering

[Arha01]

5/10
I really liked HALF of the manga,but other half is a pure clusterfuck.Story begins with Kanou's and Emi's rivalry progressing into romance,then they add Yakumo and make it a love triangle,later Lou to make it a harem.In the story where the MC is crazy in love with FMC,(i guess editor or someone pressured the author to add more girls to boost popularity).Then outta nowhere this romcom adds:Falling satellites,terrrorists and terrorist attacks,secret government.Bunch of unnecessary drama for the sake of the drama.I initially wanted to give it 4,but with even all the stupid plots i can't deny how i liked the First Part.

 

[_Wakka_]

5/10
I really liked HALF of the manga,but other half is a pure clusterfuck.Story begins with Kanou's and Emi's rivalry progressing into romance,then they add Yakumo and make it a love triangle,later Lou to make it a harem.In the story where the MC is crazy in love with FMC,(i guess editor or someone pressured the author to add more girls to boost popularity).Then outta nowhere this romcom adds:Falling satellites,terrrorists and terrorist attacks,secret government.Bunch of unnecessary drama for the sake of the drama.I initially wanted to give it 4,but with even all the stupid plots i can't deny how i liked the First Part.

thanks for the insight!
yeah, the terrorist stuff was quite unnecessary but even so i liked most of the crazy shit like the satellite stuff, the concert, gothspycho-Yakumo, undying Hajime, etc. also most of the added characters landed for me - it only sucks that we didn't see more of the other elders of mtg - beside Rin.

 

[Greenharvest]

Decide to read it cause of a reddit post and because i am a huge magic player. I need to stop getting random stuff to read from reddit..

I am Insanely dissapointed by the manga overall. This started good at the start with a somewhat generic romance but this whatever i guess, i have seen worse start and setting (and im a sucker for generic romance). Could have been a good story about a game uniting differents people with differents background. The manga dropped in quality the instant Lou was introduced to become insanely blant and a generic harem until chapter 39 with the end of the world prediction and the 2000 doomsday prediction. The characters are insanely lame and cringe with the drama being forced out of nothing. Specially Kuon ,Yakumo joining a terrorist organisation cause her heart broke and the brother of the MC being a "super elite hacker" is just an ass pull to justify that no one died. Them not talking for 12 years while they both have each other number and way to realistically contact each other is stupid and just seem to be added for drama sake, same thing with the tsunami. I did expect that everyone was alive and ok but can this be less generic. At the end i was rushing all the duel just to see what the ending was since this was so generic and boring.

My major issue with the manga is that i fail to see how anyone who have never touch magic could enjoyed this manga. They explain the rules maybe once at the start and this was rushed. If you have no clue how the card worked or basic keywords this just feel like random stuff where they sometimes pay mana for random spell. Even when i know what the cards does (while they are not using the same cards every times), i have to read the panel again just to be sure if what they do is legal. Also they used cards that are either rare (or insanely rare) or cost a lots of money to get which make me question why the manga even exist.I understand the goal is to sell cards but to who is this manga supposed to appeal to? Not new players that's for sure cause this not new players friendly and used cards that are not legal in all formats beside vintage. Not old players cause i doubt this type of manga appeal to player that play in the mid 2000. Recurring players maybe but why used a 1999 setting if this the case. I know they cant just retcon the years of when the story happens but this feel like this would make more sense to make the formats and cards they played change with the real irl counterpart release.

This clearly try to be a cheap Yugioh manga but this doesn't go over the top unlike it and doesn't seem to care about writing a somewhat possible plot outside of the product placement required every chapters. The author probably got forced into it specially since the Yugioh manga is somewhat popular for some reason (they are bad but this another discussion).
This can be annoying but at least the anime (and by extention the manga) of Yugioh take his time to remind the person about the rules, specially since the average experience of Yugioh was to watch the random episode that was airing in the middle of the morning on a random sunday on TV while having awful french dub (or any none english dub). I learned how to play Yugioh from watching the anime when i was like 6 and this in generally believed to be harder to learned than MTG . I highly doubt anyone that read this manga learn how to play it tho. I'm not glazing yugioh either since i stopped at the start of 2024 cause the meta was annoying to play and i have a lots of issue with TCG pricing in general and the gamble aspect of TCG overall.

Overall this could have been a generic romance that have MTG as a background but ironically enough, MTG take way too much space at the center of the story and is unwelcoming to new players or manga reader in general and have forced drama with generic character that have lame back story and motivations. Regardless of how i feel about it, thanks for the update, i'm sure im just not the target audience for it and was expecting a bit more. 3/10 mostly for the ending and how lame everything become after chapter ~30. Before Lou this was a solid 7/10.

 

[_Wakka_]

Decide to read it cause of a reddit post and because i am a huge magic player. I need to stop getting random stuff to read from reddit..

I am Insanely dissapointed by the manga overall. This started good at the start with a somewhat generic romance but this whatever i guess, i have seen worse start and setting (and im a sucker for generic romance). Could have been a good story about a game uniting differents people with differents background. The manga dropped in quality the instant Lou was introduced to become insanely blant and a generic harem until chapter 39 with the end of the world prediction and the 2000 doomsday prediction. The characters are insanely lame and cringe with the drama being forced out of nothing. Specially Kuon ,Yakumo joining a terrorist organisation cause her heart broke and the brother of the MC being a "super elite hacker" is just an ass pull to justify that no one died. Them not talking for 12 years while they both have each other number and way to realistically contact each other is stupid and just seem to be added for drama sake, same thing with the tsunami. I did expect that everyone was alive and ok but can this be less generic. At the end i was rushing all the duel just to see what the ending was since this was so generic and boring.

My major issue with the manga is that i fail to see how anyone who have never touch magic could enjoyed this manga. They explain the rules maybe once at the start and this was rushed. If you have no clue how the card worked or basic keywords this just feel like random stuff where they sometimes pay mana for random spell. Even when i know what the cards does (while they are not using the same cards every times), i have to read the panel again just to be sure if what they do is legal. Also they used cards that are either rare (or insanely rare) or cost a lots of money to get which make me question why the manga even exist.I understand the goal is to sell cards but to who is this manga supposed to appeal to? Not new players that's for sure cause this not new players friendly and used cards that are not legal in all formats beside vintage. Not old players cause i doubt this type of manga appeal to player that play in the mid 2000. Recurring players maybe but why used a 1999 setting if this the case. I know they cant just retcon the years of when the story happens but this feel like this would make more sense to make the formats and cards they played change with the real irl counterpart release.

This clearly try to be a cheap Yugioh manga but this doesn't go over the top unlike it and doesn't seem to care about writing a somewhat possible plot outside of the product placement required every chapters. The author probably got forced into it specially since the Yugioh manga is somewhat popular for some reason (they are bad but this another discussion).
This can be annoying but at least the anime (and by extention the manga) of Yugioh take his time to remind the person about the rules, specially since the average experience of Yugioh was to watch the random episode that was airing in the middle of the morning on a random sunday on TV while having awful french dub (or any none english dub). I learned how to play Yugioh from watching the anime when i was like 6 and this in generally believed to be harder to learned than MTG . I highly doubt anyone that read this manga learn how to play it tho. I'm not glazing yugioh either since i stopped at the start of 2024 cause the meta was annoying to play and i have a lots of issue with TCG pricing in general and the gamble aspect of TCG overall.

Overall this could have been a generic romance that have MTG as a background but ironically enough, MTG take way too much space at the center of the story and is unwelcoming to new players or manga reader in general and have forced drama with generic character that have lame back story and motivations. Regardless of how i feel about it, thanks for the update, i'm sure im just not the target audience for it and was expecting a bit more. 3/10 mostly for the ending and how lame everything become after chapter ~30. Before Lou this was a solid 7/10.

wow, thank you for the in-depth review and finishing it even though you didn't like it that much!
personally i don't agree with most of the stuff you wrote (for obvious reasons lol), so here are some counter-argument:

one of the main selling point for the manga for many people are the battles and how they depict the corresponding meta of the game for that era.
for players of the premodern format and for people interested in the history of mtg and its meta, i don't think that this is anything less than a treasure trove.

you are absolutely right about the duels being hard to follow for most of the time for a new player. i started reading this as a relatively new magic player and had no clue about what the hell was happening. of course it didn't help that most of the cards weren't in english in the manga in the beginning (in the scanlation).

the manga requires a decent amount of knowledge from the audience but it gives much in return. the amount of care that was put in to show the different archetypes being played is perfectly visible and makes the manga very rereadable imo. there are many details one doesn't necessary catch if one reads it only once.

the manga was made to satisfy the need of nostalgia for premodern magic (called middle-school in japan) and the era it takes place. this is not meant to promote the current practices of mtg but to take back the authors to their middle-schooler selves as they were arond the same age as the protagonists were, living through the urza block and the coming of the year 2000. this story also reflects the love for mtg and you don't need to buy oath of druids or necropotence to take part in it. and if someone wants to play with the exact cards they can play premodern and/or just proxy the decks and they are ready to go with the manga being a pretty good tool to get the basics of how to pilot each deck.

this is not a product placement manga in any means for the reasons you already said: most of the cards are out of reach in the current meta and the other stuff that is present in that world is also 28 years old at this point so everything that was put in was done so by the will of the authors because they cared about these things.

i watched yugioh for most of the duel monsters series and while i enjoyed it for the most part i found the real drama in destroy all humans to be a more touching affair for me. i'm talking about the themes of neurodivergency, bullying, trauma, facing our own weakness to be more captivating even if the manga has some crazy shit on par with yugioh's madness on a few occassions.

 

[Greenharvest]

wow, thank you for the in-depth review and finishing it even though you didn't like it that much!
personally i don't agree with most of the stuff you wrote (for obvious reasons lol), so here are some counter-argument:

one of the main selling point for the manga for many people are the battles and how they depict the corresponding meta of the game for that era.
for players of the premodern format and for people interested in the history of mtg and its meta, i don't think that this is anything less than a treasure trove.

you are absolutely right about the duels being hard to follow for most of the time for a new player. i started reading this as a relatively new magic player and had no clue about what the hell was happening. of course it didn't help that most of the cards weren't in english in the manga in the beginning (in the scanlation).

the manga requires a decent amount of knowledge from the audience but it gives much in return. the amount of care that was put in to show the different archetypes being played is perfectly visible and makes the manga very rereadable imo. there are many details one doesn't necessary catch if one reads it only once.

the manga was made to satisfy the need of nostalgia for premodern magic (called middle-school in japan) and the era it takes place. this is not meant to promote the current practices of mtg but to take back the authors to their middle-schooler selves as they were arond the same age as the protagonists were, living through the urza block and the coming of the year 2000. this story also reflects the love for mtg and you don't need to buy oath of druids or necropotence to take part in it. and if someone wants to play with the exact cards they can play premodern and/or just proxy the decks and they are ready to go with the manga being a pretty good tool to get the basics of how to pilot each deck.

this is not a product placement manga in any means for the reasons you already said: most of the cards are out of reach in the current meta and the other stuff that is present in that world is also 28 years old at this point so everything that was put in was done so by the will of the authors because they cared about these things.

i watched yugioh for most of the duel monsters series and while i enjoyed it for the most part i found the real drama in destroy all humans to be a more touching affair for me. i'm talking about the themes of neurodivergency, bullying, trauma, facing our own weakness to be more captivating even if the manga has some crazy shit on par with yugioh's madness on a few occassions.

Thanks for the reply; I'm happy to have a civil conversation on the internet. They are really rare these days, sadly. Sorry, I tend to write walls of text while giving my opinion sometimes also, so sorry if this was boring to read lol.

After having a few days of thinking and reading your counterarguments, I can see that i was kind of harsh on my critique of this manga. I just expected something way different from what the final product would be. I could easily see someone being intrigued by the duels and having a sparkle of interest about trying out the game after, like I did for Yu-Gi-Oh. I just expected the manga to be about people growing up while playing the game as a background of their life and people accepting their differences to enjoy common hobbies with a more down-to-earth drama and conflicts. I had a similar experience growing up with different TCG card games while being "different," so I probably just projected myself a bit and didn't take the time to realize that the manga wasn't about that. I can clearly see that this is a passion project and the love that the author had for MTG and was probably a bit autobiographic, so I was wrong calling it just a product placement manga.



Regardless, I still have issues mostly with the pacing of the duels and the direction that the story took, especially with the 2000s doomsday stuff and the manga turning into a harem-bait manga for no real reason. I find Kuon annoying and insanely rude toward Lou for no real reason besides creating drama with a pseudo "trauma" reason. I suspect that he was created as a joke character at the start, but the author didn't really know what to do with him. Yakuma's reaction to being rejected seemed fine at the start, since she was clearly depressed about it, but I find her joining a cult insanely random and unlikely to happen in real life. This would have been a better option to show how people really dealt with those emotions in a real way than just joining a cult. Had the same issue for most of the drama in the manga. This would have been better if they talk like real humans being and try to find a common ground and talk instead. I also feel like the characters took too much space in the manga and eclipsed the main couple, which was the most interessing characters. I still find the ending really disappointing, and I don't understand how they didn't talk to each other for 12 years while still being in love but doing nothing about it, while they have mutual friends and she knows with whom he's working. They would have moved on in real life for sure. Would have been way better if they showed their children how to play MTG with the newest set or something along those lines or even announced the final fantasy collab since he's a huge fan of Final fantasy, this would have make sence if he push it to be a new set (the set was out before the end of the manga). They really missed the opportunity of making the ending tie to reality a bit so i was a bit dissapointed.

Also, if they wanted to have an insane YU-GI-OH-like moment, they could have just made a Battle City-like arc where they would destroy the world if they lost or something and remove the brother character and the concert, which have no real purpose. The over-the-top doomsday stuff kind of shifted the realistic vibe the manga had, and it was really hard to take the manga seriously after it for me. This is my problem, though, I think, since I prefer that realistic story over the over-the-top one. My list of manga is mostly filled with slice-of-life stuff these days, lol.

If I had to put a note now, this would be around ~5 out of 10.

I'm happy to see that you could enjoy something that I can't fully, though and I am thankful that you took your time to write, so can you can try to change my mind. I hope you didnt take my message as an attack against you or the work you did on the scans.

 

[_Wakka_]

Thanks for the reply; I'm happy to have a civil conversation on the internet. They are really rare these days, sadly. Sorry, I tend to write walls of text while giving my opinion sometimes also, so sorry if this was boring to read lol.

After having a few days of thinking and reading your counterarguments, I can see that i was kind of harsh on my critique of this manga. I just expected something way different from what the final product would be. I could easily see someone being intrigued by the duels and having a sparkle of interest about trying out the game after, like I did for Yu-Gi-Oh. I just expected the manga to be about people growing up while playing the game as a background of their life and people accepting their differences to enjoy common hobbies with a more down-to-earth drama and conflicts. I had a similar experience growing up with different TCG card games while being "different," so I probably just projected myself a bit and didn't take the time to realize that the manga wasn't about that. I can clearly see that this is a passion project and the love that the author had for MTG and was probably a bit autobiographic, so I was wrong calling it just a product placement manga.



Regardless, I still have issues mostly with the pacing of the duels and the direction that the story took, especially with the 2000s doomsday stuff and the manga turning into a harem-bait manga for no real reason. I find Kuon annoying and insanely rude toward Lou for no real reason besides creating drama with a pseudo "trauma" reason. I suspect that he was created as a joke character at the start, but the author didn't really know what to do with him. Yakuma's reaction to being rejected seemed fine at the start, since she was clearly depressed about it, but I find her joining a cult insanely random and unlikely to happen in real life. This would have been a better option to show how people really dealt with those emotions in a real way than just joining a cult. Had the same issue for most of the drama in the manga. This would have been better if they talk like real humans being and try to find a common ground and talk instead. I also feel like the characters took too much space in the manga and eclipsed the main couple, which was the most interessing characters. I still find the ending really disappointing, and I don't understand how they didn't talk to each other for 12 years while still being in love but doing nothing about it, while they have mutual friends and she knows with whom he's working. They would have moved on in real life for sure. Would have been way better if they showed their children how to play MTG with the newest set or something along those lines or even announced the final fantasy collab since he's a huge fan of Final fantasy, this would have make sence if he push it to be a new set (the set was out before the end of the manga). They really missed the opportunity of making the ending tie to reality a bit so i was a bit dissapointed.

Also, if they wanted to have an insane YU-GI-OH-like moment, they could have just made a Battle City-like arc where they would destroy the world if they lost or something and remove the brother character and the concert, which have no real purpose. The over-the-top doomsday stuff kind of shifted the realistic vibe the manga had, and it was really hard to take the manga seriously after it for me. This is my problem, though, I think, since I prefer that realistic story over the over-the-top one. My list of manga is mostly filled with slice-of-life stuff these days, lol.

If I had to put a note now, this would be around ~5 out of 10.

I'm happy to see that you could enjoy something that I can't fully, though and I am thankful that you took your time to write, so can you can try to change my mind. I hope you didnt take my message as an attack against you or the work you did on the scans.

haha, no offense taken!
half the reason i worked on the scanlation to have a discussion about the manga and for some reason the people who like it are not very vocal about it at all. also i'd rather have a conversation with people who are able to see the flaws of something rather than with fanatics who can't deal with their favourite thing being critiqued (and there are plenty of people like that from the mtg circle).

you're right about the series getting side tracked. the authors personally said that they went with the "vanilla" route, not having extra girls, extra end of the world plot the series would have ended around volume 5. also many fans of destroy all humans left or got pissed off after the cult and end of the world stuff, so i would say it's kinda valid argument.

the writer has a short series called last manhealer that is quite realistic, but one could say it's even too much, dealing with mental health issues. i'd rather prefer his other less depressing and realistic works. they retain some seriousness while the somewhat over the top nature gives a needed lighter tone to his other works.

i would also love to have a more 'slice of life'-y tcg manga with the concept that you detailed above. it would work well if it was something like hirayasumi but would be too boring if it would be something like yokohama kaidashi kikou. but for me destroy all humans is already something quite simillar to this compared to other tcg manga like duel masters. hopefully we'll get something akin to this but the current tcg manga lineup is much more shounen, moe, fantasy, card battle, etc oriented - so imo we don't have a better option than destroy all humans.
for a somewhat more realistic take you can check out destroy all humans's artist's currently running series 'dumb prefect's latest chapter (92) featuring adults in tcg nostalgia (also no previous knowledge of the series is needed to enjoy it).