For me, this is a series from a very different era of my life 🤣 A period in which I would read reviews online and then buy series without any other prior knowledge. Nowadays, there are just so many series available, as well as ways to preview the content, that I would consider it a waste of money to purchase a series based on word-of-mouth only. But I am so glad that I took a chance on this one.

Things I Liked

• The mind games made the battles really fun.
• Utsuho’s motley little gang and all their interactions 😁 They bounced off each other well, especially in their approaches to lies/lying, while still being united in their goals.
• I was intrigued by the mystery of the Kokonotsu tale, and the author did a good job of slowly unravelling the story.
• Utsuho’s character was really strong/consistent, he managed to always be a jerk while still doing good things LOL
• I was impressed by the conclusion to Kuroha’s story, because I wasn’t expecting things to end up that way.
• The messages about how you can change for the better. I felt like they were realistic without being overly sappy.
• Pochi super over-powered 😍
• Every single bonus 4-koma was great.
• At first the main bonus content was super lazy, but once they leaned into the theme of lies/things that wouldn’t happen in the main series, it became much more entertaining.

Things I Was a Little Bit Disappointed With

• Hime barely got to do anything 🙁 Also her outfit was ridiculously bad.
• Everyone really really powered up in pretty much the last major battle so it felt like too much too late.
• Some of the supporting characters had weak designs and were inconsistently drawn.
• The Kin/Gin arc dragged on too long.

Top 3 Favourite Characters

Third Place – Hikae

Dude just wanna have fun 😁 His backstory being kept a secret the entire series made him a really intriguing character, especially how he was upfront about how they shouldn’t look into the Kokonotsu. His care for Hime was cute, as well as his return in the epilogue.

Second Place – Yakuma (aka Mom)

Dude is a saint 😂 I did feel a bit bad for him and all the physical abuse he got from Utsuho. He was probably the actual reason why the group managed to stay together. He was particularly supportive of Neya, Chouza and Tsukumo, with the latter relationship being really sweet. And he really was like a mother haha. He also looks better with short hair 😋

First Place – Pochi

Pochi is love, Pochi is life. Pochi is the best. And the way Pochi’s unwavering trust was used to further the plot in key moments was awesome. Pochi helping Utsuho fight by literally breaking the laws of how the world works was hilarious. Pochi’s gender being kept a secret until the secret village arc was great. And Pochi being the one who saves everyone by finally transforming was perfect. In a way, given how similar Pochi was to Mana, this series was pretty much about and revolving around Pochi 😁

Conclusion

I think this is a really solid series. It does kinda follow the generic shonen themes popular at the time, but I think it did them well. Even though it essentially turns into a fetch quest series quite early on, the addition of new travel companions as well as the Kokonotsu treasures being obtained by a range of characters made it quite interesting. With the exception of Utsuho’s mini emo-arc (those arcs always suck), reading this series was a lot of fun 😊 Given this never got an anime and isn’t from any of the Jump magazines, I’m very lucky that it was ever brought over. Thank you to whoever at Viz decided to publish this!

Categories: Series Review

Tagged as: Itsuwaribito

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