Manga Review: Big Order 01 by Sakae Esuno
It has been ten years since the woman called Daisy first appeared. Like a genie, she finds a person and grants them one wish. The wish then grants that person a superpower called an Order to fulfill the wish. Daisy is no automaton, and she can interpret the same wish in different ways as she pleases. Naturally, creating Order Users has caused mass social disruption, starting with her first wisher, Eiji Hoshimiya. His wish supposedly destroyed the world!
Mind, the world wasn’t so much destroyed as it was severely shaken up with massive earthquake events, including rendering Tokyo near-uninhabitable. Eiji and his terminally ill little sister Sena were moved to a small city in Kyushu, and the traumatized boy decided never to use his Order again. Daisy is so disappointed that ten years later, she tells Eiji that his wish was not to destroy the world.
But it’s not until attractive exchange student Rin Kurenai turns out to be an assassin bent on murdering him for revenge that Eiji finally remembers what his actual wish was and how his Order is meant to work.
Having resolved that issue, it is revealed that Rin’s actual mission which she abandoned was to befriend Eiji to spy on him for the Ten, the group of Order Users who run the local government. Soon, they’ve used a combination of extortion and a promise to find someone who can cure Sena to make Eiji the figurehead of their attempt to take over the world!
This is a shounen (boys’) battle manga, where people with various weird powers attempt to use them creatively to overcome other people with weird powers. The author’s previous series, Future Diary, did the same thing with various subdivisions of the power of precognition, but here, no power is off the table.
Good: Nifty powers, and some twisty battles. Rin’s regenerative abilities make for some slapstick dark comedy. In the first large volume here, it’s made clear that not everything Eiji believes about the past is true, making for interesting revelations.
Less good: The treatment of female characters is kind of iffy as a group; individually there are Watsonian reasons why each has an unhealthy interest in Eiji, but it gets creepy when you put them together. There’s also enough male-oriented fanservice to earn this volume a “mature” rating.
Rock God in particular comes across weird, as her “sexy” persona and impractical outfit clash with her sad backstory and origin of her powers.
The setup could go in any number of directions, so if you enjoy battle manga with fanservice, this might be the series for you.
And there’s an anime!
