Slasher Maidens Vol. 1 [Manga Review]

A Romantic Death-Action Drama

There is almost nothing new under the sun when it comes to manga. No matter what kind of story that you’d like to see, it’s highly likely that there’s a manga for it out there. You don’t even have to look so far back into the past, because there are lots of good manga that have been published in recent years that can certainly satisfy your curiosity.
If you want an ecchi romantic comedy featuring cute girls, there’s My Dress-Up Darling and Ayakashi Triangle. If you want a fast-paced action story of mankind vs monsters, there’s Monster #8 and One-Punch Man. But what if you want the combination of both? In that case, you might want to give the Slasher Maidens manga a try. Here’s our review for the first volume of Slasher Maidens.

Asuma Sudou has always been a self-proclaimed horny-meister since he was small. Even when the world started being terrorized by monsters called Kaijin that were born out humans with strong and uncontrollable emotions, Asuma didn’t care. The only thing in his head was ogling the bodies of beautiful girls.

That is until he accidentally met Innami, an elegant and beautiful girl from the prestigious Meidou Girls’ Academy. Ever since then, he vowed to change his lecherous ways and devote his heart to Innami. As if listening to his pleading, a letter arrives inviting him to be a student of the Meidou Academy. Needless to say, Asuma immediately jumped onto this miraculous chance.

What he doesn’t know, however, is the fact that Meidou Academy is actually the secret organization that fights Kaijin on a daily basis. Not only that, but the girls who study at Meidou are actually ruthless warriors called the Slasher Maidens. It doesn’t take long for Asuma to finally realize the strange reason why he was invited to this mysterious all-girls academy.

1. Rapid Character Development

It usually takes more than one volume to give any semblance of character development to the main characters. After all, the main purpose of the first volume of a manga is usually just to introduce the story, the characters, and the world that they live in. Some manga will also present the conflicts or even the goal of the story in the first volume, but such a thing rarely happens.

Slasher Maidens, however, manages to lay out proper character development for Asuma and Innami in this first volume. The manga begins with Asuma as an incorrigible pervert, and throughout the story he slowly turns into a brave and sympathetic character.

Innami appears at first as a cold and callous girl who won’t give Asuma the time of day. As the story progresses, though, she starts to show her compassionate side and even opens up a little bit to Asuma.

Providing character development in the first volume of a new series is not an easy thing to do, and yet Slasher Maidens manages to accomplish it with flying colors.

2. Unpredictable Story

Slasher Maidens begins with Asuma being a pervert and showing how he intends to change for the better because, for the first time ever, he’s finally fallen in love with a girl. That is a classic ecchi romantic comedy situation right there.

But then we find out the truth about how the girls at Meidou academy risk their lives to kill the Kaijin monsters. We even get to see them fighting to the death with melee weapons like chainsaws and machetes. That is a proper action horror story.

Those are some of the strange story progressions that appear in this first volume. The story shifts and morphs as you read it, which is a great thing because it creates an unpredictable story and keeps the readers guessing on what will happen next.

1. A Collection of Familiar Ideas

As you read through this first volume of Slasher Maidens, you will inevitably come across ideas and concepts that feel oddly familiar. Things like people that can suddenly turn into a monster due to their strong, uncontrollable emotions is something that we’ve seen in One-Punch Man. One of the villains is even the spitting image of the sexy insect lady that appeared in the early chapters of One-Punch Man.

Not only that – turning the remains of the monsters into powerful weapons to be used against them is how humanity fights back against kaiju in Monster #8. And the idea of a man who has a unique power that can act as a support for a warrior girl as they engage in a deathly fight is basically the plot of a manga called Freezing.

We can argue that these ideas and concepts are merely inspired by all of those aforementioned titles. And hopefully that is the case, because otherwise, Slasher Maidens ended up becoming a second-rate manga that uses other people’s ideas and is incapable of coming up with something original.

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There are a lot of good things happening in this first volume of Slasher Maidens – the character development, the unpredictable story progression, and the intense action sequences are some of the highlights of this volume.

However, the fact that numerous concepts presented in the story can be traced back to other people’s works is definitely a bad thing. Hopefully, Slasher Maidens can present its own unique ideas in subsequent volumes.

What do you think about Slasher Maidens? Would you pick it up and give it a try? Let us know in the comment section below.

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