Moriking – An odd gag manga that deserved better

Rating: 8.5/10

Mangaka: Tomohiro Hasegawa

Synopsis: Third-grader Shota Aikawa’s pet beetle evolves from a larva to a pupa to a superhot human! The wacky adventures of the Aikawa family and the fabulous beetle who would be king now begins! You’re gonna LARVA this new comedy manga!

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Moriking gets a one hundred million points from me.

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The story is basically about this rhinoceros beetle who is supposedly the lord of all insects of the world and who shall become the king of the forest(Run Forest Run!!). Moriking is an insect king who to prove himself he’s worthy of ruling the other insects, he ventures onto the outer world and that’s where he meets Shouta, a elementary school kid who loves insects. Shouta takes him home when he was just a larva and there we meet the second character Shouta’s sister Shoko, she’s a high school student who loves gossiping.

While taking care of the larva, one day when they thought the beetle was coming out of the pupa, suddenly smoke comes out of nowhere and there stands a dude with sick abs and handsome face who just happens to look like a pervert. And there begins the story of a brother and sister living together with the Lord of insects(and the king of the forest).

Moriking is a very weird but different story and I love it. The idea of a insect turning into a human and fighting for his place to be the king of insects with some unexplainable comedy is gold. I know that surreal humor is not for everyone but I love these kind of stories. I’m really sad to see that it got cancelled, I would’ve loved more of this goofy story.

After seeing all the negative reviews, my expectations for it was pretty low but it’s like that meme “I came looking for copper and I found gold”, this is honestly a fun manga. There’s also mind-blowing action(just kidding), I like that even with all the fight scenes the author still keeps the humor. Feels like Beelzebub at times with all that action-comedy. But I guess that makes sense since this is parody manga. There are references of dragon ball, Hunter X Hunter and plenty others including Kung Fu panda.

I enjoyed this manga to the fullest. The humor was excellent with slight undertones of irony, Moriking made for a great comedy.

I don’t have much to say about the art, it’s ok, it’s not amazing or mind-blowing but for a simple comedy manga it worked well but the art definitely let down the story with it’s character designs. It was really lacking is the characters’ expressions.

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The characterial expressions are really important especially if you’re making a comedy manga. The over the top expressions is what makes the manga so funny, for example take Gintama, it’s one of the best comedy anime/manga and it’s mostly because of the characterial expressions that Hideaki Sorachi exceled in. The hilarious expressions of the characters’ are what made us laugh our minds out.

What I’m trying to say is that with such bland characterization, it only drags down the whole manga.

Moving on to the characters. I love them. They are so weird and absurd that you won’t help but fall in love with them. There is not much character development, they act and behave different(very) from the normal humans as you can see from the above pic and that’s what I love about it. The amount of ridiculousness that each characters display in serious situations just make for a fun read.

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Reading this manga made me kinda feel sad for the insects(not for cockroaches though). Moriking was one of those weird mangas that everybody hates but I like for some reason, I just wish it got a serialized a little longer so that I could read at least some more of this awesome manga.

Even though the manga was cancelled the author did a good job of wrapping up the story, it felt a little rushed but there’s nothing he can do. There were a lot of opinions around this manga, be it positive or negative, I truly enjoyed it. This is a very unique manga and may not be everyone’s cup of tea but I encourage you give it a try.

Thank you for reading.