Manga Review: SWOT

Title: SWOT
Author: Sugita Naoya
Release: Weekly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Shonen
Art: A
Originality: C
Story: C
Characters: C
Humor: B
Action: A

Impression: Another one of the latest rookie Jump series, one that’s going for the beat up all the delinquents storyline with an extremely hotheaded UFO-crazed lead whose dream is to one day work for NASA and the only way he’ll get to do that is if he’s the cream of the crop in terms of academics and gets into the University of Tokyo. The title SWOT refers to people who only seem to live to study and get good grades and that’s what this guy is supposed to be but his bad temper and astonishing strength gets him pulled into a lot of trouble with the punks in his school. I certainly like the fiery spirit this manga has but I hate how shoddy the characterization and the premise are. The guy is supposed to be super smart given his background but he somehow fails a test in a school with half of the student body being delinquents simply because he didn’t study for it. That compounded with the fact that he only transferred into said school because of an obviously misleading flyer makes his character one hell of a wallbanger itself. The other characters aren’t too bad but it can’t be good when it comes down to one supposedly brainy character holding the idiot ball for the plot to move forward. It’s rare to see a manga with this much spirit in it but it won’t go very far without the creativity to match it. I honestly can’t predict whether or not this series will make it past the 10 chapter trial period given the odd discrepancy in taste between the locals and the overseas but I doubt this series is going to deliver much unless it gives up the delinquent thing and go straight into battling aliens somewhere down the line. Now that I think about it, it would be interesting to see a Sci-Fi Shonen Battle manga series involving aliens.