Hungry Joker Review: Some Potential

Hungry Joker begins with a glowing body found on the streest of a city. They decide to call the usual scientist, "doctor" who is called Haiji and is this story's main character. He is certainly unique character who could only be called as simply mad. Nothing is known of Haiji since he doesn't have any memories from before 6 years ago and basically the only memory (which is shown to us) he has is about this mysterious black apple and numerous glowing corpses around him.

This black apple certainly is interesting: when damaged it recovers completely and it seems that it's existence dates back into distant past as it has been worshipped as divine fruit. According to Haiji and his research Newtown achieved the knowledge of "Law of gravitation" from this particular apple. The only problem is that every other person who has eaten from that apple has died, but not long after our hero is forced to do so, after the glowing corpse transforms into vicious monster. Haiji didn't get the knowledge of gravitation from eating the apple, but rather the power of controlling gravity itself!

This is how the story of Hungry Joker manga begins and I have to admit that it isn't too bad of a start for potential manga.

Art can be considered fine, but in my opinion it lacks something, some depth to be precise. It leaves me a weird feeling about the flow of the series and if I should describe it with a word it would be "dull". It may be that the author has tried to make something in between shonen and 'dark' and hasn't really succeeded in it.

As for the characters they've been a definite disappointment for me. Haiji himself is a decent character, but really isn't suitable for being a main protagonist, if I had to describe him with a word it would also be "dull". With the side characters of the series comes the true disappointment: basically every character has been somewhat uninteresting while immensely lacking some depth.

Story pick up very quickly after the first chapter and that is more than fine for me. However it's still too early to say since we've only gotten some hints how they story is going to develop. There are some aspects that the author is obviously making for the long run.

All in all, Hungry Joker is nothing but very potential manga to be success if the author manages to improve the characters. In the span of 12 chapters I'm not yet too convinced, but only future will show whether or not it will be something better than we are shown at this point.