Japanese Title: Free Soul

 

Related: Love My Life (same author)

 

Genre: Yuri Drama

Length: 1 volume

 

Positives:

• Nothing

Negatives:

• A mind-numbing plot of shallow characters and trumped up conflict.
• Sterile dialogue.
• The subplot of writing a manga is worthless.
• Art is empty.

(contains nudity and sex)

Bloody hell, Free Soul is terrible. If I celebrated thanksgiving, I would be thankful that I never have to read this again. The plot is dull, the characters shallow, the art ugly, and it couldn’t even manage a single point of believable conflict.

One day, Keito sees a woman called Niki walk into the record shop where she works. Keito is immediately infatuated, a few pages and some awkward dialogue later, they sleep together. What attracted them to each other…? Why are you looking to me? I have no idea. Niki is free-spirited and doesn’t like anything more than casual relationships; however, after they part, Keito can’t stop thinking about her and wants more. Oh, and there’s also this subplot about Keito writing a manga on a black diva, which has no effect on the narrative. One could quite cut this subplot and have no effect on anything (apart from how much time you waste with Free Soul).

The dialogue is so sterile that I can see the characters reciting through key sentence bullet list. Instead of having natural dialogue from real characters, most dialogue is exposition. “As a child I did that—” “Now I do this—” “My parents are—” “I like to—” So dull. In regards to conflict, it’s all forced and strawman constructs. Take Keito’s mother for example, who hates lesbians, for what reason? No idea. Does this have any effect on the plot? Not an iota. Scenes like this are designed to illicit sorrow, but any smart reader will notice the rubbish ploy. The manga she writes has an exact same moment, except it’s a white guy being racist to the black singer. Again, worthless. If you can’t handle tough issues like bigotry, then don’t put them in you stories.

I can’t recommend Free Soul any less.

Art – Very Low

The art is as empty as the plot with no signs of talent, detail or creativity.

Story – Very Low

The narrative is a dull amalgamation of strawman characters, forced conflict, and sterile dialogue.

Recommendation: Avoid it. One of the worst manga you could possibly read.

(Find out more about the manga recommendation system here.)