User blog comment:Ishimura Elite/Clashing Blades Feedback and Polls/@comment-24055816-20141018212908

Review time. This week, we’re delving into one of SAOF’s series brought by the talented Ishimura_Elite, a person who I’ve taken a liking to over my time spent in this hellhole. Not that much, Ishi. Don’t start imagining things now! Anyway, Ishi has managed to write one hell of a story, and was very successful at it! Now… Without further licking behinds… Sit back, relax, put on your anime hype and most of all: Enjoy!

Story:

So, the story is set in Sword Art Online. Shocker, isn’t it? More importantly, the story revolves around the main protagonist, Ishi Haseo, a solo player in the world of Aincrad. You look through his eyes, and you get to take a look into what makes Ishi… well, Ishi! Along the way, you get to meet some well-created characters, such as Asuka for example, which you practically meet very early in the first Arc. And then there’s Yamato, the main antagonist for the story, which you also meet early on. And then there’s- Well, I won’t spoil too much. Go make the effort to read it yourself if this meager amount of information makes you tingle with hype. The path of this young Blade Master turns out to be full of hardships, no surprise there. It is however what makes Clashing Blades an interesting story which can easily pull you in to keep reading more. I’d say, from personal perspective, that the best parts that pull you in are the insanely detailed fighting scenes. The sheer amount of epicness contained in simple fights were the small details which I loved. They were significant, even when you could argue battles looked very similar. Yet, each time there was a new setting, different motives, plotholes uncovered, and so forth. All that I missed was a bit more development aside from Ishi himself, but you can’t expect much when the whole friggin’ story revolves around one guy. Moving on!

 Characters:

Clashing Blades has masterfully selected its characters, even when they are sometimes underdeveloped. And that’s mostly speaking for the protagonist side. It is in the antagonists that the real jackpot lies. Where most stories would select one antagonist to introduce, Clashing Blades just throws a ton at you. Grimm, Hao, Yamato, Kamui… Always a new threat! And on the upside, these characters continue to pose a threat, which allows for action to be present equally in each arc almost. So for you junkies who do like a good villain, don’t fret; Clashing Blades has you covered.

Protagonists… I liked them. But like I mentioned before, a little more development would have been nice. Sometimes I felt the characters present were merely to compliment Ishi on his adventure. Like Guren. We see this sidecharacter accompany Ishi in an effort to obtain Hellkarium, which they can present to Hephaestus. All you see is them adventuring together, and afterwards splitting up. I get it that the story focused on Ishi, yet I feel the characters like Guren could have been used more than just complimentary story elements. Give them some more background, have them talk about themselves! This does not account for all protagonists though, as I felt that some characters were infact developed. Like Asuka. Nevermind, that was an obvious choice.

 For actual descriptions… Stop being a lazy reader. Go look them up on the Wiki, or look below this post to FedeTkd’s review. It takes like what, a second? Moving on!

 Final Comments:

Personally, I enjoyed (re)reading Clashing Blades. It is an epic story which never stops with the more-then-satisfying plots being uncovered, well-presented villains and fucking AMAZING fights. I’d definitely recommend trying out the first two arcs for you new readers to see if you agree with my observations, and continue if you actually like what you read.

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…Happy now, Ishi? I did it. Finally got to it-Nevermind. Urgh.

~Nakuro