Manga Majesty | Review Feb 2, 2024

As we look at the sixth and final volume of the Manga Bible Series, I am glad to say this now concludes every review of this franchise. This has taken us much longer than expected to complete. But it was a longer journey for the Next Manga team and its publishers to finally finish their series. Remember, it took NEXT Manga NINE long years since Volume Five to finish their series. It took 13 years to publish all six volumes, with nine of those years separating the last two. To this day I don’t exactly know why there was such a large gap. I do remember during that period, they had this “Close The Canon” campaign. This was an effort to try and secure $110,000 to publish their final volume. I never understood why they needed the money to complete the final volume. Wouldn’t the success of the previous five volumes generate enough money to complete the final one? Why was it only for the final volume that they needed money? I don’t recall them ever having to do that with the previous five. Also, why did it take so long to raise the money? $110,000 is a lot of money, but we're not talking about raising a million dollars here. it didn’t need to take so many years to get to that amount. Was there a massive falling out among team members? Were there logistical issues? There was never a real proper explanation for this gap. It was some sort of financial goal they had.

To add more confusion to this all was the actual size of this volume. I mean people waited for 9 years, and who knows how many people donated towards this $110,000 goal. And finally, once this volume arrived, and people went to their bookstore to buy it, what were they greeted with? This!.. I mean look how thin this thing is! This is what 9 years and $110,000 got you folks. This was a real disappointment. I know this volume only represents the book of Revelation, but that is not an easy book to comprehend. So I along with many were expecting this to be the same size as the other five volumes. Even when you stack all six of these volumes side by side, Manga Majesty looks completely out of place. But who am I to complain? I was not very fast at getting these reviews done either. Manga Majesty came out in October 2019, and it has taken almost 4.5 years for me to finally review this. So I don’t have an excuse either. But at least my review did not need a fundraiser to publish it.

Anyways, enough complaining from me. Time to finally see Manga Majesty. They once again do not fail with having the letter M in their title. It’s good they are ending at 6 books because they were definitely going to run out of suitable words that start with the letter M.

As I look closely at their drawings, it seems like there was some sort of changeover with their artists. Aside from a different Art Director, I also saw a subtle difference in the thickness of the outlines in their drawings. To help you understand, when volumes 5 and 6 are side by side, the outlines are much thicker in volume 6. Even within the pages, there are differences. The good news is that this is not noticeable. But, it has made me appreciate the previous volumes even more. I liked the thinner lines as they somehow gave the images a bit of a clean polished look to them. It’s hard to explain.

It doesn’t take long into this volume for me to see some continuity errors in the form of how some recurring characters look. For example, take a look at James (The brother of Jesus). He has blonde thick hair with hazel eyes, but in the previous volume, he has dark brown hair and brown eyes. Then there is Paul who has blonde facial hair and blue eyes, but in the previous volume, he has dark brown facial hair with brown eyes. The one character that may be able to get away with a continuity error is John. Here we have a much older John with white hair while the previous volume shows a much younger John with blonde hair. So there are similarities in how they look.

There are no continuity errors that stand out with the appearance of Jesus. While he doesn’t look exactly like the Jesus from the previous manga volumes, the similarities are close enough. But considering Jesus is also God, it’s worth noting he could change his appearance if he wanted to. In fact, this Jesus with white hair looks pretty awesome, but then a few panels and pages later, we see the same Jesus with more brown hair again. Not sure why the sudden change in visuals other than this is all taking place in the visions John is having. Revelation has lots of bizarre imagery, so this all seems par for the course.

Then John comes across this elder who asks him this strange question which he answers logically, "You know more than me". It’s odd because this elder goes on a long dialogue answering his own question. The only thing that makes sense to me is that this was more of a rhetorical question.

Then we get to Revelation 8 where John describes these seven angels with trumpets appearing before God. All seven of these angels look like women, but they were all identified with male pronouns. “When the first angel blew HIS trumpet”, “second angel…HIS trumpet”, “third angel..HIS trumpet”. Fourth, fifth, sixth…angel…HIS trumpet. The art style took a very different approach for these male angels to look so feminine.

On page 65, there is unfortunately a spelling mistake. "Angels" is spelt wrong. This is pretty embarrassing. People waited 8 years for this volume and that still was not enough time to get the spelling correct.

I know it sounds like I am being harsh with this volume, but it seems unacceptable for a crowd-funded project to not pay attention to details like this. The positive aspect I will say is that they did a great job providing incredible imagery for such a difficult book. They describe so many of the bizarre things that are happening on Earth. There is plenty of color and detail in these pages that are able to capture John’s vision for readers to understand.

Overall, the Manga Bible Series stands as a series that is to my surprise very accurate in its theology. I found this series a pleasure to read. I’ve enjoyed these Manga volumes so much, that there is a part of me that hopes that NEXT Manga could develop their own anime adaptations. I don’t think that would happen, but they should take a serious look at that idea. Who would have thought the Bible could reach millions of people all over the world through the art style of Manga? I would never have thought that. But the team at Next Manga did, and their 6 volume project has shown the world that it is not only possible, but it has been done.