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Arago and Ewan Hunt witness their parents death at the at hands of a mysterious being known as the “Patchman”. Fifteen years later, the brothers live drastically different lives until their paths cross again following the trail of the Patchman’s latest victims. Their latest encounter with the being left both at the edge of death. But the Patchman wouldn’t have that — he needs one of them to be his new body. Using parts of Ewan, he revives Arago only to have his powers stolen by him. With his brother’s death weighing on his heart, Arago dedicates his life to saving others with his new powers. By day, he is a detective; by night, he’s fighting demons and spirits until the line between his double life blurs.

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As a supernatural action manga, what we have here isn’t the usual specimen but it is fairly close. The supernatural elements of the manga are unique. Demons and spirits from various European cultures and religions are utilized, many of which I haven’t heard of before. This, along with the main elements of power referred to as Erinn’s Treasures, give the manga various unique elements. The only problem is that they are used in a very generic manner.

The action part of the manga is very mainstream.  The main character gains some mysterious powers, which acts as a deus ex machina* and becomes stronger after each near death experience.  The biggest problem with this model is that almost all manga won’t let the main character die, once you realize this all the tension of these near death scenes is lost. The best manga will give you the feeling that the main character could actually die at any moment and the manga will still go on. However, this manga redeems itself with its battle scenes.  The action is short, quick paced and not drawn out. A battle shouldn’t take up more than a chapter if no new element is added. Many manga fall into the trap of long drawn out battles but this work avoids such traps which helps make the manga quicker paced.

Characters in Arago tend to all be static as they don’t change much from beginning to the end. The biggest exception to this is Joe, but other than that, the personality of every other character stays fairly constant from the beginning to the end.  Is this bad? No, not necessarily.  This is a relatively short work of only 85 chapters. The characters don’t need to change; in fact, if the characters changed too much in such a short time, then more harm is done than good.

Arago’s plot is fairly straight forward. There is one “final boss” type enemy. Everything is simply a build up to the final confrontation. Who the final boss is, I will leave to your imagination, although you are given hints of his identity as a decent twist. The premise to the battle is also fairly generic, to gather all of Erinn’s Treasures and to either use them for evil (the boss) or to prevent their use (Arago). The occasional twist along the way adds spice to plot; however you don’t read this kind of manga for the plot.

What you read this manga for is the thrill of seeing the main character acting cool and succeeding through his/her hardships. This work provided that thrill. But if you are looking for deep emotional turmoil or a unique/complicated plot, look elsewhere. Ultimately, this manga does its job well as a fairly mainstream supernatural action manga. I enjoyed reading the work — I especially enjoyed the ending. I thought that the ending was the best part as it probably had the best action, suspense, and thrill of the entire work.

*Latin for “God from the machine” which is a plot device in which a problem or situation is solved abruptly. In this case, when a character is saved at the last minute.

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GO Rating: 3/5