For my first review I bring “Jinki Extend Relation” by TSUNASHIMA Shirou.
Hello everyone, it’s YouNoThatman here. After much thought I decided to contribute more to the site and joined the team. This will be my first time writing a post but I’ll give it my best; so please give me your honest opinions. Okay, before I begin, a big shoutout to Wizard and the team for welcoming me aboard and for their support.
The mecha series began with “Jinki” in 2000, which had four volumes; followed by “Jinki Extend” in 2002 and had nine volumes. Between 2007-2008, spin-offs “Jinki – Shinsetsu“( Five volumes) and “Jinki – Shinsetsu – Final Episode“(one volume) were released. The latest(Jinki Extend Relation) started in 2009 and has five volumes. Currently, the series has been on hiatus. A 13-episode anime adaptation(Jinki EXTEND) was produced by FEEL in 2005. An eroge adaptation, “Jinki Extend Re:Vision” was released in 2010 by Giga(Baldr Sky, Baldr Force); the eroge was loosely based on the manga.
The 1st manga begins the story with a 14-year old, robot modelling girl named Tsuzaki Aoba who is kidnapped and finds herself in Venezuela. There she becomes a pilot of a mecha called “Jinki” and fights “ancient jinki”. Then an evil, world-destroying organization shows up. Naturally, right? There’s actually serious plot here. The story goes on to introduce many characters and their mysterious powers throughout the series. In J:ER, the story is set three years after the 1st Jinki manga and focuses on a new hero. For a mecha manga it has a good balance between it’s lighter moments to it’s more mature content.
While it seems strange to from the last manga, there’s a good reason for this. Fanservice. The 1st manga barely had any and while the 2nd(J:E) had more, it was largely non-nude. J:ER has the most. In the future I’ll probably add the rest.
Fair warning: There’s is graphic content such as death, rape or heavily-implied rape.
Jinki Extend Relation Manga 5 Volumes(on Hiatus)
Series Artwork:
Fan-edited
From the eroge. Wonder why the male MC seems displeased?
My thoughts on Manga Series
There’s not many manga that I’ve seen build up such an interesting and complicated story over time as this one has. The male MC, Ryouhei goes from being hot-head warrior/pilot who’s also the comic relief to a “beloved onii-chan” to the girls and a mentor to his kohai; a true badass throughout the story. However, problem is much of the plot is a mystery due to so few translated chapters. While some of the plot can be guessed, the finer details cannot be. To add to confusion, there’s a time-skip and multiple flashbacks that make it difficult to determine chronological order of events. The characters are unique and funny but even they are not immune to danger. The manga has some cruel twist within its stories and it’s certainly not afraid to show evil …being evil.
Thoughts on Anime
Since I mentioned the anime, I may as well briefly include it here. Simply a bad adpatation. They tried combining the first two manga series, changed few things and ended up being a complete mess. Fanservice was basically zero. A naked towel scene was the best it got.
Links:
Download All manga compilation
Series artwok including some from Tsunashima Shirou’s artbook can be found here.
To read the 1st few chapters of Jinki manga click here.
To read the 1st chapter of Jinki: Extend Relation click here.
Interested in the eroge? click here.(NSFW, of course)
