Houkago Wizard Club

A manga about three friends who enter the same fantasy world of Haikakin in their dreams.

This was a short lived fantasy action manga that ran in Weekly Shonen Champion. Looking back now you can see that it’s a mess of ideas thrown together with no payoff. Author Kyousuke Kagami introduces a lot of unexplained mechanics to the dream world of Haikakin, presumably to reveal them at a later date. The problem was that the series was canceled before he could do so, and probably partially because they didn’t explain a lot of things. The manga even starts off with 2 year flash forward with the main character trying to save someone from unleashing a huge magical explosion in the real world but we never got to learn anything about that situation because this series was cancelled. I feel bad for artist Yoshihiko Watanabe because this was yet another series like Versus Earth that ended prematurely for them.

Also there’s a scene where bandits pounce and all but rape a girl who loses in a fight against the main characters. It’s supposed to establish the cruelty of this world the protagonists are participating in but it just comes off as gross titillation. This happens after the teacher character warns the reader that she’s part of group of killers who are the worst, as if that’s supposed to justify what happens. It’s all very off putting to read and I don’t recommend this series.

~dakazu