So, out of boredom, I binged TSS.
That was...really weak.
I'll say this, Tanaka and Matsuura have a decent grip on action. The panneling is consistently pretty strong and dynamic, the art is fluid and, on a writing side, Tanaka manages the powers pretty well. Every character has a very distinctive set of techniques, and in terms of how they're used, there's a fair bit of ingenuity (Jin's powers aren't just "shoots electricity" for example). In terms of doing the "battle" part of battle manga, I think the series technically succeeds.
On the other hand, holy shit is the manga uninteresting.
TSS is a barren wasteland when it comes to any actual writing. From the beginning, I question Tanaka's decision to have no ongoing storyline and instead just focus on being a "fun manga", but that could've worked had the scenarios been interesting and well-developed. Only...they're not. Every scenario presented thus far has been really flat and one note, consisting purely of Jin and friends fighting through random barely developed bad guys to accomplish a singular goal of some kind, with no real deeper insight or twists at any point. The only thing Tanaka tries to do is include bits of social commentary...only they never work because he never elaborates on them, they're just...there.
And in terms of characters, they're actually worse. Not a single one of them feels unique or interesting, they're mostly a bunch of very basic tropes with zero depth. Jin is easily the worst, the guy is a complete and utter blank slate in spite of being the protagonist, and the fact that his one motive seems to be the exceptionally corny "protecting mah friends" doesn't help.
Overall, the whole thing just reads to me as a middle-schoolers idea of cool, a lot of flashy colors and cool powers, but nothing in the way of actual substance. It's unimpressive in every way, which makes me kinda shocked at how many people reacted with sadness when I said it was failing on twitter.
