Welcome back to our manga recommendation of the week series. I did some digging again and came up with something rather interesting. Well, it is officially the 7th week of this series and I am getting accustomed to looking up and finding more and more manga. So sit back and enjoy this and upcoming articles.
This week we have a manga called Soul Catcher. Now music in mangas is very hard to depict as you don’t have access to the soundtrack like anime of course. Yet still, somehow there are a lot of music mangas and some of them are really famous like Your Lie in April and Beck. Well we have a music manga this week and let us get into the details about it.
Introduction
Soul Catcher is written and illustrated by Shinkai Hideo. It was published from 13th May 2013 to 14th Feb 2016. totaling 11 volumes or 90 chapters. It was published in Weekly Shounen Jump. That should give you an idea of how good the manga is. After all, almost every mangaka dreams of having a publication in Jump Weekly.
It is of course a music manga with a little supernatural twist. What makes this manga great are its humor and the engaging and well-paced story. Let’s get further into the details with this basic information out of the way.
Plot
Soul Catcher is about a guy, Kamine Shota who can see the “hearts” of people. He tries to use this power and make people happy but always fails for some reason or another. He thinks it is impossible to make others happy. Yet one day, he meets a guy called Hibiki whose saxophone Kamine likes.
Curious about Hibiki, Kamine goes to one of his band’s concerts. He sees them gripping people’s hearts like Kamine was never able to do. So he also learns music so that he may be able to use his power. Now I know it does kind of sound serious and all but it has really well-placed and tasteful humor to keep the series going.
Art
This manga was published in Jump for 2 years; of course, it has some really good art. Agreed, it’s not god-tier but you know what, the art style is perfect for the manga. It has some of those typical shonen mangas awesome moments and does a great job of executing them. Overall, really good art.
Characters
Hibiki and Kamine take the cake here of course. Both of them share quite a few traits. Kamine finds his drive to do good for people once again after meeting Hibiki. It was Hibiki’s music that moved Kamine to learn music himself. If it wasn’t clear already, Kamine is someone who really cares for others. It is partly because of his ability and partly because of his nature.
Why you should read Soul Catcher
Some quick pointers on why you should check this manga out
- Good art
- Good story
- One of the rare band – shonen manga
- Rather short
- Great characters
Conclusion
That is all I have for now about manga recommendation of the week. Let me know your thoughts and suggestions down in the comments. As always, stay tuned for more content, and do not forget to check out our art section. With that said, I will take my leave here. See ya!