#RADIANT MANGA SERIES#

It’s a reminder that for all the corporate slices of PR hype, the uninspired trends that reward failure, and whatever this account is used for, Shonen - and by extension, anime/manga - can still be pretty damn good.

#RADIANT MANGA SERIES#

You see, Radiant isn’t simply one of my favorite series of all time.

To answer that, let me put it to you another way. Does Radiant’s original comic still live up to its namesake? To that end, I powered through the first 11 volumes. I’m no exception to this, but with an ongoing manga in circulation, a 13th volume due in North America this month, and the second season of the anime now available on Netflix France, now seemed like the perfect time to take another critical look. Shonen as genre has a long and complex history that would take far too long to document, and while plenty of writers, critics, and online personalities have offered up their own opinions of what a masterpiece is, many of them tend to either live on nostalgia or in the heat of the moment, when a series reaches the peak of popularity, or is still in the public eye. I’ll avoid spoiling where they land for my anime-only readers, but it was one of the most engrossing fantasy stories that I’ve read in quite some time. What started as a casual read ended with me catching up with the story entering the current arc. But a funny thing happened as I started reading through the series from the beginning. Truth be told, I had no plans to cover the manga on the blog as I wanted to enjoy it at my leisure and take a break as I broadened my horizons and honed my writing pen through other means. Since the end of the first season, I’ve been quietly collecting volumes of the Radiant manga (or manfra if you prefer) as they release in the US.

It’s hard to believe two years have passed since the Radiant anime first premiered and the manga was localized to English for the first time in North America in 2018. But as events transpire and Seth experiences the cruelty of humans and the Sorcerers who would take advantage of the weak and defenseless, he makes a new vow to find the source of the Nemesis and end the cycle of discrimination - to find Radiant. In a world where magic is viewed as unnatural and taboo, the Infected are branded as outcasts, gaining the ability to wield magic (Fantasia) for a price in the form of a curse. Continuously on the move with his mentor Alma, the two of them are Infected - humans who came into contact with demons (Nemesis) and survived. First released in 2013, Tony Valente’s Radiant tells the story of Seth, a young apprentice sorcerer who dreams of becoming a Nemesis Hunter.