bel Blatt started off as a mixed bag and around the halfway mark it got worse. I think that it started off as something really special. I dont mean the first few chapterstheyre fine I guessbut the creators vision for the series as a whole. The core plot of betrayal and revenge and regret obviously came first and when thats the focus of the action everything is goodthe characterization the plotting even the art. More on that last point in a minute. But the creator also added all this political intrigue which is at best okay and a larger Evil Plan that is the focus of the last third or so which stinks. To take those points in order: The protagonist Koinzell was betrayed twenty years ago by his comradesinarms. They left him for dead returned to the emperor and took credit for his accomplishments which ended a war with the neighboring country and since then theyve been honored as heroes and his name has been reviled. Hes returned for revenge. This is not a terribly original plot Berserk of course does it better but it is a good one. bel Blatt is at its best when it explores what this betrayal did to the betrayers: how the Seven Heroes have been corrupted by twenty years of luxury glory and power purchased by their secret sin. Even here bel Blatt is not without problems many of the villains are just a hair too cartoonishly villainous but I can say without reservation that this plotline is a good one. Those Seven Heroes were honored for their victory by essentially having the empire they saved divvied up between them. Each was made a noble even the former bandit and the merchants son subordinate only to the Emperor. In the twenty years since they have for the most part brutally abused their fiefdoms and schemed impotently for advantage against each other. When Koinzell returns and starts killing them this disrupts the balance of power and they immediately begin intriguing first to be given authority over the efforts to kill the rebel then to gain enough power to crown themselves emperor. The trouble is that nothing about all this intrigue has even a whiff of plausibility. For example the basic premise is laughable: An empire with an established nobility which this empire had simply is not going to be divided up among a bandit a merchant some soldiers and a minor noble or two just because they accomplished their goal in a suicide mission. Im sorry its just not. Theres nothing wrong with using that as a plot device to set up these climactic confrontations between the protagonist and the Seven Heroes but if you want political intrigue you need the political structure to have some basic plausibility. Everything else about the empires political structure is similarly sophomoric and halfbaked. E.g. theres a free city that was not placed under the control of any of the Seven Heroes. Why? Because the plot needed there to be one. The Evil Plan that occupies the last third of the series just comes out of nowhere. Its never explained why anyone even the Big Bad thinks its a good idea and there are plenty of reasons its a dumb idea of course. To make it work and to set the stage for the final conflict technologies and characters and places are introduced seemingly at the authors whim then immediately discarded. Compounding those problems the ending a came out of left field b didnt include any of the characterarc payoff we were expecting and c was incredibly rushed. I think that by the last volume of the series the creator mustve been as sick of this story as I was. In short the plot was not good. That brings me to the characterization. Again when the focus is that core narrative of betrayal and revenge its pretty solid. The villains are a bit too villainous but its not awful. But as soon as we get away from the betrayal/revenge narrative and particularly as the revenge plot fades into the background and the Big Bads evil scheme takes over that changes. The villains get dumber and more blatantly evil. Everyone starts holding the Idiot Ball at once. People change their allegiance without adequate explanation. Ichfeis goes from being a coldblooded opportunist to the biggest dumbest idealist in the series. I dont mean to imply that the characterization is good at first then takes a turn for the worse. Rather the characterization is consistently bad whenever the author ventures away from the core narrative of revenge. For example Koinzell is portrayed throughout volumes 1 and 2 as an incorrigible womanizer either because the author thought it was funny or because it would give him the chance to draw more fanservice. More on that in a minute. But starting with volume 3 its like a switch has been flipped and hes suddenly a respectable hero. But what really sinks this series in my opinion is the art. For the most part its competently executed but there are some pretty bad panels that seem to show a difficulty with perspective. And for a manga that focuses so much on swordplay theres basically no effort at depicting the swordplay itself and no variety whatsoever to how the fights get resolved. They almost invariably go like this: 1 a few panels of sword clanging on sword 2 Koinzell or whichever good guy is fighting gets a cut diagonally across his left shoulder which never so much as inconveniences him and 3 Koinzell ends the fight using one of his two magic sword moves. At that point either the enemy is dead yay hero wins or the enemy is still standing in which case Koinzell collapses and is saved by the intervention of some other character. In short the art doesnt add to bel Blatt. And in fact in my view it actually detracts from the series due to some really egregious fanservice. There are a lot of naked women in this manga and theres a fair bit of sex. Fine. Whatever. Not my thing but I wont complain about it. But there is a very young girl whose sole reason for being in the story as far as I can tell is to appeal to perverts. Her combat attire which she regularly loses would make perfect sense as lingerie. At one point she forges a sword wearing heavy protective gloves and a bikini bottom. Absolutely ridiculous. Another even younger girl wears an armored thong into battle. This doesnt just offend my sensibilities it also makes it impossible to take Ubel Blatt seriously. By the way this is what I meant when I said the art is better in the revengefocused bits: The revenge story doesnt involve any young girls so the author doesnt have any opportunities to put lolicon smut in those bits. Bottom line: Not hopelessly incompetent and even had some good points but overall a big disappointment.