A Look at “Trinity Seven” Manga
As long time readers of this blog know, I’m often told about titles that might interest me. One such title was Trinity Seven, the anime of which I was nearly tempted to watch, but then passed on. For some reason, the manga was brought back to my mind, so I decided to give it a read and see what it was all about.
***SPOILERS***
Trinity Seven is the story of KASUGA Arata, a perverted high school boy living with his high school female cousin, Hijiri. One day, Arata notices a black sun, then at school, gets threatened with death by a previously unknown female student. Eventually, he is forced to remember that a Breakdown Phenomenon destroyed his town, taking Hijiri with it. Before she disappeared, she gives him her powerful grimoire Astil Manuscript, who grants his wish to create this false reality where everything is fine. The unknown female student, ASAMI Lilith, had been sent to investigate the Breakdown Phenomenon from the Royal Biblia Academy, gives him the choice of death or to have his memories wiped. He chooses option 3, and registers at the Royal Biblia Academy as its only male student.
While there, Arata discovers he is a Mao (Demon Lord/Magic King) candidate, which makes him very powerful, but also very dangerous. Lilith, an instructor at the academy, is also a member of Trinity Seven, a group of very powerful female mages at the academy. He quickly meets six of the seven members, all of whom either take a liking to him or a dislike, then he finally gets to meet the seventh, were eventually, he befriends them all and they become his battle partners as well as potential love interests, thanks to the good parts of his nature, including a desire to save the still alive Hijiri. However, because he is a Mao candidate, others see him as a danger to be destroyed or bent to their will.
***REVIEW***
For starters, Trinity Seven is a manga title that is heavy on the ecchi fanservice. As one who’s enjoyed the various worked of AKAMATSU Ken-sensei (Love Hina, Negima, UQ Holder), I’m clearly versed in fanservice title with an ecchi bent, but Trinity Seven really pushes the limit. During the course of the existing manga, (early on, between Arata and some of the Trinity Seven babes who cover a range of waifu types), I was surprised when some of the magic attacks would be sexual in nature, even giving the girls an ahegao face at times. Either that, or the antagonist might adopt a lust-filled expression. Some attacks were even tentacle-like in nature, doing thinks to the girls without showing a lot (other than maybe an ahegao face). These days, more than ever, I can do without this kind of thing.
Arata seems to be based in part on Ataru from Urusei Yatsura in his perversion levels, only he doesn’t have Ataru’s irritating aspects. His redeeming factors come from his desire to save his cousin, but also to help any of the girls in need, which is what ultimately melts the hearts of all of the Trinity Seven members. His ability to roll with all of this shocking changes to his life (the existence of magic, the fact that he’s a Mao candidate, the fact that his grimoire can assume the form of a loli girl, etc.) .
The other aspect of Arata seems to be taken from the character of Negi from Negima, in that Arata first learns magic to dispel magic, but ends up stripping his female comrades or opponents. One of the challenges that Arata has before him is to eventually strip one of his Trinity Seven comrades, whom has so far managed to avoid this.
When the series is not being ecchi and showing off the babes in nondescript nudity, Trinity Seven starts off fairly interesting. While the magical system of Saitou-sensei’s world is somewhat complicated, it does make a certain sense with people researching magic abilities to grow stronger, and having magic types based on the seven deadly sins.
The early stories are about Arata growing in power and winning the trust of the Trinity Seven. To give Arata more battle babes, eventually his grimoire takes on the form of a loli babe named Sora, who loves the perverted side of her master. Things were fairly interesting for the most part during most of the existing manga as we learn more about this secret magic world on Earth.
In more recent times, the manga has begun to suffer in terms of story. One one hand, there’s a tournament in progress, which is basically an excuse to have the Trinity Seven and Arata pair up to do battle. That wasn’t that interesting (and I’m not a fan of tournaments). At the same time, there are battle babes from other schools attending this tournament, and their agenda for getting the Mao candidate is in play as a second story, but to be honest, I haven’t found it very interesting as it feels more like an attempt to have Arata’s harem grow beyond the Trinity Seven babes.
In the end, I found Trinity Seven to be too ecchi for my tastes. While the story does get off to an interesting start, of late, it has faltered. Because of this combination, I doubt I ever return to finish this manga series.
Well, this is one of those rare cases (the only one in the last years) on which I read the spanish scanlation instead of the english release.
And trinity seven is now a plain boring manga. It is now like some half assed story made by one of those guys with “the eighth grader syndrome” referred on recent anime/manga (“Chuunibyou” says google). A fanmade story, a fanfiction of sorts…. but a bad one.
I’m not against the ecchi at all, but there are +18 mangas a lot better than this on terms of story and characters (yeah, I read those too, don’t judge me please), so I’m reading this just for the sake of complete it, nothing more.
Heh! Chuunibyou indeed. I get the feeling the author didn’t expect the manga to be quite as popular as it turned out and didn’t really have a game plan for making the manga continue after the T7 were gathered and the secret of Hijiri was revealed.
But things do go too easily for Arata, but he didn’t annoy me the way Touta from UQ Holder did.
I promise I won’t. 🙂 In a free society, folks can read and enjoy whatever they want. For me, God put a boot up my backside at the beginning of 2016, and since my life is out of control in all aspects, I have to clean it up in all aspects at the same time. (It is personal, so I won’t say more than that, but when all is said and done, I pray I am much improved as a human being. ^_^)
Care to recommend some? 😀
This was also made into Anime if you didn’t know already
Yeah, last season, right? I remember being somewhat tempted to give it a look-see then, but for some reason, decided to pass.
it was fall 2014 actually but the VAs really make the show worth it.
I didn’t realize it was already that old.
Good Monday to you, Astro.
Just dropping by to alert you to a new Spotted Flower chapter. It’s an actual chapter this time (12 pages) and has a nice cliffhanger.
Whoa! 12 pages. Awesome!