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If one were to look at what’s hot on Manga Plus, a manga-reading app filled with banner titles like One Piece, Chainsaw Man, and Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo, they might be led to believe that this trio is the reason the app is worth downloading in a sea of reading apps that are more of a monetization hassle than they’re worth. However, the real manga that make the app essential aren’t these tenured shonen, but newer blood series. Alongside MAD, another manga series that more people should be obsessed with is the dark fantasy Centuria.
Reductively, Centuria, created by Tohru Kuramori, feels like a chimera of Makoto Yukimura‘s pacifist warrior odyssey, Vinland Saga, by way of Kentaro Miura‘s brutal and melancholic masterpiece, Berserk. On its own merits, however, reading the manga as it has evolved from week to week since its debut in 2024 has been nothing short of witnessing a literary powderkeg poised to push dark fantasy into a new echelon after an era dominated by works that felt more derivative of Berserk than genuinely self‑defined.
Centuria follows Julian, a boy with a truly messed-up past who finds himself as a stowaway on a ship filled with slaves awaiting their freedom. There, he befriends his fellow slaves, most of all Mira, a pregnant woman who rekindles his faith not only in humanity but also in his right to live a happy life. That is, until the shoe you’re waiting to fall, having read the previous sentences, hits him like a Mack truck. His fellow slaves are massacred by the ship captain, and to make matters worse, an eldritch emerges from the sea. During all the chaos, said eldritch being makes a bargain with Julian, granting him supernatural abilities by gifting him the combined strength of his slaughtered friends as well as their combined lives. In essence, Julian becomes a quasi-immortal being: with every death he suffers, he is resurrected, and his tally of 100 lives dwindles. Julian, in turn, indebted to his allies, uses his newfound strength to protect Mira’s newborn daughter and his adoptive sister, Diana, from forces both human and otherworldly that want her for their own ends as a mysterious “child of prophecy.”
Watching Centuria expand its world‑building week to week is a treat in itself, branching outward like a precarious spiderweb crack across a windshield. Despite its moderately brisk pace, nothing feels out of left field; each chapter lands on either a wholesome cliffhanger, an emotionally devastating beat, a giant bombshell, or a clever subversion of where you assumed the story was telegraphing itself to go. Rather than regaling readers with the well‑trodden lone‑wolf‑and‑cub dynamic between Julian and Diana, Centuria pointedly refuses to make its hero a lonely, solemn scowler. Instead, it surrounds him with new allies who quickly form a found family—a village determined to rear the child of prophecy the right way and fight tooth and nail to keep her safe.
And it certainly doesn’t hurt that the series is awash in some of the most detailed background art in the medium. Kuramori’s aesthetic feels pulled straight from the medieval tapestry of knights in the Bayeux Tapestry, with textures practically lifting off the page as if chiseled from stone. Its double‑page color spreads, meanwhile, evoke the haunting grandeur of Dark Souls and Elden Ring‑tier vistas that, even when rendered in black ink on a white page like any other manga, never fail to be equal parts awe‑striking and terrifying.
Another fun wrinkle in Centuria‘s intrigue beyond the literal story itself is that the series is part of a pretty cracked lineage of former assistants to Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto. Granted, it’s pretty standard that the trajectory of becoming a mangaka means you likely served as an assistant under a bigger mangaka. But for whatever reason, those in Fujimoto’s orbit tend to have all branched out to make pretty unique series all their own that all feel like a counter-cultural influence of Fujimoto. To give pomp and circumstance to the Midas touch Fujimoto’s assistants have had since becoming their own mangaka, here’s a quick rundown of who they are and what they’ve made:
Likewise, Kuramori is a former assistant to both Fujimoto and Tatsu, having worked with the former on his one-shot manga, Goodbye Eri, and with the latter on a couple of chapters of Dandadan, and it shows. Centuria is teeming with impressive character designs, clever power sets, and even a cast of villains that are endearing and worth reading for, with arcs to rival those of its heroes.
Another hallmark of Fujimoto’s influence that’s unmistakable in Centuria is his penchant for drawing “cute girls,” which is as alive in Kuramori as in his other assistants, arguably more so. At the very least, it’s something that’s impressed Tatsu enough to draw fan art of his assistant’s massive female knight while imploring him not to follow in Fujimoto’s footsteps by killing her off.
ケントゥリア面白い・・・！
アンヴァルを殺さないでください・・・！ pic.twitter.com/IyJKDfZLit— 龍幸伸 (@TatuYukinobu) August 19, 2024
Over the two years of its serialization, Centuria‘s momentum as a must-read manga series has shown no signs of slowing. It’s even earned it a shortlist recommendation from Manga Plus editor-in-chief, Shuhei Hosono.
“It has both a complex story and special-power battles, and I have no doubt it’s going to become a masterpiece, so I hope more people give it a read,” Hosono said in the YouTube video linked above.
With the luck Fujimoto’s assistants have had getting the whole series picked up and turned into a banner anime of their own, hopefully, it’ll only be a matter of time until an anime studio announces they’re adapting it. So now’s as good a time as any to give it a read and see what all the hubbub is about.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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Isaiah Colbert
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