666 Satan (O-Parts Hunter), Shonen at its best.

This is one of my personal favorite manga, and I hope you can find this review helpful.  666 Satan is a shonen adventure fantasy manga by Seishi Kishimoto that runs for 76 chapters released in 19 volumes.  The manga is finished in Japan, and is still being released stateside under the title O-Parts Hunter at 9 volumes by Viz Media.  The artwork and some of the themes and characterization in 666 Satan is very similar to the work of Seishi’s brother, Masashi Kishimoto, Naruto.  This is due to the same influences growing up and probably no small part to being twins.  Whereas Naruto works off a ninja mythology 666 Satan borrows a few ideas from both the Christian and Jewish religion.  That’s information you can find off of Wikipedia and dozens of other sites so let’s get to a review.  Most of the plot elements in the story revolve around O-Parts and the 10 Kabbalah Angels and 10 reverse Kabbalah Demons.  O-Parts are weapons and tools taking any number of forms that possess abilities ranging from hydromancy to control over magnetic fields to even a gigantic flying fortress.  O-Parts tend to work better depending on the type of person using it (think synch ratio from Evangelion) and work off a spirit release power that is not much different from Naruto’s chakra control system.  Another likeness to Naruto results from the Kabbalah Angels and Demons that work on the same principle of the Tailed Beasts.  Each of the Angels and Demons either reside inside one of the characters in the story or as a creature itself.  The Kabbalah creatures exude a ridiculous amount of power with various strong abilities, and very rarely are they ever controllable. In the world of 666 Satan there exist two powerful organizations at constant war with each other, the Stea Republic and the Zenom Organization.  Both organizations fall somewhere in the grey area of good and bad, and both organizations are looking to control one of the two Kabbalahs. These two organizations serve as the main antagonists throughout the manga.

 

The story starts out with a girl by the name of Ruby Crescent while hunting for old ruins along a blasted landscape quickly finds herself ready to be the lunch of a gargantuan sized turtle.  She panics and manages to fall off her perch right onto a young boy named Jio Freed.  After “avoiding” being eaten himself he quickly dispatches the monster with one strong kick.  After some generic incredulousness at Jio’s monstrous strength Ruby introduces herself and states that her dream is to become the world’s number one treasure hunter.  Jio reciprocates by telling her that his goal is to conquer the world before passing out from hunger.  As the adventure continues we quickly learn that Jio harbors the Demon Lucifer inside him, and because of his unique bi-colored appearance (his hair, eyes, and even clothes are opposite colors) he was treated as a cursed monster even from a very young age.  Even when he thought he finally had a friend he too quickly turned on Jio, accusing him of murdering his parents.  The Demon inside of Jio made matters worse by focusing Jio’s misfortune into distrust and hatred.  Unlike Masashi’s flagship character Naruto, Jio doesn’t want to have anything to do with other people at first, and initially wants only money over the company of another.  From a beginning like this to end of the manga it’s Ruby who is always teaching Jio in the ways of friendship and influencing him about what it means to love and trust one’s friends.  As is typical with most shonen story heroes Jio himself influences many people he meets to be stronger then what they feel they could be otherwise, and even converts a few hated enemies over to his side as well.  There is a decent sized cast of characters found throughout 666 Satan, but unfortunately many of them don’t receive the characterization they deserve or they just exist to serve as a convenient plot device.  Despite this the main characters both good and bad remain unique, and manage to be entertaining and memorable.  The battles in 666 Satan revolve around fights between O.P.T. (O-Part Tactician, one who wields an O-Part) or creatures of the Kabbalah.  The battles are easy to follow and the art style lends itself well to create very nicely drawn fight scenes.  The techniques and weapons used by the various characters are sometimes very unique and most characters prove themselves able to wield even the most basic techniques in inventive ways.  This being said the O-Parts themselves constantly evolve along with their O.P.T.s taking on increasingly stronger forms that expand their use and power.  On more than one occasion certain characters exhibit the ability to control multiple O-Parts, and one of the more powerful O-Parts consist of five separate pieces each with a different ability.  During the span of the manga the characters age twice, and with it present a new design for most of the characters, each time giving them more dynamic and “cool” looks.  For the kind of story 666 Satan paints and with all the great characters and touching moments it’s a shame it’s so relatively short.  Both some of the plot and some of the characters suffer from the noticeably rushed pace found in the manga.  The plot leaves so much space for expansion and could have stood to be fleshed out a lot more.  Some of the characters too felt like they would have made great main character material, but never received more than a few sporadic and sometimes pointless moments in the sun. 

 

Despite looking on the surface like a Naruto clone 666 Satan has its own charm and possesses a unique world with compelling characters.  In fact even reading it I can’t remember thinking to myself “Man, this is totally ripped off from Naruto” except for the one time a character was introduced that looked remarkably like post-skip Sasuke.  One of the things I liked most about this manga was the relationships between the characters.  The sizeable cast of characters quickly forms a meshwork of relationships both good and bad and there plenty of touching moments to go around.  The relationship between Jio and Ruby especially took my interest, and I’ll admit I was surprised to see anything of the sort in a shonen manga targeted at younger audiences.  The story has many dark elements filled with revenge, hate, death and the like, but is equally filled with friendship, trust, and love as a balance.  I recommend this to anyone who likes The Shonen genre or to anyone that loves good characters and interesting plots with a feel good twist.