Plunderer (manga)

Plunderer (Japanese: プランダラ) is a Japanese fantasy manga series written and illustrated by Suu Minazuki. It began serialization in Kadokawa Shoten's Monthly Shōnen Ace magazine on December 26, 2014. The series is licensed by Yen Press. An anime television series adaptation by Geek Toys aired from January 8 to June 24, 2020.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The main problem story is that it tries very seriously as a fantasy series where it doesn't know what it wants to be or what's trying to say.
 * 2) It looks too similar to Fullmetal Alchemist, with the Alician Royal Military being rip offs of the State Alchemist of Amestris' State Military.
 * 3) It is the fantasy manga equivalent of Sci-Spy, DC comics'  Kamandi: At Earth's End, Superman: At Earth's End, Countdown to Final Crisis, Futures End, The Culling, and Marvel's The Clone Saga of the Spider-Man comics and Secret Empire, with a similar dystopian future/world.
 * 4) Hina is an annoying female protagonist who makes every main male protagonists look like amateurs.
 * 5) The story is very convoluted where it is set in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by numbers in which every human being has their worth measured by a special "Count" imprinted somewhere on their bodies, which defines any number related to an important aspect of people's lives. If a Count decreases to 0, a person will be dragged down into "the abyss", and said to die for all eternity.
 * 6) The Alcian Royal Military and the Special Service Unit (SSU in short) are unheroic governments that act like Nazi stereotypes. Some of the soldiers act like bullies than normal ones.
 * 7) It gets much worse when the students of Class A came back into insufferable, sadistic, cruel clones. They do sadistic things like pretending they are alive and well, beating up Licht Bach and Lynn May with the help with the traitorous Pepe Peporo, tried to torture Mizuka Sonohara and drowning her.
 * 8) Unconvincing villains who are taken too seriously to be sadists:
 * 9) Sargeant David of the Alcian Royal Military is a sadistic molester who steals Hina's Ballots and lies about being a legendary Ace who is 300 years old. But before the events of the series, he was assumed to be a deceased member of the Special Service Unit, meaning that he would never act like what his clone-self would.
 * 10) Nikolai is just some generic "narcissist" who keeps luring Hina, nonstop and often works with Schmerman Bach.
 * 11) Firenda, who's manipulative plan to overthrow Schmerman Bach in position in the Secret Service Unit just because she was jealous of Schmerman did not love her and only caring about Rihito Sakai as a son, seriously.
 * 12) The fights scenes are poorly executed where they used energy auras (from the Dragon Ball franchise) of their ballots and "boosting" of how many counts they have if it's higher, you defeated the opponent. Making it even too similar to life points from Yu-Gi-Oh! and even G-Powers or B-Powers from Bakugan. But this is an excuse to be original and feels like a generic "RPG game mechanic".
 * 13) The characters can be downright too psychotic.
 * 14) Unnecessary filler scenes that makes it's pacing too slow.
 * 15) The use of holographic screens is sometimes very annoying and will get you on your last nerve.
 * 16) There are some meanspirited moments here.
 * 17) Attempts at trying to be tearjerking, but it suffers from an inconsistent tone, which is either dark or light-hearted.
 * 18) Padding that takes forever to end this point of the series.
 * 19) It has no connection to the author's previous work, Heaven's Lost Property, despite this series has nothing to do with it.
 * 20) Licht Bach used to be a normal military student named Rihito Sakai, who comes across as less of a pervert that is a rip off of Tomoki Sakurai (from the author's previous series, Heaven's Lost Property).

Good Qualities

 * 1) The Alcian Royal Military do reformed their actions in chapter 61.
 * 2) Likeable characters like Licht Bach/Rihito Sakai, Lyne May, Pele Poporo, Nana Bassler, Jail Murdoch and Mizuka Sonohara.
 * 3) It did have interesting concepts but was poorly executed.
 * 4) The artwork is nice to look at along with being an improvement to Suu Minazuki's art style, despite it doesn't even fit in this series.
 * 5) The clones of the deceased Class A students do reform their actions when they realized that they were genetic templates of themselves by Major Schmerman Bach.
 * 6) Taketora Doan does redeem himself from his arrogant bullying nature and does become likeable when he rejoined Licht Bach.
 * 7) Tokikaze Sakai is a sympathetic antagonist who's tragedy into losing his classmates 300 years ago is handled very well, and did reformed his actions in chapter 69. He was shown to be Hina's biological father and Licht/ Rihito as her uncle.
 * 8) As mentioned in GD #7, Tokikaze and Licht/Rihito being Hina's father and uncle was a good plot twist because Hina's mother wanted her to search for them and the legendary aces.
 * 9) Major Schumerman Bach is a solid and intimidating villain, despite he's like the Jackal from the Spider-Man comics.
 * 10) The funny moments are still here similar to the author's other series, Heaven's Lost Property.
 * 11) Of course, it's not supposed to be an isekai series.

Trivia

 * The manga was adapted into an anime covering 35 chapters.