Übel 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 don't mean the first few chapters—they're fine, I guess—but the creator's vision for the series as a whole. The core plot of betrayal and revenge and regret obviously came first, and when that's the focus of the action, everything is good—the 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 comrades-in-arms. 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 they've been honored as heroes and his name has been reviled. He's returned for revenge. This is not a terribly original plot (Berserk, of course, does it better), but it is a good one. Übel 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, Übel 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 merchant's 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. I'm sorry, it's just not. There's 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 empire's political structure is similarly sophomoric and half-baked. E.g. there's 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. It's never explained why anyone, even the Big Bad, thinks it's a good idea (and there are plenty of reasons it's 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 author's whim, then immediately discarded.

Compounding those problems, the ending (a) came out of left field, (b) didn't include any of the character-arc payoff we were expecting, and (c) was incredibly rushed. I think that by the last volume of the series, the creator must've 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, it's pretty solid. The villains are a bit too villainous, but it's 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 Bad's 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 cold-blooded opportunist to the biggest, dumbest idealist in the series.

I don't 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, it's like a switch has been flipped, and he's suddenly a respectable hero.

But what really sinks this series, in my opinion, is the art. For the most part it's 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, there's 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 doesn't add to Übel 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 there's a fair bit of sex. Fine. Whatever. Not my thing, but I won't 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 doesn't 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 revenge-focused bits: The revenge story doesn't involve any young girls, so the author doesn't 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.