Centuria is a dark fantasy series that would mostly fit in what we could call “unconventional fantasy”, in the sense that it doesn't follow at all the usual setting for most Japanese fantasy series: Hero Vs Demon Lord. There are multiple works that use this as a basic background and have one or two twists, you know, the typical gamer that finds themselves possessing the body of a side character and wants to change some events of the original story, or maybe your run-of-the-mill reincarnation in another world with assistance of our beloved Truck-kun.

I went off on a tangent, sorry. Centuria begins with a kid named Julian who has successfully escaped from his owner and decided to take a ship to get as far away as posible, the issue is that the ship he boarded was transporting slaves (not the best choice a former slave could make in the spur of the moment but I guess it was the only option at the time).

During the voyage the other slaves treat him well, even with some camaraderie, but amongst them there was one that treated him with more warmth than the others; a pregnant woman named Mira, in her Julian found the mother he longed for so long instead of the woman who neglected him as a child and mercilessly sold him. Their time together comes to an abrupt end when the ship's captain shows his real intentions and orders his crew to slay all the slaves; once all the other slaves have died and only Julian and Mira remain alive all of a sudden a mysterious entity appears. Time freezes for the crew as they watch an unknown creature of the sea getting closer to the two survivors, the entity immediately proceeds to offer the power to get through this hardship to the surviving humans, there's only one problem: Either Julian or Mira has to die for the other to receive the blessing.

I suppose that knowing who the main character of this series is gives you a hint of who pulled through and attained a superior power to that of an average human. First things first, let's state two key points about this series: there are gods in this world and those who get powers beyond any natural law are known as gifted (I actually found it oddly funny at first because that's the same way people with supernatural abilities label themselves in The Raven's Shadow trilogy by Anthony Ryan).

Anyhow, the story revolves around Julian and Diana (Mira's daughter) as they try to find their place in the world, but it seems not only people but also gods get in their way to a peaceful life; Diana is a harbinger of destruction, she shall bring the end of the kingdom these two have come ashore, it's been prophesied. As time passes more and more characters join Julian's group to protect Diana and find a safe place they can outrun the claws of fate, to prevent a most likely unavoidable outcome.

Storywise the plot itself if not perfect it's indeed remarkable, it's actually genius because it makes the readers curious to see if such thing as changing the future is a feat that could be done, there's also the issue regarding the gifts, the endless possibilities of powers beyond any physical boundary one way or another draws the attention of any novice reader who might give this series a go; therefore these two factors ensure an ever increasing loyal audience interested in seeing how this story will unnfold till the bitter end.

The pacing, albeit fast most of the times, is appropriate when it's properly mixed with enough lore and flashbacks, most chapters have been satisfying so far in this regard.

The strongest point of this series is without a doubt the characters (as it's usually the case), all the members of Julian's group are loveable and have such diverse backgrounds and fascinating origins that you find yourself rooting for each of them, more or less in the same degree, whereas the villains are equally hated with a raging wrath that seems fitting given their objectives and awful deeds.

Now, I've already rambled about the upsides, let's flesh out the downsides.

For starters there's the art, don't get me wrong, it's good but there are two details to remark, the first is critical and the second I'll leave it up to the reader to decide if it's bad or not:

1. It seems the author has a tendency to forget adding some objects that should be there or there are some inconsistencies some wouldn't notice at first, for instance in a chapter appeared a box that was basically a rough sketch with literally the label “box” on top, which indicates he forgot to draw the actual box for the chapter and submitted it like that. As for inconsistencies, there are some obvious cases in which you can see at a panel a gift manifesting as lines stretching out of the eye's pupil and extending over a portion of the gifted's face making a somewhat personal shape for that gifted, and then on the next page you suddenly notice that there are no longer lines in the cornea, as if those never existed. However, objectively, it makes sense; It's way easier to draw those lines around the eye rather than inside, so I think that this spontaneous change between pages/panels could either be adjudged to negligence or perhaps the author, realizing what a poor initial choice was drawing lines coming out of the pupil, decided to start "subtly" introducing the characters with this change little by little so we grow accostumed to seeing the lines coming around the eye and consider it was like that from the get go.

1. The author, Tohru Kuramori, uses pictures of real life places and paste them in his pages, so you could conclude he's either lazy or he doesn't have enough time to draw complex structures before the deadlines.

Then there's of course a certain subject of discussion: That the current longest arc of the series was basically a huge shonen fight. Lots of readers have found this distasteful as the series was originally more orientated to the unknown and horror, so a large number of readers didn't like too much this turn of events (maybe this isn't that much of a downside but the several complaints I've seen lead me to consider it noteworthy anyways).

Just recently this series is becoming somewhat popular in Japan, for some reason since the beginning this story has been more popular in the West than in the East, actually Centuria has been in the range for cancellation (the ruthless and terrifying Axe had lurked around this one for a while) more than once but has survived this long because of the volumes' sells worldwide and other factors. If you are wondering whether you should pick a series that seems this unstable I can't really blame you for having your doubts, though I have a hunch this one is gonna continue its serialisation for as long as it needs to.

All in all, it is well worth reading, but beware that this is a grimdark fantasy series, therefore it's expected some topics and scenes won't be to your liking as it could be seen as obnoxious or disgusting. If you've come this far and read all of this then I have a humble request: Just ignore it and keep reading, even if it's unsettling consider first that it probably has some sort of value to the story before you start swearing and call it trash. For those who read Berserk, Bugle Call and other works of the sort this could come up as a needless warning but who knows.

Having said all this I hope you liked this review and I sincerely apologize for the long text, see ya next time!