Bingo 21: Liberate
John and Seraphina both want to be free (liberated) from social strictures and expectations somehow. But the rules of the world they live in are not developed. But is you sort of imagine a My Hero Academia world where more people are un-powered than not, it makes a little more sense. They both seem to think that you should judge folks for who they are. Not whether or how much power they have. Sound familiar?
Unordinary is highly cliché; this is the story of a high school for very special kids who have powers, everyone is elite but the main character who has no powers, but maybe he has a secret. His bestie is the most powerful girl at school; she comes from a high-pressure perfection background but she’s starting to loosen up a little around John. John gets bullied a lot, but still seems to do ok. But someone gets curious about his secret. What will they find? And what will they do with the info? There’s also a mysterious banned book called Unordinary; supposedly those who read it lose their minds. Guess who has a copy? When John and Seraphine get separated for a while when she has to leave school for a while, however will he survive? What about the mysterious murders of powered people? Etc.
That this story has been done is some form 100 time before is not a problem by itself; a lot of Webtoons (which this was) seem to go that way, and yet manage to be interesting. Problem here is that everyone is a selfish jerk; even John seems to have a chip on his shoulder about something that he lets out on someone who may not deserve it more than once. Everyone in the school thinks the world is beneath them, maybe even John. The only exceptions seem to be Seraphina and the school doc (who has to fix up John every time he gets himself beat up). There’s a handful of bullies who all kind of look and acta like, and I have a hard time remembering who was who, and it does help that there’s virtually no character development for anyone except Seraphina. Even John seems to be a little one note.
Everything feels a little rushed, and apparently this is only a 2 book series, and I haven’t checked the comic, but it feels kind of rushed. It’s not bad, just kind of predictable, and since I didn’t really care about anyone, it’s hard to care enough to find out what’s next.