YMMV / Chained Soldier

aka: Mato Seihei No Slave

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • The actions of Yuuki's older sister, Aoba are a little hard to discern. Is she a Yandere with an unhealthy desire for Brother–Sister Incest, or simply someone with a case of Big Sister Instinct trying to get Yuuki away from (what she believes is) a corrupt organization who treats him like a slave. Her first few appearances would have one believe she was the former, but her later appearances, which are out of combat and make her less antagonistic, would suggest the latter. This is downplayed a lot after her introduction arc. Aoba has since been portrayed as a well-adjusted person who is simply angry at the injustices she and her friends have suffered, and her relationship with Yuuki seems to be strictly sibling love. Her initial Yandere symptoms may have just been a combination of her enthusiasm from seeing her brother again after years of separation and her hatred of the Anti-Demon Corps due to their association with the Onmyou Agency.
  • The series eventually makes it ambiguous how much of the rewards Yuuki gets from Kyouka and Himari are due to Kyouka's power or of their own volition.
  • With how girls are typically shown enjoying giving Yuuki his rewards on some level (even if they try not to show it) many fans speculate the form the reward takes isn't just decided by Yuuki's desires, but rather the desires of both parties. The rewards also often in some way reflect on personal aspects of the woman giving them, a personal touch that would require knowledge that Yuuki sometimes may not have at the time. Which in turn leads to alternative interpretations of some characters, Yamashiro especially.
  • Was Yumeji Shimomura just a power-hungry woman who joined the Eight Gods of Thunder to get revenge on Kyouka for kicking her out of her spot as chief? Or was she an underappreciated girl who wanted to feel validated and rewarded for her hard work but never got a chance to get it under the Anti-Demon Corps and joined the Eight Gods because she had nowhere else to go?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Tokyo metros are indeed as crowded as shown, but their "women's only" cabs were originally implemented to address gropers.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Some fans admit that they keep up with the series just to see the "rewards" that the author comes up with between Yuuki and the girls.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Tenka Izumo is undoubtedly the most popular character in the series, and the one most fans point at when asked who they want Yuuki to get together with. She even came first in the first two popularity poll before falling to second place in the third, and even then she only lost to Kyouka, the main female lead.
  • Similar to Tenka, Ren Yamashiro quickly gathered the love of the fandom due to her broken powers and hilarious post-reward scene, which even became the Signature Scene of the series for many. She came in second place in the second poll, and just like Tenka, she only fell down one rank in the third.
  • Fubuki Azuma was instantly dubbed one of the most attractive characters in the series, and it shows in the polls. She got 5th place in the second popularity poll, and actually manged to rise one rank in the third.
  • Varvara Pilipenko got 10th in the second popularity poll despite being a background character up to the 80th chapter when this poll was released, seemingly just because people really liked her character design. After she got her arc of focus, her rank increased to 6th place.
• Fan Nickname: This series is otherwise more widely known as The Fem-Dom Manga. For pretty obvious reasons.
• Fans Prefer the New Her: A number of fans lamented that Bell's scarred face from surviving Fukuma's attack only lasted 2 chapters before her powers healed them away.
• Memetic Loser: When it comes to the three main girls of the 7th Division, many can't help but feel sorry for Shushu due to how much Kyouka and Himari overshadow her. Kyouka being the series' Deuteragonist while Himari gets a lot of focus because her Azuma Family is in the spotlight a lot. Meanwhile, Shushu is just there. Some even joking how they forget that Shushu is even part of the 7th Division since she gets far less screen-time. This is further evident in the 2nd popularity poll where Kyouka and Himari have 16,330 and 6,977 votes respectively while Shushu ended up down at 2,710 votes. It gets even worse in the 3rd popularity poll where Shushu ends up dropping out of the top-10, and is now down at 1,556 votes.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Kyouka getting cucked. ^ExplanationPops up any time Kyouka has to pass off her boy-toy, Yuuki, to the other girls when they need to go through the "reward."
  • Oh right... this is that author. ^ExplanationThis series has always had a vibe in the back of everyone's minds that something is going to go wrong due to the fact that the series is written by the author of Akame ga Kill!, a manga that's infamous for the amount of character deaths to its main cast. This series looked to be doing the exact opposite for quite some time where everyone was getting to live, but the moment Bell gets absolutely brutalized in Chapter 106, it served as a reminder as to what the author can be like. Then this ended up being subverted when it turns out that (barring her ability being negated) Bell can't be killed, and got out of her body being torn apart with nothing but some scars to show it happened.
  • Author doing the opposite. ^ExplanationMany can't help but notice that unlike the author's previous series, Akame ga Kill!, no one in Chained Soldier has actually died so far despite all the fighting. This became particularly noteworthy once the Gods of Thunder start getting axed off for real, but rather than actually staying dead, their souls instead go into Yuuki, and become part of his mental world.
• Nightmare Fuel: Shushu's Sizeshifter ability shows its deadliest Logical Extreme in Chapter 34 when she pulls off a Combination Attack with Sahara against Koko's Shuuki pet, Kuma: Shushu shrinks to fit in Sahara's hand, is thrown into Kuma's mouth, and finally turns herself giant while inside him to tear him apart as his insides are more vulnerable than his outside.
  • In Chapter 43, Naon and Koko are swallowed by the monstrous egg-like Thunder God Kuusetsu. The other Thunder Gods claim that Naon and Koko will become "batteries" for Kuusetsu for all eternity.
  • Kuusetsu shows her terrifying nature again in Chapter 67 when she invades the home of an actress, phasing through her wall like a ghost. Kuusetsu then knocks her out and examines her body hungrily as if grading the quality of the meat, as she is evidently intent on eating her.
  • In chapters 76 and 77, Kuusetsu defeats Mira and swallows her whole. The sequence is complete with a Dead Hat Shot and Mira losing a boot as Kuusetsu finishes devouring her.
  • In chapter 106, Fukuma appears before Bell, assuming her own form, and then jabs her hand into her chest before mercilessly slashing her, giving her severe lacerations, and then sealing her butchered body within a card.
• Periphery Demographic: With how heavy the female dominatrix overtones are in this Manga, it is no surprise that it has attracted quite a lot of folks from the BDSM community.
• Questionable Casting: Many people thought Maaya Uchida didn't fit as Tenka well.
• Signature Scene: For many, it's Ren Yamashiro's childish and incredibly embarrassed reaction after being forced to reward Yuuki by acting like a dog. Seeing an incredibly powerful woman, who up to that point had been nothing but completely calm, condescending and proud become so horribly humiliated has almost instantly become one of the most memorable scenes in the entire manga.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general perception of the anime is that it's average at best, because it doesn't take advantage of what made it so popular. It sometimes comes off as too restrained in adapting the "rewards", and it doesn't excel greatly at animating the action scenes either. It gets unfavorably compared to Gushing Over Magical Girls, another anime adaptation in the same season with a source material that's heavy on the sexual content, but has a Hotter and Sexier adaptation instead.
• Spiritual Successor: This could be considered a supernatural take on Infinite Stratos, since both series' respective matriarchal societies are just set dressing. The main difference is Mato and the Shuuki being a common enemy to the world instead of each nation using a new weapon of mass destruction to keep each other in check.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The English translation of the title as "Chained Soldier" was met with a lot of backlash from fans.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Even though the first thing we learn about the setting of this manga is that it's a matriarchy, this has almost no impact on the plot of the series. The characters spend nearly their entire time inside Mato, so human society has no relevance to the plot beyond what directly affects the Anti-Demon Corps. Some of the girls don't have a good relationship with Yuuki at first, but those instances are all framed as personal issues instead of anything to do with their society, and most are usually nice to him from the start. Not only does this diminish one of Yuuki's goals (to prove himself in a society that doesn't support him), it also means the series never tries exploring gender roles in any detail despite the seemingly perfect setting for this. Most of the girls in Mato do have and exert authority over Yuuki to some degree, but this is framed as them being his seniors in what is technically a military organization rather than him being a man. It's rather telling that the anime cut some dialogue in the first episode to downplay the importance of women in the current society, basically nipping this plotline in the bud. Overall, the alternate history the world took is set dressing for cool fights and fanservice that the characters provide.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Some women, such as the terrorists that try to attack the Demon Corps Headquarters and two of the Azumas that show up for the Azuma banquet, look enough like men that some readers assumed they were until other readers corrected that assumption.
• Villain Decay: The Eight Thunder Gods, the main villains of the story, start off threatening enough with lofty ambitions of wiping out the entire human race. However, through their continued encounters and battles with the Anti-Demon Corps, they seem to come across as less and less of a legitimate threat. Naturally, their ultimate goal can't prevail, but they still fail to score any truly meaningful victories. The most they achieve over the course of the story is incapacitating some characters for a brief period, whereas the Anti-Demon Corps continues to eliminate them one-by-one (Rairen's defeat was seen as particularly anti-climactic by some fans), meaning the Thunder Gods, overall, become weaker as their numbers dwindle, while the Anti-Demon Corps gets stronger. Not only that, but the souls of the Thunder Gods who are defeated live on inside Yuuki and, aside from essentially forcing him into their sexual exploits, they generally come off as harmless and friendly. In fact, in Chapter 126, it is implied that the presence of the Thunder Gods within Yuuki is actually beneficial to him as they seemingly heal his injuries.

---