Is Übel Blatt Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Overview

Twenty years ago, fourteen young warriors were sent to defeat a great threat; some were named heroes on their return, and four were branded traitors and destroyed by the rest. Übel Blatt opens with one of the supposedly dead traitors walking back into the kingdom that condemned him, and from there it builds a slow-burning revenge plot around exactly what happened on that mission and who's really responsible. Written and illustrated by Etorouji Shiono, it ran in Japan for fifteen years before wrapping in 2019, and Yen Press has published the full run in English, including a newer deluxe edition.

What it does well

The central mystery is the backbone of the whole series, and Shiono is disciplined about not giving it away early. Who Köinzell really is, what actually happened to the Lance of Betrayal, and how much of what the kingdom believes is a lie all unspool gradually, and the story trusts the reader to sit with partial answers for a long time. That patience pays off — details from early volumes recontextualize once the fuller picture comes into focus.

The swordplay is the other major draw. Shiono draws fights with a level of tactical and anatomical specificity that treats each duel as a puzzle being worked out in real time, not just a showcase of flashy poses. Combined with genuinely brutal stakes — characters lose fights permanently, not just narratively — the action carries real tension even across a very long run.

The irony baked into the premise also gives the revenge plot more bite than the genre norm: Köinzell isn't a nobody seeking payback, he's a former hero the entire kingdom now believes is a monster, and that gap between reputation and reality drives a lot of the story's best moments.

Where it falls short

Fifteen years of monthly serialization is a long time, and it shows. The middle stretch of the series slows its pace considerably and introduces political subplots and side factions that don't all resolve as cleanly as the tightly-focused opening arcs. Readers going in expecting the lean revenge story of volume one should know the scope broadens significantly, for better and for worse.

It's also an unflinchingly mature book. The violence is graphic and the series doesn't shy away from sexual content either, both of which will be more than some readers want from a fantasy epic. And the political maneuvering in the later volumes asks you to keep track of a lot of names and factions for payoffs that land with mixed success.

Verdict

This is a patient, brutal revenge fantasy that earns its length more often than not, built on a genuine mystery and swordplay that treats violence as something with real weight and consequence. It sprawls more than it needs to in the middle stretch, but the core hook — a hero the world thinks is a villain, slowly proving otherwise on his own terms — carries it all the way through.