Level E Review: Yoshihiro Togashi's Alien Comedy Is the Smartest Manga Nobody Talks About

Quick Take

• Three volumes, complete, and better than most manga ten times its length — Togashi wrote Level E between Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter and it shows his intelligence at its most concentrated
• The alien prince is one of manga's great antagonists-who-is-technically-the-protagonist — he is not evil, he is bored, which is worse
• Every arc is a different genre: science fiction comedy, then horror parody, then sentai parody, then genuine emotional sci-fi — the variety is controlled and deliberate

Who Is This Manga For?

• Readers who want manga that treats them as intelligent and rewards structural attention
• Anyone who enjoyed Hunter x Hunter's most game-theory-focused arcs and wants more
• Fans of science fiction that is genuinely funny and occasionally genuinely affecting
• Readers who want completed manga that can be read in a single sitting

Content Warnings & Age Rating

Age Rating: T (Teen) Content Warnings: Specific horror arcs involve alien biology and situations that are more disturbing than the overall comedy tone suggests; dark humor throughout; the violence is light except in specific sequences

The T rating is accurate but some arcs are darker than the cover suggests.

Yu's Rating

Category	Score
Story Depth	★★★★★
Art Style	★★★★☆
Character Development	★★★★☆
Accessibility for Non-Japanese Readers	★★★★★
Reread Value	★★★★★

Story Overview

Yukitaka Tsutsui is a high school freshman who has moved to Yamagata to play baseball. He arrives at his apartment to find a strange blond man already living there, claiming to be an alien prince who has crashed his ship. The man has amnesia. He presents no identification, behaves with complete confidence, and immediately takes over Yukitaka's living space.

The prince is from the Dogura, a civilization so advanced that they have assigned observation teams to monitor every alien species on Earth. He is the crown prince. He is extraordinarily intelligent. He has the ethics of a person who has never been told no.

The series follows several distinct arcs: the first establishes the prince and his relationship with Yukitaka; subsequent arcs follow different human characters who encounter the Dogura and deal with the consequences; the prince appears and disappears, sometimes as a genuine help and more often as the cause of whatever crisis is unfolding.

Characters

The Prince — His specific evil is intellectual superiority combined with complete indifference to consequences for other people. He constructs elaborate games and scenarios because he is bored and because watching other people scramble is interesting to him. He is never cruel for cruelty's sake — he is indifferent, which is a different thing and, Togashi argues, more dangerous.

Yukitaka Tsutsui — His specific quality is being the most competent normal person in the room, which means he is perpetually being outmaneuvered by someone who operates on a different level. His frustration is the series' primary comedic fuel.

Art Style

Togashi's art in Level E is cleaner and more polished than his Hunter x Hunter work from the same era — the sci-fi comedy format gave him room to draw with more finishing than a weekly battle manga allows. The alien designs are effectively strange without being gratuitously bizarre.

Cultural Context

Level E ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1995 to 1997, during the same period Togashi was finishing Yu Yu Hakusho. It is structurally more experimental than either of his other major works — the anthology structure and the tonal shifts between arcs reflect a creator working outside the standard shonen constraints. The sentai parody arc in particular is a direct engagement with tokusatsu television that rewards readers familiar with that tradition.

What I Love About It

The "Color Rangers" arc. Togashi takes a group of ordinary elementary school kids, transforms them into a sentai team through a game the Prince has engineered, and then reveals that the "game" has actual stakes — and that the Prince has calculated every possible outcome and found the one that produces the result he wanted. It is simultaneously a parody and a genuine demonstration of strategic intelligence. I have read it four times.

What English-Speaking Fans Say

Western readers who find Level E describe it as a revelation — three volumes that demonstrate what Togashi is capable of when he is working in a format that lets him control the pacing completely. It is consistently recommended as the place to start with Togashi by readers who want to understand his intelligence before committing to Hunter x Hunter's length.

Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The conclusion of the Prince's elaborate scheme in the first arc — the moment where every element of his "amnesia" and apparent helplessness is revealed as deliberate construction — reframes the entire first volume and demonstrates that the reader was being played just as thoroughly as Yukitaka was.

Similar Manga

• Hunter x Hunter — Same author, similar intelligence applied to longer form
• The Disastrous Life of Saiki K — Comedy with extremely intelligent protagonist
• Nichijou — Comedy that rewards structural attention
• Ouran High School Host Club — Comedy with self-aware protagonist subverting the genre

Reading Order / Where to Start

Volume 1 — The entire series is three volumes, start at the beginning.

Official English Translation Status

Viz Media published the complete 3-volume English edition. All volumes available.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Three volumes, completely satisfying, structurally brilliant
• The Prince is one of manga's great characters
• Each arc works as a self-contained story in a different genre
• Togashi at his most focused and controlled

Cons

• So short that finding used copies can be difficult
• The sentai parody requires some familiarity with the tokusatsu genre to fully appreciate
• Readers who want extended character investment get limited space here

Format Comparison

Format	Notes
Individual Volumes	Viz Media; 3 volumes
Digital	Available

Where to Buy

Get Level E Vol. 1 on Amazon →

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