Bastard!! Review: The Heavy Metal Dark Fantasy Where Every Spell Is a Band Name and the Hero Is the Villain

The first time I opened Bastard!!, I was a teenager who didn't know a single one of the band names yet. I read "Megadeth," "Anthrax," "Venom," "Judas," "Black Sabbath" as if they were invented fantasy words — exotic, slightly silly, the kind of thing a Japanese author makes up to sound dark. It took me years to realize Kazushi Hagiwara hadn't invented any of them. He was a heavy metal fanatic building an entire dark fantasy world out of the records on his shelf. When that clicked, the manga rearranged itself in my head. This wasn't a fantasy story that happened to have weird names. It was a love letter to metal, smuggled into Weekly Shonen Jump in a body it was probably too obscene to fit inside.

I want to be honest up front, because the rest of this site is built on honesty: Bastard!! is messy, horny, dated, and unfinished. It has been on hiatus since 2010 with no real end in sight, and the English edition was abandoned by VIZ at volume 19 of 27. By every reasonable metric it is a frustrating thing to recommend. And I still love it, because nothing else in manga commits to its own ridiculous identity this hard.

Quick Take

• A foundational 1980s dark fantasy where every spell, place, and character is named after a heavy metal band — and the "hero" is a genocidal wizard who'd rather conquer the world than save it
• Hagiwara's art is the real draw: dense, ornate, anatomically obsessive magical combat that influenced a generation of fantasy artists
• M (Mature): heavy nudity, sexual content, and gore — this was always the far edge of what Jump would print

Story Overview

Four hundred years ago, the demon god Anthrasax nearly ended the world. In the present, the Kingdom of Metallicana is under attack by the Dark Rebel Army, who want to break the four seals keeping Anthrasax dormant and resurrect it.

The kingdom's only hope is buried inside a fifteen-year-old boy named Lucien Renlen (Rushe). Sealed within him is Dark Schneider — a 400-year-old dark wizard who, a generation ago, was himself the founder and leader of that same Dark Rebel Army. The seal can only be broken by the kiss of a virgin. So the high priest's daughter, Tia Noto Yoko, who has raised Lucien like a little brother, is forced to kiss him to unleash the most dangerous being on the continent to fight on her side.

That premise gives you the whole engine of the series. Dark Schneider is not a reformed villain — he's a villain temporarily pointed at other villains, mostly because he wants Yoko and is amused by the kingdom. The early arcs send him against the four Lords of Havoc (Gara, Arshes Nei, Kall-Su, Abigail), his former lieutenants, each of whom he defeats, kills, or wins back. As the seals weaken anyway, the story escalates from kingdom-scale war toward the actual resurrection of Anthrasax and an angelic counterforce, growing more cosmic and more tangled with each volume — until it stalls out, unfinished, deep in its later mythology.

Characters

Dark Schneider — The most powerful dark wizard in the world, and he knows it. His arrogance isn't a flaw the story corrects; it's the point. He's lustful, vain, and casually cruel, yet the narrative keeps catching him doing something almost decent — usually for Yoko, or for Lucien, the boy whose body he shares and occasionally listens to. His arc is the slow, grudging admission that he cares about people he claims to be using.

Tia Noto Yoko — Far more than the kiss that wakes him. She's the only person Dark Schneider genuinely answers to, and the series' running gag — the seal only works if she's a virgin — turns her chastity into a literal weapon-control system, which is exactly as absurd and revealing as it sounds. She's stubborn, unimpressed by his power, and the human anchor the whole story hangs on.

Arshes Nei — Dark Schneider's former lover and the half-elf girl he raised, which the series treats with its trademark lack of restraint. One of the four Lords of Havoc, she's forced to fight him after Abigail curses her with the "Accused" spell, which makes betraying the Dark Rebel Army lethal. Her arc is the series' most genuinely tragic thread: a woman magically compelled to attack the only person she loves.

Gara — A ninja master and Lord of Havoc who duels Dark Schneider early, loses, and — recognizing raw strength the way the series respects it — becomes the first of the four to switch back to his side.

Kall-Su — The ice sorcerer leading the conquest, cold and devout where Dark Schneider is hot and selfish. He becomes the central antagonist of the later, darker arcs.

What I Love About It

The spell names. I know that sounds shallow, but it's the soul of the thing. When Dark Schneider casts, he doesn't recite invented gibberish — he intones "Venom," "Exodus," "Megadeth," "Black Sabbath," "Judas." The most famous incantation, the one fans quote, is the spell of total destruction whose chant ends in the word that summons it. Hagiwara built a magic system where the deadliest forces in the world are, quite literally, the bands he loved. The Kingdom is Metallicana. The demon is Anthrasax (Anthrax). It's not decoration laid on top of a fantasy world — it's the load-bearing structure of it.

What makes it work rather than feel like a gimmick is Hagiwara's absolute sincerity. There's no winking. The metal references are delivered with the same gravity as the apocalyptic stakes, so the absurd and the epic stop being separable. By the time a half-naked wizard screams a Judas Priest album at a demon god, you've stopped laughing and started watching, because the art is selling it with total conviction. That collision — pure adolescent metalhead joy rendered with genuinely masterful draftsmanship — is something I've never found anywhere else, and it's why I keep the volumes I managed to find.

Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The fight against Arshes Nei is the one that stayed with me. She's been cursed by Abigail with the "Accused" spell — break faith with the Dark Rebel Army and the curse kills her — so she comes at Dark Schneider with everything, lightning and fury, unable to stop. For most of the fight he doesn't understand why the woman he raised and loved is trying to murder him.

Then Lucien, the boy inside him, surfaces just enough to make Dark Schneider see what's actually happening: she isn't betraying him, she's being forced. His response is not a clever counterspell. He tears out his own heart — physically rips it from his chest — to break the hold of the Accused curse and prove the thing she can't say out loud. It's grotesque and operatic and completely unhinged, and it lands, because the whole grammar of the series is excess used sincerely. Freed from the curse, Arshes becomes the second Lord of Havoc to return to his side. I read it as a kid and thought: I don't know what this manga is, but it means it.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Hagiwara's art is genuinely world-class — ornate, detailed, and hugely influential on later fantasy manga
• The heavy metal naming gives the world a texture that exists nowhere else in the medium
• Dark Schneider is a fully committed "the hero is the villain" protagonist, decades before it was fashionable
• The Arshes Nei and Yoko threads give the bombast a real emotional core

Cons

• Unfinished — on hiatus since 2010, deep in its mythology, with no resolution
• The English release stopped at volume 19 of 27 and is long out of print
• The mature content (nudity, sexual themes including the Arshes backstory) is heavy and dated in ways that won't sit well with every reader
• The plot grows tangled and slows badly in the later arcs — this won't work for everyone, especially anyone who needs a series to actually end

Is Bastard!! Worth Reading?

If you want a polished, complete, accessible fantasy, no — it's unfinished, out of print in English, and unapologetically obscene. But if you care about manga history, about where dark fantasy's visual language came from, or you just want to watch a heavy metal fan build a whole mythology out of his record collection with jaw-dropping art, it's one of a kind. Go in knowing it never ends, and the ride is worth it.

Content Warnings & Age Rating

Age Rating: M (Mature) Content Warnings: Frequent nudity and sexual content, graphic fantasy violence and gore, mature themes including Dark Schneider's relationship with Arshes Nei

This was always the outer limit of what Weekly Shonen Jump would print, and the content reflects that. Not for younger readers.

Yu's Rating

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

Official English Translation Status

VIZ Media licensed and released the first 19 of the 27 Japanese volumes in English, but publication stopped in September 2009 and the books have gone out of print. There is no complete or in-print licensed English edition, and the original series itself has been on hiatus in Japan since 2010. The most reliable way to read it legitimately today is the Japanese tankōbon edition.

Similar Manga

Title	Its Approach	How Bastard!! Differs
Berserk	Grim, painterly dark fantasy with a wandering antihero	Bastard!! is louder and more comedic, trading despair for heavy metal bravado
Dragon Ball	Contemporaneous Jump action built on escalating power ceilings	Bastard!! makes its overpowered lead a villain and drowns the world in mature content
Devilman	Foundational dark-apocalyptic manga where the hero carries demonic power	Bastard!! turns that horror into spectacle and metalhead joy rather than tragedy

Where to Buy

No complete English release exists — VIZ stopped at volume 19 and it's long out of print. The Japanese tankōbon edition is the only reliable way to read the full story.

Find it on Amazon.co.jp →

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