I have to say something.
I still read Noblesse because it's exciting to the twelve-year-old that lives in my head. I find myself entertained by the fights and the inevitable truth that the good guys are going to win, and they're going to do so overwhelmingly.
Storywise, however, Noblesse is about as bland as anything can be. The same pattern has been repeating since the first arc: good guys try to live their lives, bad guys come in and do something stupidly, completely unnecessarily evil, some minor skirmishes ensue, Frankenstein comes in and has a bit of fun, then Rai arrives and pwns everyone. Crombell is somewhere in the background, scheming. Yuri is still not dead for some reason. Science and experiment are used mindlessly to justify the aforementioned evil. SAME DAMN THING, over and over.
The characters have all fallen so deeply into their established behavior patterns that no one, except possibly Frankie, seems to have any space for expansion. The humans have become completely irrelevant as a result of Noblesse's terminal case of Dragonball Z disease - everyone is so overpowered that I can't even tell who's strong and who isn't. The main character - let's pretend for a moment that it's Rai and not Frankie - has the emotional depth of a potato. No, Noblesse, you can't sell to me that he's a lonely, deeply troubled soul and expect me to be emotionally invested in that when the story is so far removed from its namesake. Really, it's like the authors know that he's nothing more than a story-driving device and treat him as exactly that.
inb4 "if you don't like it, don't read it". I find some measure of primitive entertainment in Noblesse. We all like big-damn-heroes moments, and Noblesse is essentially a vending machine for those. Turn the crank, wait a few chapters, out comes another one. Unfortunately, that's all it is.
Disagreement welcome. If someone can reveal to me some hidden sign of quality in the plotline, I shall certainly be grateful.
Edited by Father Deus, 11 December 2013 - 04:45 AM.