サイハテ四重奏

SAIHATE QUARTET

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
2
RELEASE
July 13, 2023
CHAPTERS
23

DESCRIPTION

Angels descend upon Japan! They’ve come to deliver the Japanese people from demons, who have taken the music industry by storm. But their master plan is to shoot for stardom as idols?!

(Source: MANGA Plus)

Note: Chapter count includes 5 extras.

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

SpikeWasAlreadyTaken
23/100
Hello, fellow kids! With angel idol shonen stuff! That'll be great, right? Right?
Stan For Salvation tells the story of a group of angels who drop down to Japan in order to save it from demons. In order to gather followers, the devils have formed a band, and naturally the solution is to form an idol group and get enough followers to stand against the devils. At least, that's the chapter one premise- the series very quickly deviates from it and make it really obvious that it's just a weak gag manga.
In StanForSalvationland, devils and angels gain power for each follower they gain. Apparently it's as easy as someone liking the band, but also maybe not? When the angels bust out their magical "see follower count" hand sign on these supposedly popular devils, they have 530,000 "Devotion". Popping out the hand sign on another supposedly popular character, they have 20,000, which is apparently just as impressive. Is it 1 follower= 1 Devotion? Or variable? Who knows. Devotion lets the characters power up, I guess? Also, the angels supposedly have a ton of devotion overseas, but only five in Japan, so I guess devotion doesn't convert to local currency or has really weak signal across water or something. It's more of just a bs attempt to include a shonen power system than anything. Apparently if the devils keep gaining Devotion, the gates to Gehenna will open, and that would be bad because... I dunno, some reason. The devils and Lucifer apparently already escaped Gehenna, and they're just kind of chilling, living their best lives in Japan, so I don't know why Gehenna opening would be a huge deal... everybody imprisoned there already left anyways. Gehenna opening continues to be referenced throughout the series, with the Gate of Gehenna being noted as a character on the character page each chapter has, with no explanation and absolutely zero plot relevance.
Sound dumb? Yep, and that's just a plot summary.

Despite how dumb the basic plot is, it's a gag manga, yeah? So who cares... except the gag aspect is crushed by the biggest issue with the series: the characters are so freaking dumb.
I get it, they're supposed to be so confused with the human world or whatever... but the angels and devils are both just stupid. They're apparently at each other's throats, but they never make serious attempts to attack each other after chapter one (so the poorly railroaded in battle shonen elements have no stakes, making them even more pointless than they would have been otherwise). There's moments where the angels and devils run into each other every chapter or two and just ignore each other or at worst toss out an elementary school level insult, sometimes played as a gag and sometimes... I guess that's all the mangaka figured mortal enemies should do?
The characters are by and large overgrown elementary schoolers. These angels are ancient or whatever, they're apparently fully capable of stuff like holding down a job, making word puzzle style puns or effortlessly learning to play an instrument, but they aren't capable of holding a normal conversation, understanding basic directions, or approaching situations with an ounce of maturity. It doesn't make sense, and feels like a base attempt to make the characters more relatable to the younger shonen demographic. The devils aren't much better, and really are only better because they have less screen time.
This kiddishness also kills a lot of the joke delivery. It's almost ridiculous, the series has some half decent gags but doesn't seem to realize that a funnyman/straightman routine tends to not be good when both characters are the funnyman and interject with jokes seemingly at random. The jokes themselves are okay, but the delivery is just awful, coming from characters that need to go back to trying to color inside the lines. Add in the forced battle shonen-y elements and you get a mess that can't even commit to being a gag series. I'm reminded a bit of Candy Flurry in that regard, but at least Candy Flurry seemed to understand the concept was dumb and fully committed to that.

Also, this isn't the mangaka's fault, but the English translation via Mangaplus is pretty awkward and especially later on it feels like the TL gave up. There's spots where it feels like words are missing, "of" and "to" are mixed up, characters repeat themselves within sentences in ways that feel like both English and Japanese syntax are used, etc. It's annoying, doesn't make it impossible to figure out what's going on but just another downside.

There are some small plusses. The art is okay, pretty standard aside from some color pages, which are actually really nice. I don't know why the volume cover is in a pretty mediocre overly standard "digital coloring exists now" style, especially when the color pages look significantly better. It's the difference between Wonder Bread (the volume covers) and some fresh-baked color pages. I mean, seriously. The difference is ridiculous.

There's also some setup within the story that's solid, the author uses the early page count extensions to the fullest to add in a little bit of setup for characters they introduce later.
Other than that... yeah. Unfunny gag presentation with awful characters and token attempts to appeal to a younger demographic. I honestly don't think it's much worth the read, but hey, it got axed mercifully quickly and at least offers a laugh at how dumb it is. Go figure.
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