What is Radiant?
Radiant is a french manga (or manfra) series written and illustrated by Tony Valente which has been published in France by Ankama Editions since 2013. It's also available through other publishers around the world in English, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. It got an anime adaptation in Japan by Lerche in 2018, at the moment it has 2 seasons (between fans it's regarded as a bad adaptation, take that as you will).
Radiant is also published by volumes instead of weekly or monthly chapter publications, each volume (starting from the second volume) contains 8 chapters, there's usually 2 or 3 published per year (this is mostly because Tony does all the art and writing by himself, he's tried to work with an assistant before but found it hard to coordinate).
What's the basic plot to the series?
From Wikipedia: In the world of Radiant, monsters called Nemeses fall from the sky. These Nemeses contaminate everything they touch. People who survive their contact become cursed, but also gain the ability to wield the magic power known as "Fantasia", thus becoming Sorcerers. Seth, the protagonist of Radiant, is a teenage boy who has survived a Nemesis attack. He dreams of defeating all of the Nemeses and bringing peace between Sorcerers and the rest of humanity. To do so, he has to find the place where the Nemeses come from, the legendary Radiant, and destroy it. He and other sorcerers travel the region in search of Radiant whilst avoiding the Inquisition, an organization opposed to Sorcerers.
As a little side note, don't expect stuff like tournament arcs or wanting to 'be the best X', that's quickly shot down in the first volumes, think of this more as an adventure manga, there's still fights (and really well made ones) and action, but the focus is on how the protagonists can reach their goal.
What makes Radiant different to other shonen manga?
Tony Valente is a big fan of Oda (One Piece mangaka) so you'll find a lot of similarities throughout (lots of foreshadowing, large cast of characters, focus on adventure), while its first couple of volumes are regarded as being generic (the author didn't know if he was getting the greenlight to make it a series), from Volume 3 onwards is when the plot starts to form, and each subsequent volume is better than the last, it only gets better.
The fact that it's written by a western author changes things up a bit, the humour is different, and so are the themes tackled during the series, you'll see the author's views on things like racism, immigration, the refugee crisis and religious indoctrination. There's also a lot of different factions and groups and politics in the world of Radiant, so if you're into Game of Thrones style strategies or similar you're in for a treat.
The cast is also pretty diverse compared to other mangas which is a big plus, and again compared to most other shonen manga, Tony does a good job in writing the female characters in the series.
Manga? Manfra? Comic Series?
Call it whatever you want, most people regard it as a manga since it's pretty much one except it's just written by a french person instead of a japanese one.
What does it look like?
Below I leave some examples of covers, color pages and manga panels of the series that show off Tony's style, I'll try to keep it as spoiler-free as possible, but if you don't want any spoilers I suggest not having a look.
How many volumes are there? Chapters? Arcs?
There are currently 18 volumes. As of Volume 18 there are 140 chapters in the series. The next volume (19) currently does not have an estimated release date, but safe to say it's slated at least for 2024.
The categorization of arcs is mostly up to the community but it's usually classified as follows:
Arc 1 - Rumble Town Arc (Vol. 1-4)
Arc 2 - Caislean Merlin/Sorcerer Knights Arc (Vol. 5-10)
Arc 3 - Bôme Arc (Vol. 12-???) - side note: Vol. 11 is considered a transition volume between arcs. THIS IS THE CURRENT ARC.
RULES
- ResetEra's Guidelines are obviously supposed to be followed.
- Make sure to spoiler tag important or recent events in the story, this is mostly up to common sense, if there's someone new asking for something don't spoil them.
- Regarding spoilers too, make sure you always spoiler tag stuff in regards to the latest volume released, even if it's not that important.
- Be nice!
If you have any questions or want to discuss anything, please feel free to do so!
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