The Spring 2025 Manga Guide

Reincarnation Coliseum (18+)

What's It About? 

High schooler Kouji Mikagami is painfully average in every way―except when he's playing video games! So getting summoned to a magical world and granted the ability to copy his opponent's skills should be his way to the top. Before he gets the chance, he's thrown into the coliseum as a combat slave...for his trash-tier skill! In the midst of his despair, he realizes only one path remains open to him―beat down the strongest girls with the weakest skill and make a name for himself!

Reincarnation Coliseum has a story by Saizō Harawata and art by Zunta. English translation by Ko Ransom. This volume is lettered by Ivo Marques. Published by Yen Press (April 22, 2025). Rated Mature.

---

Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris
Rating:

I like to think I'm pretty open-minded when it comes to heavier, harder, horny stories. I've found fair things to say about manga like Inside the Tentacle Cave and Reincarnation in prior guides. I can't be too judgemental about what does it for people, and seeing the way some of these series effectively navigate those kinks, concepts, and even accompanying psychology can be pretty interesting to evaluate sometimes. So the only way something like Reincarnation Coliseum could really put me off would be if it was, oh I don't know, a boilerplate besmirched-nerd revenge power fantasy isekai. And hey, wouldn't you know it—

I'll at least start by paying Reincarnation Coliseum the most paltry of props for its priorities and presentation. It lets readers know right at the start how sexually violent the story herein is going to get, letting them decide to nope out instantaneously (though a true content warning before a full splash page probably wouldn't have hurt). And there's something to be said for the energy of artistically rendered manga pages powering an otherwise by-the-numbers isekai setup. I can see an anime equivalent of this looking as stiff, flat, and boring as any of the dozens of those we get every season. But Zunta can put a fair amount of sauce and personality into the art of Reincarnation Coliseum. It's not high art and it tends to get messy and warped regularly in places. But there are impressively extreme facial expressions and a sense of effort, which is appreciable.

That's something to glom onto since the actual content of Reincarnation Coliseum is annoying in the most expected ways. Obnoxious gamer nerd Kouji (who couches everything in gaming lingo in a way I assure you never becomes cringe at all) exists entirely to get dumped on by a parade of cruel, sexy women just waiting to be put in their place. It's eye-rolling in how the domineering personalities of the women don't feel like part of the appeal, but rather more like uniform representations of how mean ladies come across to the storyteller. Even the floated possibility of sexual assault on a man for a coliseum loss is swiftly swept up in magical sex changes and female domination. The writing is wrapped in multiple layers of the raw indignity of the female existence—it's like a misogyny turducken.

That's all to say that Reincarnation Coliseum isn't even the fun kind of problematic pornography; you can get this sort of material from back-alley imageboard posts. Plus the manga doesn't even go all-in on the porn part, actually skipping over this volume's sex scene in-story and saving any explicit shots for a few in-between chapter pages. This means the alleged actual appeal is Kouji using his Gamer Skillz to strategize and subdue his opponents. But that doesn't work when the skills he's utilizing are all story-contrived RPG mechanics designed to let him virtually MacGuyver up a solution. It's just lame, is what I'm saying. There are more engrossing, more engaging, dare I say more enlightening forms of fucked-up fap material out there to discover, that you don't need to bother with Reincarnation Coliseum to get your fix.

---

MrAJCosplay
Rating:

Something doesn't need to be new to be fun and exciting to read. That is definitely how I feel about Reincarnation Coliseum. This is the story that takes elements from a lot of other manga that I've come across, with the emphasis on our main character translating being a busted gamer in the real world to being a strong fighter in a fantasy world and utilizing copy skills creatively. I'm surprised I found things so engaging, although that could come down to just how exaggerated everything is.

I'm mostly talking about the artwork, which takes advantage of the visual medium by showing these large and expressive faces. Everyone's got this deranged look in their eye like they're ready to tear apart their opponent, and it is very fun to observe. Surprisingly, the book isn't as titillating as I was hoping it would be, given the body types of a lot of the characters and the overall premise of the series revolving around being sexually intimate with those that you defeat in a Colosseum. There is sex in the story, but it's all off-screen, and it feels like it's played more for laughs than for any sense of sexual pathos.

There's a stronger emphasis here on our main character trying to take advantage of the circumstances as much as he can. How can he copy opposing skills and utilize them to win? How can you take advantage of the rules of the world to survive, and what kind of unique scenarios can we come up with to keep things interesting? This is a story that knows what it wants to be. If you're looking for a decent action series with some big tits and creative fights, then I think this is a solid pick.