Or is it better to start from the beginning?
Summary:
- Chained Soldier Season 1 finished airing on March 21.
- The anime ends with Chapter 44 of the manga.
- Fans advise to read the manga from the beginning, though.
Chained Soldier (Mato Seihei no Slave) Season 1 finished airing last week, when Episode 12 aired on March 21, 2024. Although the anime adaptation had its issues, it has managed to make a lot of people interested in the series, so they naturally want to start reading the manga.
Manga details and Season 1 chapters
Chained Soldier is an action ecchi manga series written by Takahiro and illustrated by Yohei Takemura. The manga is still ongoing and has 128 chapters as of now. The latest chapter was released on March 23, 2024.
The first season of the anime adapted 44 chapters of the manga. There are also a couple of moments from Chapter 45 in Episode 12 of the anime, since they’ve been moved a bit. Basically, if you want to continue the story after Season 1, you can start with either Chapter 44 or 45.
It’s better to start from the beginning, though
Of course, this is such an obvious thing to say for many manga because the stories are always better experienced as a whole. But with Chained Soldier it’s more than that. The anime is too different from the manga.
It doesn’t mean that these two types of media follow completely different routes, but the anime adaptation has been criticized for deviating a lot. That’s why manga readers suggest starting with Chapter 1 even if you’ve finished the first season and don’t want to read about the same things that happened there.
Chained Soldier gets a bit too unhinged at times with its rewards and sexual themes. The anime doesn’t have that much censorship, but it did cut some of the sexual rewards out. So if you want to experience all of them, the manga is the best choice.
And it’s not just some fanservice-y content that we’re talking about, the anime also skipped a couple of plot points that you’ll need to understand the story better.
On top of that, there are some .5 chapters (Chapter 30.5 or 39.5) which the anime doesn’t adapt, either. Extra chapters aren’t in the anime for the most part, and there’s also something worth your attention in them.
Chained Soldier is just another upsetting example of “the manga was better,” so readers think that everyone who’s interested in the series should start reading it from the beginning. After all, it’s just 40-something chapters we’re talking about; it’s not that much.