Elden Ring: The Road to the Erdtree

I have mentioned it a few times now, but I have a problem with most Japanese media. There’s always something about the stories they tell that bother me, whether it’s glorification of suicide or hand-waving child molestation or normalising sexual abuse of women or, at its most innocent, being unable to have one decently written ending. However, I really and I mean really like Elden Ring‘s world and story. Whilst I wasn’t necessarily expecting to gain new lore insights through this manga, I was hoping to at least some more visual representations of maybe some bits of the game that you maybe only see from a distance or have no time to admire the design of because it keeps trying to kill you, and just for that, I thought it would be worth giving this manga a try.

It unfortunately was quite a bit worse than I thought in terms of gaining lore insights because the manga doesn’t even try to follow the lore. It does follow the rough sketch of story, Aseo is a tarnished, Melina finds him, he gets Torrent and needs to make his way to the Erdtree and to do this he’ll have to defeat demi gods to be allowed access to the capital in Leyndell and I’d assume it’ll keep following these story beats including an unnecessary trip by the Haligtree so the book can have its Malenia fight moment. However, anything that isn’t the hard coded main storyline is turned into a gag, characters’ personalities are changed to make things funny and all events and actions are always done with a side of sarcasm or silliness to keep things funny. The Road to the Erdtree is a gag manga and it is maybe even overbearingly “gaggy” in its first 4 entries as in those not a single frame exists without the intent of making a joke. It was funny at the start but then got tiring. The Elden Ring world can be told with humour as this manga attests but it’s also a very dark world and fully skipping or revamping important story beats to make a ridiculously dumb joke out of it does become annoying after a while. Thankfully entries 5 and 6 seem to start embracing a slightly more serious tone and strike, in my eyes, a better balance between being a comedy and still telling a good fantasy adventure story with stakes and it has me be quite optimistic about the next entries.

What really helped me stick through those rougher entries at the start however was the most welcome lack of almost all anime/manga/Japanese tropes I detest. No woman is made into a sexual object, nobody is welcoming suicide like a great thing to do, the story actually progresses at a decent pace (book 6 not withstanding) and even character relationships develop. It never felt uncomfortable, inappropriate or downright illegal nor did it ever feel like filler. The manga tells the story of Elden Ring and even with all its changes and time for jokes, it moves along the story and doesn’t dally around. Entry 6, as I said, is an exception in that aspect as it dedicates itself entirely to the fight with Radhan and had a few too many frames where nothing really happened outside of seeing yet another variant of Radhan swinging his swords around whilst the only dialogue are characters going “oh”, “ah” and “ugh, that hurt”.

The particularly frustrating point is that entry 6 is also the latest one released in English and the next one isn’t expected before October (2 months from time of writing), and it most definitely will not be the last one. Realistically, I could be waiting for its full and complete release until well into 2027-2028 and that’s a bit long and falls into the one issue of Japanese media the mange didn’t circumvent: they take forever to come out (especially properly translated) and if you follow along the releases you’re never really sure you’ll actually ever get to the ending. The Japanese version of the manga is admittedly releasing at a steady pace, but even with its brisker pace than the average manga, Elden Ring‘s story will take many more years at the current pace to be fully told (if FromSoftware doesn’t pull the plug before then or the author gets bored or dies).