When the King of Hiden sends thirteen heroes to vanquish Clevatess, the powerful King of Dark Beasts dwelling on Luna Mountain, the greatest of all monsters rises to meet the threat to his domain. After effortlessly dispatching the heroes, Clevatess directs his wrath upon their kingdom, resolving to dispose of any peoples who might one day turn against him. In the rubble of his rampage, the beast hears a crying baby, and a dying Hidenean begs him to give the child a chance to prove humankind deserves to survive. The proposition is intriguing, but the Beast King is hardly equipped to raise a baby. Raising the dead, however…

Clevatess: The King of Dark Beasts, the Baby, and the Undead Hero has a story and art by Yuji Iwahara. English translation by Stephen Paul. Lettering by Abigail Blackman. Published by Yen Press (August 25, 2026). Rated OT.

Kevin Cormack
Rating:

Clevatess is a bit like that old Tom Selleck/Ted Danson/Steve Guttenberg movie Three Men and a Baby, except instead of three men it's a physically and sexually abused wet nurse, a zombified heroine missing an eye, and a dread elder god reduced to human form (with a horn). As you can imagine, the jokes essentially write themselves. Ok, they don't really; it's a grimdark fantasy set in a world mostly overrun by monsters, where the five human-esque races are hemmed into a single continent, prevented from expanding their territory by terrifying Beast Kings.

For various plot reasons, Clevatess, the terrifying King of Beasts, who earlier slaughtered the thirteen heroes sent to kill him, before destroying the nearby Kingdom of Hiden and executing their king, has been lumbered with the care of a tiny humanoid child, who may, in fact, be heir to the throne. If you've ever wondered how a towering, wolf-like Demon God might deal with such challenges as dirty diapers and lack of available lactating breasts, here is your chance. The scene where Clevatess resurrects one of his deceased assailants, the female hero Alicia, then demands she “expose your teats” to feed the baby is darkly hilarious and utterly absurd.

This constant tension between absurdity and dark, horrific violence keeps the story interesting. The art is a little cartoonish, and certainly isn't as detailed or as gritty as other manga in its genre, most obviously Berserk, but it's quite charming nonetheless. Although some events have the potential to be lurid, especially the treatment of Nell, the aforementioned wet nurse, thankfully, most panels don't dwell on the indignities and assaults she suffers, choosing instead to imply. This doesn't lessen the impact of how badly she's been treated.

Anime viewers will know how her story turns out, but this volume ends with a cruel cliffhanger that stops short of a pivotal scene that would help illustrate what kind of character Clevatess himself will turn out to be. In Japan, this series runs to 13 volumes so far and already has an omnibus edition that compiles earlier volumes into more substantial reads. I can't help but wonder if this could have worked better in English in that format too, as, judging from the material presented here, the story has barely begun. Personally, I prefer the recent manga Centuria for my dark fantasy fix, but Clevatess certainly has a promising and slightly unusual concept at its core that makes it worth a look.

Jean-Karlo Lemus
Rating:

How nice it is to have a non-isekai fantasy! While the title and concept imply a degree of levity, Clevatess is a much darker ordeal. At no point does Clevatess even begin to imply that they have anything other than utter contempt for any human in their vicinity, and the heroine Alicia makes no bones about wanting to betray him at every turn. The story keeps its dark tone consistently; there is a political void left by Clevatess' rampage in Hiden, foreshadowing a great deal of political upheaval in the story to follow. In the meantime, Clevatess and Alicia are dealing with bandits.

There are a few moments where the violence in Clevatess gets a bit uncomfortable; there's a moment early on where Alicia is forced to “show her teats” in order to feed the baby, and Clevatess' treatment of Alicia improves little as the story goes on. Their time with the bandits is also harrowing; while the violence against women is there to underline a point in the book, and we thankfully never actually see any sexual violence inflicted on the poor slaves, we still see the full extent of it with poor Nell. Reader beware, this series is rather upfront with the pain of giving birth to stillborns, and there's no light at the end of the tunnel for poor Nell.

However, Clevatess manages to avoid crossing the line of gratuitousness; it's a fascinating fantasy story about a beast trying to reconcile with the world of humans, and how the land of law and order is often anything but. Its restraint endears it to me; strongly recommended, but major warning to readers regarding physical abuse towards women.