Shokuryou Jinrui
Starving Anonymous

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Holy shit, this was actually a really good read. I wasn't expecting to be impressed at the beginning, but reading the whole manga transformed my score from 6/10 to 9/10.

The first third of the manga feels like it would be another dark, edgy, shock-factor story, however, it really finds it's tone in the last half. Don't go into this manga thinking you'll get a super-serious drama/suspense/horror masterpiece. There are many moments where it shifts from dark to comedic, shocking to absurd—it complements really well most of the time. When a character dies, you feel empathy, and most of them have interesting backstories that are at ... least briefly talked about.

Also the art is FUCKING SUPERB! No exaggerations here, 10/10 art worth reading for the illustrations alone. Overall, very interesting, but don't go into it expecting too much seriousness in the plot aspect.

PS can people stop comparing this to Promised Neverland? They're totally different storytelling-wise. I've read the first 60-ish chapters of PN and it's a completely different experience

Do you like gore and monsters? Then this manga might be right up your alley.

*A spoiler free review*

Shokuryou Jinrui can only be described as "repulsive made beautiful". The first thing to draw your attention is the top-notch art with great character designs. The touch is realistic and the gross stuff comes off as sickening as it can get - just like it should.

The story is pretty standard survival horror which brings close the ugliness of human nature but there are also some more imaginative twists. If you have read the authors' previous work Apocalypse no Toride the pattern seems familiar: an isolated place, a naive ... main character who gets thrown into a mysterious situation, a diverse cast of more or less messed up characters, a narrative leaning heavily on flashbacks and of course, the awesome monsters.

The characters are nothing special but some of them have interesting motives and backstories which made me feel for them. When I say there are a lot of flashbacks - I mean a lot. It almost feels like the story progressed more through the flashbacks than with the present story line and all the possible character development happened in the past. Fortunately the pacing is pretty good and every chapter has some twist that makes you want to know what happens next - or what has happened before. While the story ended up being shorter than I expected, I still like the way it was concluded.

Overall this is a solid horror story which had potential to grow even better. The scenario portrayed is interesting and on top of the gory stuff the story presents us matters which can make one question the line between a human being and a monster, both figuratively and literally.

Recommended for fans of monster and body horror and readers of sci-fi, survival and psychological stories who have stomach for visually and mentally disturbing content.

I just binge-read this and I made the effort not to drop this just so I could make a proper review.

This was a terrible horror manga. You could put together a random series of gore images and get a better result that the whole 7 volumes of Shokuryou Jinrui. Why? Because the plot is an absolute mess and the characters are a joke.
It's pretty common to read people complaining about plots and disregarding it because, well, yeah, sometimes some mangas don't have good plots but they're still enjoyable. This is not the case. I will not spoil anything so more people can feel inclined to ... read this review, but basically nothing matters. There's so many jumps, inconsistencies, contradictions that the whole possible story loses any meaning. The plot doesn't make sense to such an extent that you just can't care about the story not the characters even a bit. It's so bad it makes you wonder if you skipped a "comedy" tag when reading the plot summary.

(And I'm not even mentioning the many moments that take your suspension of disbelief and just go the extra mile, so anything you read feels downright dumb; nor the cliches that feel absolutely outdated for this day and age).

The characters are build just like the plot that holds them, so all you have left is some kinda cool looking art that you could easily enjoy with a simple google search and call it a day. No one, absolutely no one, needs over 60 chapters of cringy storytelling just for a couple cool shots.

This is a random collection of images trying to disrespect your intellect for 7 volumes. Anyone trying to figure out if it's worth the read should take my word for it and skip this one.