Zenaku no Kuzu

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This series is aggressively bad. Instead of trying to tell a story with any kind of actual depth or nuance, its basically just aiming to shock you.

Every arc consists of the same structure. Bad buys with no characterization other than being bad do something horrible but completely over the top (almost always involving graphic rape and mutilation). A family member of the victim approaches our two generic ass anti-heroes, who then proceed to murder the fuck out of the bad buy. The story contains no humor, no character growth, and ultimately is so over the top in its depiction of violent crime that its impossible ... to take seriously half the time.

I feel the story is also a little absurd. The central conceit is the idea that the Japanese criminal justice system is powerless to actually punish people. In reality, besides Japan being a low crime society, its arguably the most ardently policed country in the developed world, with people going to jail for years for simple possession of marijauna and the country having a 99% conviction rate for those accused of crimes. THis may be too serious an approach to take to a silly story like this, but the story having legitimately nothing in common with reality makes it feel like a borderline piece of right-wing propaganda advocating for harsher punishment of criminals. Ultimately, the story fails because it is too serious in tone to treat as just over the top violence for violence sakes, while being way too over the top to function as a serious crime drama. TLDR: This shit is bad.

Art: Functional but not great. The backgrounds are mostly photographs, the fight scenes all look like janky playstation 1 graphics. Occasionally theres a good two page spread of people dying horribly.

Character: Barely remember any of them. They've either or got generic ass backstorie, the generic victims of horrific crimes, or generic rapists. You, the person reading this review, could almost certainly write better characters than this.

Enjoyment: I actively dislike this series. Its like if Ichi the Killer/Deadtubewas poorly drawn and lacked memorable characters. Legitimately mad at myself for spending 3 hours of my life reading it.

Overall: 3

Zenaku no Kuzu aka The Scum of Good and evil.

Story. 7/10
This manga is about revenge. When your family is hurt and there is not enough evidence, then you can go to this duo — Kamo and Tora. They will “punish” the evildoer.
Why do they do do? Well, to exact revenge these guys have already dirtied their hands. Kamo feels that when he has lost everything, he should help others by getting revenge, yet not lose their innocence. Very idealistic and twisted views.

Have you ever been bullied? Or beaten, or somebody badmouthed your family? Well, that hurts. We take appropriate measures, maybe argue, ... or fight, inform higher authorities. If strong enough, we may beat up the other fellow. But when hurt and angry, maybe foe only a fraction of second there is desire to inflict pain. Getting revenge in short term seems cool, so many movies and manga are based on it. This here, is based on it too——- Revenge and violence.

In movies the villain is simply shot and killed. Not here. The usp of this manga is the blood, gore, and explicit violence that is shown. Like Brutal, or Ichi the Killer.
So if you want cheap thrill, seeing bad guys getting killed, you’ll love this.
I have mixed feeling though. At some point things got repetitive and I had my fill of gore.


Art. 7/10
Violence is shown pretty well. Art is neat. No details spared.


Character. 7/10
Sadly, there is almost no character development. One after the other, innocents come and beg for revenge. And our protagonists do the job. That’s it. It repeats again and again. If we could’ve seen some thoughts about the murders or investigation about if crimes were correct, this would’ve been a different manga entirely.
Not deep. But that’s okay if you’re only here for the gore.


Overall . 7/10
This manga divides the world into black and white. There was a victim that I felt was partly to be blamed for crime, but no attention given. There is no confirmation of victim’s story. The police does nothing, as these murders continue. Highly unrealistic.

If you want a deep philosophical story or some murder mystery thriller, do not read this. Also there is no comedy, or romance here.


If you want to see fights, blood, violence and divine retribution step right here. You’ll love this. Just remeber, this isn’t realistic.


Thank you for reading!