Shounen no Abyss

Reiji Kurose was born in the countryside, and has spent his life believing he can never leave his town. He cannot leave his mother alone with his shut-in brother and demented grandmother, nor can he escape the clutches of Gen Minegishi, who keeps Reiji at his beck and call. In contrast, his childhood friend Sakuko Akiyama sees past the nothingness of their gloomy town and dreams of the chaotic glamor of Tokyo.

As a way to withdraw from his monotonous life, Reiji finds comfort in watching the performances of "Acrylic," an idol group, and its most beautiful member, Nagi Aoe. But when he encounters the famous idol behind a convenience store in his grim town, he does not anticipate that he will soon be involved in a series of scandalous events that seem to be a repercussion of times long past. Robbed of his innocence, Reiji struggles to wade through the abyss of sin he has been pulled into, all while an intricate web of lies, obsession, and betrayal threatens to tear him apart.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Shounen no Abyss has been published in English as Boy's Abyss by VIZ Media under the VIZ Signature imprint since April 25, 2023.

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Characters

Aoe, Nagi

Main

Kurose, Reiji

Main

Akiyama, Sakuko

Main

Shibasawa, Yuri

Supporting

Kurose, Yuuko

Supporting

Nozoe, Akira

Supporting

Minegishi, Gen

Supporting

Shinooka, Saki

Supporting

Fukami, Kazumasa

Supporting

Uryuu, Kouji

Supporting

Reviews

Jul 25, 2024

AnimePotato101

Recommended

Missed opportunity for greatness. But good none the less.

I followed this manga a while back. I was in this arc of reading sort of edgy material (Tokyo ghoul) (Berserk) and wanted more. Then I stumbled across this manga where it was dark edgy and truthful while also dealing with a lot of mental problems but not being action focused but more drama. I caught up to it on chapter 173 and slowly waited for the chapters to come out. I hadn't even realised but the manga had come to an abrupt end.

From the start I loved the themes and how the story played out. ...

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Jul 27, 2024

afmikasenpai

Mixed Feelings

Well-written

So, it's finally over.

Being made by the same author as Hatsukoi Zombie, I was very interested in this manga since the first chapter came out. Not only is the art style very different from the mangaka's previous title, but so is the entire genre. To the author's credit, transitioning from a shounen romcom to a psychological seinen is, I imagine, not an easy task.

I never truly enjoyed it after chapter 100, but at that point, I just wanted to know how it would end. The teacher was probably the sanest insane person in the entire story. Aside from the quality of the art, she was ...

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Aug 31, 2020

YungChody

Not Recommended

Preliminary (22/? eps)

For anyone reading reviews to see if they should pick up this manga, please for the love of god let me spare you:

Also, since it's happened in the past; before anyone says 'lol why read the manga if u hate it', I clicked on this because it was the most recently updated manga on the website I used to read it, was interested in the description, and read every chapter in like an hour, since there's really not a whole lot of thinking required.

- If you are looking for a 'deep' manga with some kind of underlying metaphor or overarching theme, read something else.
Before anyone ... tries to say that this manga is deep simply because it touches on themes like suicide, rape, depression, etc. please just know that even a middle schooler that is proficient in any language can write a story equal to this one, in terms of how deep those themes go. This manga is not deep, period. The story feels like the author just made a spider web of ideas that they wanted to write about, and pieced them into a book in no particular order, then spent a few hours coming up with some contrived, bullshit way for them to connect somehow. I have read 22 full chapters, and there has been maybe a chapter's worth of development on the main plot. It started off with some late-highschool aged kid living in a shit hole in the boonies, with a group of dudes who harass him, and a family life that's fucked up, and his goal is to leave the town to get away from all that. I don't want to go into explicit detail of what exactly happens, since this is a review, and I don't want to spoil anything on the off chance that someone will read it even after seeing this. With that being said, just go to the page for "Himegoto: Juukyuusai no Seifuku", which is by the same author, and read the description, then amplify the level of depravity that you would expect from it 10-fold, and that's what the actual story entails. This manga is about on that level, except rather than it being a story about sexually confused youth, it's about a bunch of random shit happening, and every character sexually taking advantage of one another (or trying to). The author uses these themes and soft-core hentai scenes to appeal to low-level curiosity, and, unfortunately, any other deeper meaning behind the things that happen can only be implicated by the reader. Good stories that touch on deep themes do not put the responsibility on the reader to fill in the gaps where there is no substance. It is the author's job to deliver on these implications that they intentionally put forth to begin with. (There are also implications of rape, blackmail, drug overdose, prostitution, and NTR, so if you're not into that shit, then definitely don't read.)

- If you are looking for a 'dark' manga that highlights some negative part of the world, or the people in it, read something else.
It's not to say that this manga doesn't touch on dark subjects, because it certainly does, but that's precisely the problem. So far it has only 'touched' on these subjects, alluding to or explicitly mentioning them as some kind of plot development that would be major in any well-written story, only to immediately move on to the next thing. These themes and subjects are used solely to evoke that 'butterfly'/'sinking' feeling in your stomach that you get when something really nightmarish happens to a character you like. And the subjects themselves are probably enough to elicit this type of feeling, but the author doesn't directly do anything for the reader to actually develop a large enough attachment to the characters for this to be possible. You might be thinking "but there's only 22 chapters! they'll go deeper!". If this was a valid point, I might agree, but I would argue back that it's the author's fault for writing these intended emotional kicks to the stomach in the first couple chapters. Even when you ignore the previously mentioned point, I would still disagree. There have been way too many instances in a 22 chapter sample size where the story just breaks from its path and starts a new one completely, only to randomly tie it in later. Also, based on this author's track record of cutting plot in favor of deplorable shit, don't be surprised when that same thing happens here. (also the pacing is just bad in general, everything moves really quickly, but lacks meaningful substance.)

- If you are looking for a romance manga that has hints of the previous two topics, read literally anything other than this.
There is nothing romantic about this story, whatsoever. Anybody who has read up to the latest chapter of this manga and can say with a straight face that this should be classified as romance has a really warped sense of what romance actually is.

- If you are looking for a manga with nice art, and don't give a shit about the story, read away.
The art is the only redeemable aspect of this manga, imo. A lot of the scenery is just filtered real-life pictures, which is common in most slice of life manga series, but there are actually a higher than average number of hand-drawn scenes that look pretty good.

- If you saw the 'smut' tag and wanna see the big sex, there's plenty of doujin authors that are more talented at both writing story, and drawing nipples for you to jack off to.

To sum up, I feel like this manga is really outrageously overrated by a lot of the people who have read it. This manga absolutely has the parts to potentially be something amazing, but honestly, knowing this author, I highly doubt they can piece them together into something amazing, given the erratic mess they've created thus far.

Side note: the last manga I read before this was GTO, and to go from that masterpiece to this was a hilarious contrast.

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Poll: Shounen no Abyss Chapter 183 Discussion ( 1 2 ) javereal - Jul 24	64 replies	by GavrocheN7 »» Oct 8, 3:09 PM
Poll: Shounen no Abyss Chapter 36 Discussion removed-user - Dec 16, 2020	8 replies	by Rajidae »» Oct 5, 10:26 PM
Poll: Shounen no Abyss Chapter 35 Discussion removed-user - Dec 7, 2020	16 replies	by Rajidae »» Oct 5, 10:21 PM
Poll: Shounen no Abyss Chapter 12 Discussion AnonymousGuy9 - Jun 18, 2020	9 replies	by Rajidae »» Oct 5, 8:08 PM
Poll: Shounen no Abyss Chapter 172 Discussion Adnash - Apr 10	6 replies	by JaniSIr »» Sep 15, 3:58 PM

Shounen no Abyss
Boy's Abyss
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Boy's Abyss
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