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

Fukami, Kazumasa

Supporting

Uryuu, Kouji

Supporting

Shinooka, Saki

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

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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Jan 13, 2025

kk_oniichan

Not Recommended

As someone who is a fan of "Hatsukoi Zombie" and is quite fond of "Himegoto: Juukyuusai no Seifuku", I was going into "Boy's Abyss" with a positive attitude and hoping for an interesting read as the author had already displayed with their previous work. But, something felt off as soon as Nagi and Esemori's beginning character personality and development was introduced.

Despite being a major part of the manga, the dark themes such as self harm, rape, and adultery serves very little purpose in character development or plot progression. They were usually there for a sort of deep emotional emphasis, which was not successful at all. ... The only effect it had on readers, in my opinion, with such a large amount of atrocities happening one after another is that it numbs the readers and makes decencitize to these horrible, borderline criminal (well some are criminal), actions, which just dilites the dark themes and turns the manga into a torture chamber for the readers.

The premise of story was actually quite interesting. The mystery of an idol and her obession with double suicide with the main character was a good hook, and a strong theme around "people borning into a town never leaves the town", and the mental anguish of the main character's struggle between prioritizing his future by going to uni in Tokyo or taking care of his struggling family at a young age was very interesting. However, the paths and methods that the author took to tackle this premise and these themes was unbearable. The way that the characters' motives and reasoning behind their actions were presented was convoluted and always ill intented. This ill intent could be conveying the evil nature of people or just people from this cursed town, but this barrage of evil, atrosicities, and other distusting shit are really not enjoyable to read. To add on to these weird and uncomfortable character traits followed by convoluted plot points, the characters are just unlikable.

The characters are irredeemible. All of them just slowly decend into despair. At the beginning at least the author gave us a little hope for some of the main characters to turn around and change things. But by the end, they all keeps getting weirder and hopeless, which honestly feels like their in despair for the sake of the mood of the story because these characters just make no sense. The solutions of each character arcs were very dependent how likable and much we cared about these characters, which was nonexistent for me, so the conclusion was extremely unsatifying and empty.

Personal opinions. I mostly either hated or just did not care about the manga, so I really did not enjoy reading this. Buy by chapter 100 I was locked in to finish it because I know I will definitly drop this if I stopped at any point, and some moment were like watching riduculous car crash, so it's not completely unreadable. I also liked the character of chako and sensei at the beginning because of the struggle of helping themselves or important ones around them while juggling around family problems and potential societal backlash (well the sensei is breaking the law, but as a fictional plot device...). But then they just went crazy... thanks.

To conclude

While having an interesting premise and theming around the human relationships of a certain countryside town with decent art and well designed characters that started at a 7/10 (good) for me, the story and characters really dragged down the score to around a 4/10 (bad), but since this manga was a little infuriating to read (hate reading),which avoided complete boredom soit got boosted to a 5/10 (still bad tho).

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Poll: Shounen no Abyss Chapter 171 Discussion MegamiRem - Apr 3, 2024	14 replies	by MeVike »» Jan 16, 9:43 AM
Poll: Shounen no Abyss Chapter 14 Discussion Jinx_Araragi - Sep 20, 2022	3 replies	by rodmanii »» Jan 2, 6:45 PM
Poll: Shounen no Abyss Chapter 12 Discussion AnonymousGuy9 - Jun 18, 2020	10 replies	by rodmanii »» Jan 2, 6:32 PM
Poll: Shounen no Abyss Chapter 2 Discussion FMmatron - May 6, 2021	7 replies	by rodmanii »» Jan 2, 6:08 PM
Poll: Shounen no Abyss Chapter 1 Discussion FMmatron - May 6, 2021	6 replies	by exiledagain »» Nov 19, 2024 3:25 AM

Shounen no Abyss
Boy's Abyss
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