The World Is Mine

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"Good comes from God, evil comes from ourselves. "
This is a sentence that can easily be quoted when talking about Hideki Arai's The World Is Mine.
This work is absolutely nothing ordinary, and will necessarily provoke in the reader a before and after, in my opinion. It is a deeply political story, where two men will seek to test the wrath of God in a Japan fractured by its leaders.
With this work, we go through all the feelings.
Indeed, the work is of unprecedented violence.
Whether it is in his crazy staging or in his drawings (beware! His style is quite atypical!) with his elaborate cut-outs, Hideki Arai ... constantly shakes us in his universe. The scenes of rape and murder are recurrent, and we are constantly confronted with their fatality. All this is obviously not gratuitous, each of these scenes always serving the purpose of the author, who wanted to be very committed to this. The protagonists are very well-written anti-heroes, each of them having a very complex personality, difficult to understand in the first volumes, but which as the story unfolds and the objectives accomplished are revealed, all this to give us the keys to understanding the story.
Much more, each character introduces to the story to a physical or moral character trait that describes him, which enriches the story ...
Damn, hard to go further without spoiler.
You have to know that if you enter the world of Hideki Arai, you will come out of it changed forever.
I think "The World Is Mine" is a life changing work, and it is good to read it at least once.

"We are saturated with unneeded information to the point that it's painful. I refuse to let this interfere with my life. The religion of progress disgusts me."

The World Is Mine is a manga that I at first hated, but after a few grueling hours I more than came around to. A story that has gotten more relevant and more uncomfortable two decades later. To call it transgressive is putting it lightly, our main characters are indiscriminate murderers. Even to those most unphased by fictional violence (by far it's not the most gory or otherwise visceral manga) the context and realism of the actions depicted in ... this series will probably disturb them. If it seems like I'm hyping this up, just know that it contains scenes of realistic —not hentai-like— rape, and I didn't find that to be the most shocking subject matter on display.

That being said, TWIM has a surprising amount of humanity, though its view for our prospects are quite bleak. Even our most fargone characters (yes, Toshi & Mon) have their understandable if not sympathetic moments. Ijima and the journalist also have a great plot thread going on, even if it takes some time for theirs to pick up.

It goes without saying that TWIM is a challenging read with edgy themes. Nihilism, terrorism, mass murder, the failings and hypocrisies of contemporary society, and international politics. It doesn't wax poetic about these subjects, but rather gives us a great story of it. It no doubt touches nerves by portraying awful things, yet it never does so purely for shock value. Cruelty and suffering are a part of this world, and this manga is full of it.

I'd like to mention the art is fantastic as well. And as uncomfortable the violence often is, there are genuinely cool scenes such as the assault on the police station, in which Hideki Arai's attention to detail really shines through; I get the impression he has an interest in firearms and such. If it was just shootouts with cops and wasn't as introspective as it is, I would praise it as an enjoyably violent romp. Of course it's much more than that, but it doesn't hurt it to have those moments.

TWIM plot felt like something that should have never lasted 14 volumes! It fail at everything for something that tries to push the psychological boundaries of its characters it's bland , for something with that much action it's not entertaining, for something that tries so hard to tell so many stories at the same time it's extremely confusing!


__PLOT/CHARACTER: 1/10

TWIM biggest flaw lies in its horrible story telling.....

TWIM introduces a lot of characters while constantly shifting perspectives and timelines! Even if you are in what is supposed to be a stressful situation, let's say at the peak of a manhunt TWIM will randomly switch ... to another storyline or timeline for entire volumes to tell you the story of a bunch of randoms characters, THEN 5 volumes later jump back to the manhunt and expect you to care???

__The main characters, TOSHI/MON are extremely bland with no development or growth, but more importantly, they never get to have any real opposition to confront them either physically or ideologically.

MON is a savage who spent most of his life isolated from society someone who doesn't follow any laws, because why? Power is absolute It's in your right to use it eat the weak!!! Don't resist accept, everything is connected! The man has nothing for him, he's just a boring mindless killer we never get to know him. He spoke maybe three words in 14 volumes same for his stupid friend who follow him because mon is so cool!

MON is a GOD with ridiculous powers, that let him do a lot of crazy shit like: converting the world to his new cult! after saying a bunch of random words. He can dodge bullets, kill an army of ELITE forces with.... punches. How am I supposed to take him seriously when he is constantly worshiped and protected by the plot?

But more importantly, why won't his OWN laws apply to him and toshi? Why do those laws seem to affect everyone BUT THEM? What is the reason behind the COMPLETE immunization of those two?


___Higumadon is the only thing that is remotely entertaining in this manga because he Gets to have a real opposition with the hunter, you add the fact that higumadon appearances are always artistically impressive and you get something fun.


___The hunter is by far the best character a truly interesting one the only one who i think deliver a real opposition to TOSHIMON and higumadon. He gets a ton of pages a huge build up just for him to suddenly disappear..... Why would you stop his story line like this? then You finally get to see his fate..... 5 volumes later, when the manga is  pretty much over at this point, switching story line is such a good idea, What a massive turn-off! All of this buildup was for nothing...

___The journalist.... he just draws penises on his notebook that it.... another uninteresting character who served no purpose!

___The two police officers. Both of them failed to deliver anything to the story, they are uninteresting, not charismatic, have next to no depth despite monopolizing a huge chunk pages but more importantly can't deliver any opposition to Toshimon because, again, TOSHIMON laws apply to everyone except for them.

__maria of odate another boring character. She'll get a MASSIVE amount of pages for no reason. she served no purpose, she's in love with MON because MON is such a god i guess..... even the fan of this serie hate her lol!

__the prime minister of Japan and the US president, two pointless character who get a MASSIVE amount of pages. the first one is the long awaited opposition to TOSHIMON ideology but fail miserably because yes MON is a god the other one is just your typical US president stereotype.... the last thing that this manga needed was politics..... after a cetain event you'll never hear anything about the prime minister despite the enormous ammount of time he monopolized just like our hunter friend hmmm i see a patern here....?

__ And... a shit ton of other RANDOM POINTLESS characters arcs placed at random intervals they are so useless that i challenge anyone to remember one of their name or face!


_ART 7/10

__TWIM art is mediocre and brilliant at the same time. Remember when I said that this manga was confusing as hell due to its story structure? Well there is another thing that you need to take into account something that you'll notice from the very first chapter. This manga is extremely confusing to look at. You just don't know what's happening. It's extremely noticeable during any action sequence. You just stand here looking at a panel asking yourself, WHAT is this supposed to be?! and that's one massive flaw for a manga with so much action......

in the second half this manga became such a chore to read because It's so slow. There is a ton of pages with gigantic bubbles of mindless dialogue everywhere just to make the things drag more and more, and it gets worse with time. The first volumes were quite nice to read then it goes full filler mode all of this talking to tell you what exactly? that toshi is a god ? yeah i get it.....

+++ As for the positives, the sequences where Higumadon go berserk are impressive, Higumadon's second rampage series of seamless chapters is simply jaw-dropping a beautiful display of Hideki Arai incredible skills the absolute highlight of the serie for me. Some of the actions scenes are really well made when they're not confusing and overall this manga is filled with beautiful panels, the covers are incredible too.


__CONCLUSiON 3/10

I can't recommend TWIM It's one of the worst cases of padding I have ever seen! It's full of artificial plot lines that won't serve the story in any way. It's full of nonsense that adds nothing substantial to the plot. its full of random event here just to waste your time, It just never stop shifting from random characters to random timelines so that it doesn't have to finish what it started, thus resulting in huge pacing issues and a lot of confusion for the reader.

TWIM failed to be interesting because the cast of characters is laughable. TWIM failed to be entertaining because of its awful pace and the protagonists constant protection and lack of opposition to confront them either physically or morally.

On the other hand, it want you to care, to shock you so badly, but everything failed miserably from the very start to the very end, all of this felt meaningless because everything in this manga is pointless.