This was terrible, which surprised me after very decent Hoozuki no Shima. It’s been long since I flipped through pages on pure rage to tear a work apart properly in a review.
Among the many factors that make you question your choice of hobby while reading this manga the atrocious hamfisted fanservice is the real star. It has no contenders in making you want to hit your head on the table from the complex combination of ire, cringe and lameness overflow. I am understanding of fanservice in manga, really, truly, I promise, but this time it got to me and it got to me bad. And
...
I think it’s not my fault. One of the first things you see in Mouryou no Yurikago, even before learning anything about the story or characters, is a schoolgirl pissing herself with fear, attention on her crotch and labia majora, and her crotch, and her labia majora, and more crotch… – hope you catch my drift. The girl is made to look very earnest in being scared. Every girl in this manga is made to look very earnest, to provide tits'n'ass nonstop and be dumb as a brick (sorry, bricks). The level of grace with which this is handled is, say, a blind girl is nearly raped, but manages to escape by hurting her attacker in a living hell situation – this scene is used to make something like a pin-up of her for a colored page, her peach-like ass visible through a torn skirt and breasts outlined through a wet shirt. Or a twisted “bad” girl dies and her last thoughts are about forgetting to put on panties. No, sadly it’s not funny in the context. And all the female characters are like that, there’re about 5 pages combined in all the manga where they are not extremely irritating, 3 of those pages dedicated to the female MC swimming silently. The author also seems to have a thing for the “golden shower” (women piss a lot in this manga, boys don’t at all though, lol). It’s not erotic, it’s not motivated, it doesn’t have a good flow, it’s just “look tits” and half of the cast turned into trash. Damn this stuff to the bottom of the ocean.
The male cast fares somewhat better, since they at least don’t show their dongs left and right and some of the tropey personalities initially had potential. At the beginning we’re introduced to a stoic type that pushes people away, to a caring womanizer, to a psychopathic “effectiveness” guy still on the “good” side of dnd alignement and to a wheelchair guy with the moral dilemma of fighting for his life vs. being a burden. But later on many of these make 180 turns out of nowhere, some (nearly all) end up being wasted. There’s also a bunch of “weird foreigners”, including a sword-wielding Russian religious fundamentalist without any context or explanation.
Speaking about the context, when the backstories start to roll out, it doesn’t get better – it gets worse, for heaven’s sake, and that’s rare in fiction. The author shoehorns wild things in the cast, with children being also specialists – they are circus acrobats, “my relative built this ship” walking asspulls, tormented prodigies and language geniuses and I’ve already mentioned the psychopathic guy. Not to mention that their school trip involved going on a cruise liner to dig some ditches in Africa – yeah, don’t ask, don’t let me think about the logic and consistency in Mouryou no Yurikago anymore, please, I’ll conf… Sorry, got off-track. And the schoolkids also talk about each other in terms of “he won’t die, he isn’t that sort of guy”. Alltogether it holds water as well as the sinking ship they’re on.
You could've named the plot of Mouryou no Yurikago ambitious, if not for the huge amount of “hell on a sinking ship” movies filmed around early 2000-s, which this manga tries to copy, just with a Japanese schoolkids cast. And there’s a whole genre of similar “trapped on a spaceship with monsters” fiction. Manga has a lot of good catastrophe survival stories too. This – this is not a good survival story or a good sinking ship story, because it's not a good story at all. This manga is long enough and not amateur enough to have brighter moments, of course, but the overall quality of writing is catastrophic. One good thing I can say about it is that it doesn’t stray too much - no sudden alien invasions, no excessive breaking of the 4th wall.
I guess, two other things I can call remarkable is the sheer tonal deafness of the author and the art. The tone deafness is simply impressive. The art made at least my angry fast reading possible, since it’s easy to understand and detailed enough. It reminds me of good shounen art with characters designed in a few recognizable features and honest immersive backgrounds that do a fine job of being backgrounds, but not much else, and maybe also Ibara no Ou a little. The debris is drawn very nicely. Though, despite the events taking place on an overturned sinking liner, I can’t say that there were many memorable places where the landscape reigned the atmosphere as a character on its own (which manga is very capable of and which totally should happen in such a setting). So the art is good, yeah, but not good enough by far to redeem everything else.
I recommend not wasting your time and energy on this thoroughly disappointing work. Too many things are wrong with it. Even if you think you’re fine with poorly placed fanservice, crippling plot problems – in everything: progression, character development, logic, backstories – will remain and bother you in the end. Really, there’re better things to read out there. Wade in only if your very survival depends on finding a new survival manga or you are such a dedicated enthusiast of the piss fetish that you have ran out of all and every work containing it out there.
 Alternative TitlesSynonyms: Cradle of Monsters Japanese: 魍魎の揺りかご InformationType: Manga
Volumes: 6
Chapters: 41
Status: Finished
Published: Apr 16, 2010 to Aug 17, 2012
Demographic:
Seinen
Serialization:
Young Gangan Authors:
Sanbe, Kei (Story & Art) Statistics Ranked: #78242 2 based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded. Popularity: #1651
Members: 12,978
Favorites: 85 Resources | Reviews
Filtered Results: 8 / 8
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Aug 1, 2017
This was terrible, which surprised me after very decent Hoozuki no Shima. It’s been long since I flipped through pages on pure rage to tear a work apart properly in a review.
Among the many factors that make you question your choice of hobby while reading this manga the atrocious hamfisted fanservice is the real star. It has no contenders in making you want to hit your head on the table from the complex combination of ire, cringe and lameness overflow. I am understanding of fanservice in manga, really, truly, I promise, but this time it got to me and it got to me bad. And ... 
May 23, 2011
This is an interesting manga to say the least. When you have a zombie story, rarely does it take place in the middle of the ocean on the boat. Take with that the fact that it is on an upside down ship. Very original overall. The characters have very deep personalities that only adds to the mystery and goodness of the story.
The one thing i did notice however, was that the manga is bases alot off of the movie "Poseidon". At several times the manga matches the movie scene for scene, like when they are crossing an elevator shaft. So to summarize, its "Poseidon" meets ... 
Aug 15, 2013
This series you might say, is underrated. Yes, underrated. Why you ask? It hasn't reached many people yet. Basically when I started reading this the first thing that came to mind was the titanic plus zombies combined. Was fairly decent.
It did not have the best start, but it picked up greatly later. Plot (7) after reading other zombie mangas, I can say this is possibly better than HSOD, which most people have read. Not to mention the fact that zombies and being trapped in a titanic is simply brilliant because you're always 'cornered' and have to move on. It did have it flaws, and referenced a ... 
Jul 7, 2015
I read Hoozuki no Shima a while ago, and I found that I enjoyed it quite a bit. I'm very into the horror genre as a whole, so it's not surprising I forgave it for its issues. Today I was browsing the manga list trying to find something to read, when I saw Hoozuki again. I decided to check out the author, Sanbe Kei, and it led me to this manga, known in English as "Cradle of Monsters".
Zombies in general have always been an iffy subject for me. They are hardly ever scary, and are instead used when the "horror" aspect refers to gore, which ... 
May 12, 2014
First review, so here goes nothing:
Mouryou no Yurikago, or Cradle of Monsters in English is an interesting departure from the standard zombie plotline in many ways. First and most notably the fact that the manga takes place on a capsized sinking cruise ship, which, in addition to meaning the cast must contend with both the living dead and escape before the ship sinks, it also means that, unlike most zombie media, firearms are not available to the cast. Secondly, the zombies featured are neither the Night of the Living Dead-esque "slow zombie" or the 28 Days Later "fast zombie", but are a new, more dangerous ... 
Oct 11, 2020
Short review for people debating wether or not reading this but the reviews available are almost as long as the manga itself:
It's not good. The premise is zombies and teens on a ship, but the plot is weak, the art style is weird, the pacing is kinda messed up and the characters can be either good or unbearable, there's no middle point. You can find weird ecchi scenes scattered thoughout very tense moments, ruinning the latters. I do not recommend this if you're looking for some quality stoy-telling. If you don't mind any of that and just want something to read or really love people ... 
Feb 17, 2016
After ERASED anime had come out, I decided to check the manga's author previous works to study his style, and his style is rather interesting.
Mouryou no Yurikago is a survival story with pretty strong horror element, teens are trapped in dark place with maze-like location. And it like The Minotaur Maze because it filled with monster. Will the teen survive? If yes, is it worth enough to read? In my opinion, art it's really bad; bold lines, polygon-like face, and plain facial features. In term of shading the foreground and background also not fitted with the story theme which mean that it doesn't as scary as ... 
Aug 21, 2024
tl;dr: A manga that’s really rough in most aspects but flows well enough that it’s fine as a braindead read.
This manga is about a group of high school students trying to escape from a capsizing cruise ship overrun by zombies. Overall I’d say that it’s not terrible, but it’s pretty lacking in terms of everything. Plot wise, the only overarching goal is to escape from the ship. Beyond that it comes down to the conflicts between passengers. This is enough to hold up the manga to some degree as there are some interesting elements due to how they’re both in a sinking ship and facing ... |
