Hyouryuu Net Cafe
Drifting Net Café

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TL;DR: This manga is a wild ride that doesn't let you rest easy until the very last chapter. Some may not like the weirder elements of the plot (especially towards the end); but if you like "Lord of the flies" type of stories, where a group of people isolated from everything and everyone start slowly but horrifyingly clashing against each other, you'll love it. It's a ""short"" but tense thriller easily recommendable.


It's funny how this manga came to my attention in the first place. A few months ago I read "Happiness", by Shuzo Oshimi, and really liked it. It was a very personal and emotional ... take on vampire literature, while keeping the horror element intact. Later, I read "The Drifting Classroom", which is wild and hardcore as f*ck, and borderline histerical with its use of gore at times, but a really great take on Lord of the Flies.

Now... the author of the first has done his own take at the latter with "The Drifting Net Cafe", and the end result is nothing but amazing. The combination of a crazy setting with a much more restrained storyteller gives birth to something entirely detached from the original that, while not unique (it IS a take on a manga which was also a take on a novel), it's very effective, especially on a chapter-to-chapter basis.


STORY: 8
"A group of people isolated from the world are forced to work together to survive, while tensions escalate between the group" is a classic setting, used many times already, but damn if it isn't a good one. As I said in the TL;DR, the more 'supernatural' elements can get weird, but in a good way. They're not weird for the sake of having a weird mistery, they are active parts of the plot that make everything much more tense.

For example, people begin to ponder if the reason they're stuck there MAY be because one person wished for it. Now, go to a group of desperate people that the reason they're stuck and dying is because of you: it's horrifying. And it's with stuff like this that the author gets away with defying the laws of physics once or twice: because it keeps the momentum going.

I also like how, while the story is 90% detached from the original Drifting Classroom, you can see a couple of direct inspirations here and there. The main antagonist is practically the same (in looks, at least, the one here is a true psychopath), and the idea of "this world came out of someone's mind" was also in the original.


ART 8:
Not much to say here. Later works of the author have more personality, but this one looks great as well. He knows how to draw expressions on people to make them look realistic but really frightening. It's like he takes a regular face and sprays juuuuust a bit of 'uncannyness' on them to make you uneasy.


CHARACTER: 7
Ok, they're all really good characters, and at no point I would say they're acting against logic, but I didn't find them that much unique. The main character's struggle is very interesting to read, and the rest of the cast have their own 'quirk' so they don't blend together, but while 'what happens to them' is engaging, on their own they were a bit lacking.

Terasawa really is scary, though, like... jesus...


ENJOYEMENT: 9
I READ THIS IN TWO DAYS, THIS MANGA IS GRIPPING LIKE HELL.
Everytime I thought the story was gonna drag, or that I knew where it was going, something happens that just f*cks everything up for the protagonists, and makes you tense because you wouldn't know what to do either. The antagonist is a force of nature, and seeing him slowly take action in bolder and bolder ways was great. Every single chapter ends with a cliffhanger, and at a certain point, I just knew I couldn't stop.

Also WARNING: while not as graphic as the original, things do get very dark. There are crude depictions of sex and violence that may throw you off if you don't take well that kind of stuff. It's less explicit, but more impactful.



OVERALL: 8
The Drifting Net Cafe is more than the sum of its parts, and it just knew what to change from the original in order to make it its own thing: The concept is reused; but the setting of a net cafe is really unique, and makes for a cast of characters more interesting than a few schoolers. And while those characters aren't perfect, their interactions are on point, and are handled so well it doesn't really matter. It can stand proud among other famous survival tales.

The overall and final message of this story is touching. The message and theme the author puts out is relatable, heart-wrenching, and puts a pit in your stomach thinking about regret of what could have been. However the manga doesn't focus on just displaying this message, it also has its own sci-f survival setting. Honestly, I didn't find the setting and incidents within the story to be all so charming or beautiful. The world and characters were unlikeable, disturbing, strange many times. The main character and the girl(Kaho) he loves are amazing characters, and the girl is drawn beautifully as well. Kaho is one of ... the best female character designs I've ever seen. If you're a fan of his works, definitely check this manga out, it has good reread value and its strengths definitely outweigh the flaws.

Compared to recent works by the author like Chi no Wadachi and Happiness, his art here is very weak, as well as the story itself. Not least because this was one of his first manga so it justifies art to be weak.

Suspense exists, but the characters are totally stupid and do not act according to the situations, which ends up totally breaking the suspension of disbelief of the reader. It may even have the purpose of showing how humanity can be bad when there are no more rules or things like that, but everything is so gratuitous and unreal that this premise is broken.

The manga ... comes down to characters acting stupid at all times, cartoon characters taking unreal actions, gratuitous violence and rape all the time, with no context behind it. In short, a story that only serves to satisfy people with rape fetish and gratuitous violence.