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.

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.

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.

First of all let me say that this a Manga for adults. Not only because of the graphic violence and gore or the abundant sex but also because it strangely takes some maturity to look back at your first love and see how it might have impacted you now that you are an adult.

I can relate with the author when it comes to the "trauma" that the very first powerful flame of love can produce. It might go buy unnoticed most of the time but deep down we never forget it. There's always THAT ONE PERSON that is stuck in our minds for no real ... reason.

It doesn't make sense and it wasn't probably that much of a thing in reality but we can't help it to find ourselves decades after daydreaming about those few moments that made our hearts skip a beat and our minds drift into endless imagination fueled by innocent love.

This is mostly why people will get hooked on this manga from chapter one. It appeals to feelings we all have buried inside and that we like to revisit times to times when nostalgia knocks at the door.

Besides that the surreal sci-fi supernatural development was a decent platform to build upon the most important subject which is the author's need to dump is very own first love trauma into a manga. All the violence that comes along might be a but unjustified and hard to relate to the subject of the manga. The graphic sex scenes are a not "fan service" but a result of that psychopathic world that was created to keep things somewhat interesting.

Granted, filler characters and the secondary plot don't connect well but it does keep you feeling like a roller coaster from beginning to end. This was one of those mangas that you will one shot and, as far as i am concerned, those are for me the best experiences.

I really liked this manga. Reason being that I was able to relate to the story a lot. Not the rape and pointless violence, of course not that. But instead, I was able to relate to the main character not being able to let go of a middle school crush. And in a way, this manga helped me with this struggle by helping me get over this. I understand that this may not be the author's best work and yes there are some really stupid moments in the manga but I enjoyed this due to me the reader being able to relate to the main ... character. I personally thought the story was interesting but the ending is a hit or miss. Me personally I really enjoyed it and I think that if you enjoyed the author's previous works then give this manga a try.

tl;dr: A manga with an interesting start and a great ending, though with a bunch of pointless nonsense in between.

This manga starts off with the protagonist, Toki, deciding to waste time in a net café he passes by so as to delay going home to his moody pregnant wife. There he’s surprised to encounter his first love from middle school, Tono, whom he had always regretted not confessing to. At this point there’s a crazy storm and when it clears up, he’s shocked to find that the world outside the net café is completely different, with it being the sole building in the middle of ... empty wetlands that go on endlessly. Thus, the story becomes one about the occupants of the net café doing their best to survive this abrupt and strange situation. The core of this is essentially exploring the worst aspects of human nature, lord of the flies style, with the focus basically being on how in the absence of any rules or enforcement it becomes a power struggle where the strong abuse and exploit the weak.

I didn’t think it was a particularly good at this however. It largely felt like everything and everyone was too simple. There’s a very clear villain driving all the vileness and trying to manipulate everyone into going along with him. And everyone goes along with him far too easily. There’s some attempt at trying to explain the motivations behind why the villain is the way he is, but it’s incredibly lackluster, and thus he just seems like a pretty flat villain. Most everyone else is even more simple in that they don’t really get fleshed out at all beyond being scared and just going along with the one in power. The manga does get quite brutal and terrible things are done by characters to other characters, but in the absence of any fleshing out of these characters, it largely felt pretty pointless.

However, while this aspect does seem to compose the majority of the manga, it’s definitely not the most important aspect. Rather, what’s most important is Toki and Tono. The story centered around them explores the themes of past regrets, wherein the past can be an anchor to the present and how overcoming that is what it means to be an adult, in a way that felt pretty natural. This plot thread is incredibly predictable, wherein about a third of the way through the manga I had predicted what the ‘moral’ of the story was going to be and the majority of the major plot points relating to it revealed at the end. And that really isn’t that surprising as it’s the type of story that inherently seems to require what feels like lazy writing in order to work properly. Despite that, it’s still a pretty good story that’s told pretty well and ends in a pretty satisfying manner. And because this is what’s focused on in the conclusion, in the end the manga manages to land the ending incredibly well and the final impression the manga leaves is pretty good as well, even if everything outside Toki and Tono’s story was pretty weak.

I should also note that the art of the manga is really good and used really well throughout. Even the portions that weren’t so great flowed pretty well and weren’t too bad to read because of the art. And during the climax and ending the art really managed to shine and was quite exceptional.