Nickelodeon

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Wow... Now that is what I call some real wtf material.
Highschool girls making out with tigers, a badmington/monster hunter club, having a ladder on the 2nd floor of a building equals the answer to the universe, genetically modified komainu stew, limbs flying left and right (and sometimes on your own accord), Duskin Hoffman, facehuggers from Aliens, happy tree friends?!
Illogical, incomprehensible, plain gibberish. This manga makes absolutely no sense whatsoever... And that's why I loved it!

Nickelodeon is basically a collection of short one-shots (7 pages each) from Dowman Sayman, a specialist in the domain of mindfuck. Dowman's Nickelodeon will have you laughing at the stuff that ... usually gives you the creeps. Make you smile at morbidity. Move you at the sight of those very cute and somewhat cliched romantic scenes, and then break all the rules with some crazy turn of events and leave you with a blank look on your face wondering what in the world just happened. And yes, in only 7 pages.

Horror, gore, psychological, mystery, supernatural, comedy, romance, ecchi, seinen, thriller, drama, parody, and a few more genres, all thrown in the blender, result in Nickelodeon. That manga is so abnormal, who knows what kind of reaction one's supposed to have when reading. Expect blank faces and WTFs.

MOOD: A veritable thought-particle collider of a series.

It’s hard to describe what makes Nickelodeon great. People have compared it to the works of novelist Haruki Murakami, to anime the like of Lain, Penguindrum, or Kyousougiga, ad infinitum; none of this really fits the manga.

It could be chalked up to its way of approaching fantastical and absurd concepts with a mundanity one would see in a realistic manga and a warmth one would see in a slice of life work. Yes, it’s weird, but it doesn’t point itself out; instead, it lets you discover its weirdness on your own.

Perhaps it’s the brevity of its chapters - ... each chapter is about 6 or 7 pages long, but in those pages ideas are explored to extremes in ways full series haven’t tackled the same concepts. Its flash fiction stylings create a structure that is never boring nor rushed.

More likely, however, is how well it manages to channel the spirit of its namesake media format, the nickelodeon. Although the manga is very inclusive (tackling a multitude of LGBT themes in its 39 chapter run), it relies on weird, new ideas, shock value, and occasionally erotic content to recreate the sheer fascination of an emerging medium. This and its brief lengths (as mentioned before) really do make it feel like you’ve walked inside a seemingly magical box and been shown things that you’ve never experienced the likes of before.

The stories run a broad range of genres, tones, and styles. There are stories ranging from conversations about buckets to a woman who eats her lovers to a story about a girl born on the day of the Columbine attack. In this, it tackles themes of unrequited love, manipulative lovers, sister interactions, determination, and a slew of other thinking pieces on human life.

The art is entirely unique in its field, sporting a pop art/saturday cartoon inspired aesthetic, with solid but disarrayed lines, exaggerated features, sharp angles, intentionally stretched proportions, and vivid shading. It’s not entirely describable, but it’s utterly gorgeous to look at.

If there’s anything to take issue with, it’s that the series will perhaps leave you feeling unfulfilled. There was much more of it planned, but when the magazine it ran in tragically closed up shop, mangaka Dowman Sayman was forced to bring a sudden end to the series, leaving threads of worldbuilding and plot hanging in an emotionally dissatisfying fashion. Despite this, the first and last chapters still manage to serve as great bookends to the series for anyone unaware of the corporate politics behind the ending.

FINAL VERDICT: With its tales of conjoined twins, buckets, vore, unrequited love, hypnotism, space, pop culture references, and much more, Nickelodeon’s pace, boldness, and intrigue will leave you blown away and needing more.

Dowman Sayman and his pet project Nickelodeon (named after the short-lived early 20th century nickle theatre project) display a world very much different than ours - limbs are lost at leisure, animals may roam and commute through zoos as they please, and youkai have peacefully immigrated to our world. At it's core this is a story of innocent love overtoned with the supernatural. Each story is presented in an artstyle reminiscent of The Nightmare Before Christmas mixed with Mike Mignola .

This manga dabbles in a little bit of everything from self aware Pokemon parodies to tales of strange animals in the middle of their ... own forest . The most interesting thing is its ability to baffle the reader with every story. I spent a good amount of time scratching my head at the stories and wondering what the point of it all was before coming to a revelation about its central reccuring theme that connects all the stories -loss.hair, love, limbs and stuffing are amongst the things all neatly ripped from the characters grasp.


Nickelodeon seems to not want to leave us at all fulfilled with anything, but always thirsty for what comes next similar to the cheap nickle theatres the stories namesake comes from . The stories are all fairly short, none surpassing ten pages each seems to build up a repoire with the reader only to pull the wool over our eyes at each curtain raising with bittersweet glee.

This manga is effectively a collection of skits in manga form, with some small tie-ins between disparate chapters. If you don't want to read something without an extended narrative then this isn't for you.

Ok, are they gone?

Yeah this manga is an absolute blast to read. While there isn't any strong narrative throughline to speak of, the collection is held together effectively by the strong tone and atmosphere shared across each vignette, with a general focus on the morbid and dark all the while having an undertone of bizarre comedy. Personally, that's a sweet spot.

In general, the characters are quirky and charming. I wouldn't call any ... of them particularly normal and more than most of them would be considered twisted. This works hugely in favour of the overall tone and does a lot to keep each chapter entertaining since you can never pin down exactly what will happen next.

The art is also banging. It's personally right up my alley but I recognise that it's also extremely stylised in that way so not everyone will like it. That being said, the baseline quality is still good so, if nothing else, if you enjoy a more cartoony style akin to Panty and Stocking (or just any of the author's other works) then this will be straight up eye-candy.

Overall, this is a really fun read that can be read at any pace without feeling rushed or stale. Pick it up and read at your leisure, I can wholeheartedly recommend at least giving this one a go.