Harem End

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I read Harem End on a whim, mostly morbid curiosity and frankly because the descriptions I've seen of it made the manga sound a billion times more interesting than it actually was. The story is, in short, a group of women banded together in the destruction of men who abuse women, only for it to spiral out in an absolutely bizarre and over explained conspiracy when one of the people they whack turns out to be of great importance to another organization which kills women and uses their corpses to produce "death anime".

I wouldn't say the manga is bad, though. At its heart, Harem ... End almost reads like two conflicting urban legends cautioning both men to not harass women, and for women to not trust shady offers. It's a neat angle, especially when the manga goes all Spy vs Spy in its final chapters, but too much time is spent explaining the uninteresting scientific method of creating "death anime" and the boring gore that comes from that. Many aspects of the story also seemed inconsistent with themselves; Harem End were written to be extremely competent serial killers who never got caught, yet they make increasingly stupid and obvious mistakes as the story goes on which left me confused each time.

On the whole, the manga is just okay. It's a brisk read so if you're into urban legend-themed horror, I can't really not recommend it.

How about murdering males that abuse females by creating a harem around those and finally killing the target? This may sound interesting at first sight, however Harem End is fails to portray this miserably through an inconsistent story with very dull and shallow characters, as well as having an excess of gore. This leaves the reader wondering whether the focus of the manga lays in displaying gore or the story itself.

These murders are done by a group of girls called "Harem End" - hence the title. Through an internet website affected females submit the target person whom they want murdered. The group handles these requests ... by first investing the client thourougfully, and if conditions are met, the process begins. This is an interesting premise, as in addition there is a mysterious animation company who has ties with one of the assessinated victims from "Harem End". Shame that the author failed to portray this, and the overall story was poorly executed and displayed.

There is a gist to the animation company: it specializes in the use of taxidermied corpses, called "Shitai" anime. However, there is a problem on how the author displays it: the corpses and explanation on how everything is made is too detailed, which makes the impression that the main objective of Harem End was to display "Shitai" anime and gore, and not the story itself.

Going back to the narrative, the different events are somewhat well written, but the continuety was not. Throughout each chapter, sudden jumps in storyline are made, as well as the dialogue of characters not being consistent neither believable in any way. There is neither any explanation on why the members of the organization "Harem End" are so adverse to males. nor any background stories were provided for the cast.

The characters of Harem End are far from desirable as well: very bland and shallow, no real motives behind any of the actions, lacking any type of real motivation behind it, making it neither realistic nor believable. There is also the problem of the clients, whose motives are never displayed neither of the victims, making it impossible to feel any attachment to the characters at all. The women seem to be stereotypical and generic, but even in this aspect it's difficult to distinguish between each of them, as all behave similarly or even nothing is shown.

Harem End's art style is passable as a whole, but the different facial expressions and character movements are very lacking, as it doesn't give any feeling of fluidity. Character designs are very simplistic and generic, being the defining points of characters hairstyle and clothing. Backgrounds suffer from the same problem as well: very simplistic, and a lack of shading. What must be highlighted is the amount of detail put into drawing the different gore scenes, depicting dead corpses, dismembered body parts, skin... In fact, too realistic for my own liking, making me feel sickened throughout the manga.

So is Harem End a recommendable to read? Definetely not. It has an interesting premise, but storywise and characterwise it fails miserably, as well focusing too much on gore with bad plot development of the story and explanation of characters behaviour. Unless you are into gore that is.

Thank you for reading.