Saiteihen no Otoko
Scumbag Loser

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I finished the manga and honestly it is a amazing description of how people can be shitty; But I mean it shows our humanity; How shitty can someone be to survive, how does mental illness develop in a shitty household. How can people be blind to the past, how can bullying and trauma create inferiority complex's. I mean honestly this is an amazing manga and it will leave you with a gutwrenching heartache feeling, finished reading this in one day and by the end of it I was out of breathe in tears... Honestly an amazing manga for anyone that IS human, we all are ... shitty to some degree, this shows how the MC survived in a shitty world.

tl;dr: A bit of an interesting take on the theme of unconditional love, but beyond that it’s either generic psychological horror or uninteresting nonsense.

This manga is a three-volume length psychological thriller centered around supernatural beings that are killing and replacing people. It is from the point of view of Masahiko, a high school boy that one of said beings, Haruka, seems to grow fond of. Masahiko has always been near the bottom rung of the school hierarchy, and thus has come to be someone that’s very good at sniffing out the biggest losers through scent alone. The mysterious beings that are killing and replacing people ... are primarily after such losers, and thus Masahiko is given the job of selecting targets.

Through this set up it touches on various themes. The main one starting out is everyone’s obsession with social hierarchies. It doesn’t delve that much into it, basically showing off an example that’s supposed to be disturbing to try to convey how awful things can get, but to be honest it wasn’t all that bad relatively speaking and didn’t leave that much of an impression. As the series progressed it also touched upon the more interesting theme of how people don’t really view the inside of someone as who there are, wherein even if someone’s personality changes completely as long as they look the same and seem to be fitting into the same slot in society, they’ll be viewed as exactly the same person.

That in and of itself isn’t that interesting because it’s relying entirely on the supernatural aspect in order to work and thus doesn’t say much about real life, however tangentially it did bring up quite often the much more interesting point about the hollowness of unconditional love. In a conditional relationship, or at least a healthy one, those involved are in love with each other for who they are and want to be loved in a similar vein. There obviously will be things that one might wish were different about one’s partner, but in general one wouldn’t want them to change completely because they’re in love with them in the condition that they currently exist in and thus it is likely love would wane if said partner changes too much. On the other hand, unconditional love doesn’t really have any sort of foundation to it. There’s no real reason for it to exist, but it still has to exist. Thus, a parent will love their child regardless of how much they change over the course of their life. That’s generally a touching sentiment, but on the other hand it’s also not at all. The love isn’t of the person themselves but rather simple of the role they’re inhabiting, and thus they’d be perfectly fine with anyone else in that role. Rather, it would be perfectly reasonable to wish that the one fulfilling that role was essentially someone completely different. While this isn’t really anything more than stating the obvious I suppose, actually thinking about it somewhat depressing.

The plot was incredibly lacking. The first half is fine. It’s pretty typical psychological horror with inexplicable changes and the feeling of helplessness and solitude in the face of the mysterious that proceed in a pretty generic manner. It’s not all that unique, but it isn’t bad either, so it’s decent enough. The second half is where things go off the rails. It drops most of the psychological horror in favor of more in your face scares but isn’t all that good at it thus just isn’t scary at all, nor is there much in terms of good suspense. It begins focusing much more on two new characters, but in the end there was no thematic or plot purpose to either of them. This is the type of story where all the main characters are horrible and unlikable, which isn’t all that rare for psychological horror, but towards the end it felt like it was trying for beats that actually relied on having some investment in the main character and his struggles, but that just didn’t land at all considering it’s not like he went through any sort of character arc or anything like that. On top of that, the pacing is pretty bad with it wasting a bunch of time on the aforementioned pointless characters and then rushing a bunch during the ending. This results in a bunch of plot holes, some minor such as why a character looked like what they did, and some major, like characters seemingly knowingly allowing themselves to be killed off for no real reason.

The art was solid enough quality. Style wise it could be good at times, meaning both in terms of looking nice and in terms of looking horrific, wherein the looking nice aspect is important for helping the horrific parts stand out. However, most of the time it wasn’t either, it was just kind of meh in a way that didn’t enhance the tone or atmosphere at all, and design wise it was pretty dull in general.

...I fucking hate this manga.

This isn't some kind of structured review or whatever. This is a somewhat sporadic stream of consciousness of someone who just finished reading this manga last night and regrets ever thinking that Mikoto Yamaguchi could possibly create a manga that isn't hot garbage.

This manga opens up with grabbing the viewer with a strong sense of disgust. The main character, Murai, at the start is a revolting little cunt who has been sniffing a dead girl's panties every day for FIVE FUCKING YEARS. And you know that? Yeah I'm down with that. I'm down with having a story where the main character ... is just a loathsome little shit who constantly tries to assert that he's better than everyone. And then the story then tries to paint him in a sympathetic light by exploring his abusive upbringing, and while that definitely could work in a story by a non-hack writer who doesn't rely on cheap gross outs to keep reader attention, the MC's development is just so fucking all over the place. There's a moment halfway through where the MC shows some genuinely redeeming qualities when he risks his life to stop the skin-walkers (they're never named in the actual story so I'm calling them skin-walkers), but then the story practically turns to the audience and says "lol no there's nothing even remotely respectable about this dude" and THEN it turns around and presents him in a tragic light or something? It's so fucking bizarre. Is the MC supposed to be an unlikely hero where he rises to the occasion despite being a gross incel? Is he supposed to be a total villain protagonist who we're supposed to hate? An anti-hero? He has development I think, but I couldn't tell you what his whole character arc is supposed to be.

Other than him, there's not really any other character who's worth talking about other than the femc. For almost the entire story, the narrative plays her up as the biggest piece of shit you can think of, but then at the LAST second it tries to do some "I actually loved you the whole time" thing. And sure you can give your main antagonist redeeming qualities at the end like that, but this whole moment feels so unearned. This ENTIRE aspect of her character comes out of nowhere to play into this really, really heavy-handed social commentary about love or whatever that they spent the last volume going on about.

As for the story, the story starts as some mystery where the MC suddenly gets a bizarre girlfriend who's implied to be a nonhuman skinwalker that eats people and she's manipulating him to give her easy prey. All the while there's this really, really tone-deaf social commentary about losers and love (I will get to this) which just makes this whole segment a slog to get through. And then at the end of the first volume it turns into Tokyo Ghoul from the POV of a lone wolf ghoul inspector who happens to be a fat incel with a baseball bat going on the run. And like holy shit for a solid 4-ish chapters this manga was actually kinda awesome just because of how batshit insane that concept is. It's like the manga rewards you for sticking through the bad social commentary. But then in the last few chapters the story pivots hard back into that and turns into some lecture about losers and love and then you feel stupid for ever getting mildly invested in the story whatsoever.

And speaking of the Tokyo Ghoul comparisons, the last scene of the manga is taken DIRECTLY out of Tokyo Ghoul. That is not me exaggerating or whatever. The sheer audacity of Mikoto Yamaguchi ape the LITERAL CLIMAX of his story from another, better manga is fucking insane to me. And before someone goes "um ackshully this is just two different authors coming up with similar scenes by accident" yeah no fuck off with that shit. Putting aside the whole actual, straight up people eaters disguising in human society, Murai literally has one darkened eye from his partial transformation. The scene with him and Haruka at the end is ripped straight from Kaneki and Rize. You truly cannot make this shit up. Mikoto Yamaguchi is a hack. This wasn't a satire or anything either because the story CLEARLY wanted you to take the scene and the events leading up to it seriously.

You might read all of that and go "okay so this guy thinks this manga sucks but why does he hate it this much?" And to that I'd say that it's because this manga tries to have a message, and said message is both poorly delivered and honestly somewhat toxic in its contents. So the main character starts the story as a gross pervert who puts himself above other people by dismissing them as "losers who no one cares about," which by contrast elevates himself in his own mind by sheer virtue of being "better" than others. And obviously that's a toxic mindset, and the story treats it as such. But the narrative's answer to Murai's ideology is that "even losers have people who care about them." But the thing is, the actual underlying axiom of Murai's mindset, that people's value is determined by other people caring about them, is never actually subverted. From the manga's perspective, the people at the bottom of the "social hierarchy" ARE losers. Yamada, whose worst crime is being fat and smelly, is viewed under the same lens as Murai's LITERAL PEDOPHILE MURDERER father. This isn't just supposed to be a sign of Murai's own distorted view on reality or whatever. The last few chapters of the story are just heavy handed exposition dumps on how some people are gross disgusting losers, but even they deserve love or whatever. This manga, like, bases its worldview on ugly bastard ntr rape hentai videos (and given the stuff Mikoto Yamaguchi comes out with I am fairly confident that this is an apt description), asserts that people who aren't in line with social norms are more or less the same as those ugly bastard rapist characters, and then asserts that "no actually those ugly bastards still have people who care about them!" This manga's message is just so fucking insane. The manga's message seems to be that "all human life has intrinsic value" but the framework it uses to convey that message is bafflingly based on rape fetish porn. I deadass don't even know what to say to that.

The art is good I guess. The skin walkers had some creepy faces which I liked. The story was clearly TRYING to gross me out so I guess it did a good job I guess.

tl;dr:

Mikoto Yamaguchi is a hack. I hate everything this man has made. I hate how fucking entertaining his dogshit is. I hate that I love shitting on his slop so much. This manga sucks ass.

Giving this shit a 3/10 because this shit sucks ass but there was a span of like two-three chapters which were actually decent and then it went right back to being shit.