Mousugu Shinu Hito

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You're a few pages in on the first chapter, the art is cute and charming and you've been introduced to a few of the main characters in a very happy slice-of-life fantasy way. You quickly learn a basic summary of these characters, and as each new character appears, you start to get the feeling that they're all pretty generic archetypes. The sweet childhood best friend, the beautiful and popular school idol who is somehow friends with the male protag, the cool and responsible student council president... Oh man, are you wrong.

The one thing that really stood out to me about Mousugu Shinu Hito was the ... creation, development, and especially the portrayal of the characters. We have Haju Yonesaka, a classic, sweet maiden who is in love with her childhood friend. But as the story develops, she learns of the gruesome deaths that potentially await her and her friends. She witnesses the betrayal of her best friend who suddenly went from supporting Haju's love to becoming a fearsome rival, all in the span of less than one day. And, much to my surprise, Haju did not take this well. She snaps. And Haju is not the only one. All the main characters, even our male protagonist Riku Kominato, goes through dynamic changes. Some changes are more subtle than others, but it's there, and it's so satisfying when you notice the change and connect 2+2 with the story. The characters in this manga deserve a solid 10/10.

Characters aside, the story is smooth and consistent, and the ending was well finished. It wasn't rushed or messy with many new characters or mysteries added in. Mousugu Shinu Hito made sure to only focus on the main characters and solidify who exactly are the main characters, cleverly utilizing minor characters or key items to advance the story. There is no sudden, "I'm actually the REAL mastermind!" or "The real mastermind is actually this new character who has never even been hinted at before!" plot twist. It's all carefully laid out and well stitched together, from start to finish. There are a few unsolved mysteries here and there, but for the most part, they're quite minor and do not interfere with the overall plot.

Despite using a very moe moe kyun kyun art style, the artist manages to convey the horrors of this story well. It can be quite disturbing seeing a cute, smiling face with disorderly eyes, covered in blood. Hiroki Haruse does not go lightly on the blood and gore, and I truly commend them for sticking strong and with a consistent art style throughout.

Like many psychological-horrors, Mousugu Shinu Hito plays a lot on human emotions and the human mind. If you're able to handle a darker genre, do give Mousugu Shinu Hito a try, and I do hope that you'll enjoy this manga as much (if not more) as I did.

Prepare yourselves for a long review.

Mousugu Shinu Hito begins as a memorable deconstruction of the harem genre. The MC's harem is forced on him, he can only choose one "true love," and the rest of the harem will die after he makes his choice. Accordingly, each of the female leads does everything in her power (in some cases crossing ethical lines) to woo him in order to ensure her own survival.

==Story: 5/10==

It takes a lot of explanation to suspend disbelief that these dramatic circumstances have befallen these seemingly everyday characters in a situation that, other than the disturbing video that causes the forced harem, closely ... resembles daily life. This explanation is never given in any adequate form: the mangaka probably realized they had dug themselves into a hole with no logical way out, so they hand-waved some Ibara no Ou-style ~psychophysics~ into existence to move the plot along.

Great "dark" stories usually make disturbing ethical conclusions seem reasonable. Mousugu Shinu Hito utterly failed in that regard.

I guess a redeeming factor in the story is how, through the wonders of ~psychophysics~, the plot does come full circle, from the perky "I want these people to be happy" video in the VERY beginning to the eventual explanation of the death video's purpose.

==Art: 7/10==

The characters were all cute and appealing. To compare the art style to anime, on a spectrum from Berserk to Kill la Kill, the characters were decidedly more Kill la Kill.

The art style is characterized by its minimal, yet clean use of lines. Hiroki deserves praise for his tasteful, somewhat restrained use of "super deformed" characters where appropriate to set the mood. None of these panels felt out of place.

Hiroki did well making the characters mostly distinguishable by their hair, except for a few frames when it was difficult to tell whether a certain character was actually Riko, the school's "idol," and that character's similarity to Riko wasn't a plot device. From this, it's safe to conclude that Riko wasn't supposed to look similar to that character, and that that accidental similarity was Hiroki's fault as an artist.

The tension palpably rose from the first death to the investigation of the video, and the doll was always unsettling where it appeared.

Color inserts were clean and easy on the eyes. For a yandere manga, gore was minimal.

==Characters: 7/10==

The MC is a little dense and doesn't realize the genuine feelings a few characters have for him until other characters tell him unambiguously. The redeeming thing about the him is that even though the girls in the harem almost all throw themselves at him in the beginning, he rightfully sees through the actions of the ones who are merely trying to ensure their own survivals, and refuses to take advantage of them in those situations. He's quite the gentleman.

As for the others, the characters featured in the video and its later incarnations (including the MC) come to save their friendships with each other over the course of the manga. As a result, it's hard for readers to hate any of them in their entirety.

The revelation midway that a character other than Haju had genuine feelings for the MC didn't feel forced at all.

Where this manga failed to argue for any striking conclusions, the harem characters were entertaining and singlehandedly forced me to finish Mousugu Shinu Hito, which leads to...

==Enjoyment: 9/10==

I am ashamed to have enjoyed this shallow manga as much as I did. Where the mangaka wanted me to cry or scream, I laughed and cheered for whoever I thought was best girl, even though "best girl" changed nearly every chapter. I wonder if the mangaka echoed my sentiment--it's easy to interpret the ending as evidence of such.

If you decide to read this manga, don't go in prepared to question everything and find out the truth, and definitely don't go in with a high barrier to suspension of disbelief. Go in prepared for a wild, occasionally gory ride that explores how some people become yandere to survive while others don't.

============plot holes / unanswered questions below================
(intentionally vague to prevent spoilers):
- HOW did the doll that Mikoto found appear in Riki's backpack to begin with?!
- one of the main girls irreversibly maims another of the main girls, and putting the attacker into jail would have been an easy way to force her out of the competition, so why doesn't the victim do anything?!
- who the !@#$ thought housing a server (yes, the kind that hosts a major NND-esque streaming site) in the mountains where (1) cellphone service is nonexistent and (2) five people have gone missing trying to fix the server?! On that note,
- why don't the cops, who are called to that building where one of the main characters is kidnapped, search the building immediately?!
- why don't the main characters catch the perpetrator when they get the chance?!
- what was the "dirt" that the ultimate antagonist had on their handler-turned-accomplice?!

tl;dr : Please don't do this to yourself. Please DON'T.
You may be thinking "eh, it's just 16 chapters. At worst I'll only waste some time" but DON'T. It's not even "so bad it's good" bad, it's just plain bad.

So now that this is out of the way, let's get on with the task of explaining why this manga sucks (I'm doing this in no particular order, this is my first review. It will suck, bear with me).

Okay so let's start with the only good point : the art (7). It's okay. Not excellent but it's pretty good at representing distressed people and is the only ... way this manga manage to have some kind of atmosphere.

Now the story (4) : it's ... okay : some kids need to understand why and how someone is going to kill them after witnessing a video that show them how they'll die. Now this is not a bad idea per se, but in this manga it's really undermined by every thing else.
Wait no, I should have said it like that : the PREMISE is 7, the actual STORY is 2. Because while it COULD have been good, it's not. The charcaters kill the story and the ending is horrible.

The characters (2). Aaaah the characters. I can't remember the last time I actually wanted to punch every single character in a manga. None of these characters are relatable and their (re)actions make no sense. Now if you intend to read this thing (and if I didn't make myself clear enough already DON'T), please don't expect any kind of rationality to happen. As always in this kind of work the police is nonexistent, adults are incompetent and the family of the kids must be on the other side of the planet as they have ZERO impact on the story (except for that one chick whose parents were murdered ten years ago. THAT's the extent of family involvement).
So as for the characters themselve we have :
- the dense harem MC. He's dense, he's meek, everyone fall for him because he's kind, he should die in a fire.
- the shy chidhood friend. She's shy, she loves the MC and anything else is spoiler.
- the manipulative bitch. You CANNOT like her. Seriously I tried, she's not made for that. No character in this story is likeable.
- the student council president. Except this one I guess. She's bland but compared to the rest she's a 11/10 character.
- some other girl who can't make her damn mind. And is actually an understandable character (not relatable mind you).
- the adults. Useless. Because of course when 5 people have disappeared while checking the server's room the police don't care, that's not important. FFS this manga.

Oh my god you can rate the "enjoyment" part. Ahahahahahah, they should really put something like "this manga made me angry and actually ruined my mood". I'm using this review to vent but seriously I hope you won't read this thing.

Overall : 2. This is not the worst manga ever, but it's trash. I simply can't understand how anybody could have rated this thing higher than 5. This is a waste of time and it will make you feel bad.
Eh, I should have put that in the tl;dr