Jun 13, 2012
Death Panda is, in a word, hilarious. There is something about a cartoonish giant panda bear with heart-shaped patterns and the world's greatest rape face (and rape face is to be understood literally) tearing up and violating people that tickles my funny bone. Perhaps it's because you don't get to know the victims. Perhaps because some of them are stupid or assholes. Perhaps I'm just trying to cope or I am just twisted. Perhaps because… is that a Giraffe violating a shrine maiden with it's head? Did Death Panda just violate a Red Panda and then rip the bodies of the onlooking crowd with his
...
ejaculate like a high pressure water cutter cuts through metal?
The humor lies in how over the top the acts are performed, how ludicrous the entire situation is, how detached from reality the entire manga seems to be. It seems more akin to the charm of a B-Horror movies with a little extra budget for bloody special effects and a slightly deranged creative team.
This becomes very clear when humans do what Death Panda does for very human reasons, albeit very pathetic and weak ones. It's scenes like these that hit very hard in the uncomfortable zone and not when Death Panda devours one of his victims during the act. Death Panda himself is a very inhuman being, with no origin story and a lot of his actions lack apparent motivation, so he is mostly an enigma yet kinda interesting.
The story does not only follow Death Panda's unholy exploits, but also the shrine maidens Suzuran and Saran who have vowed to hunt him down. They aren't really that deep characters by any stretch of the imagination (one is a hard-working warrior who lacks innate power and therefore must struggle to defeat the Panda, the other is a haughty, slightly sadistic usurper), but they serve to bring the point across, one is a hard-working warrior who lacks innate power and therefore must struggle to defeat the Panda, the other is a haughty, slightly sadistic usurper. This isn't done in any great artistic way, but it is at the very least extremely memorable (kind of a package deal with all the death, rape, obscenity and gore).
This series indeed has more of a plot and thought behind it than your average hentai, but it still fetishizes a lot of things you would only have nightmares about: guro, vorarephilia (fetishized cannibalism), rape, zoophilia, a constant juxtaposition of food and mutilation sex and snuff. If sounds unreadable to you, by all means, DON'T READ THIS.
The human character designs are reminiscent of School Rumble, though special detail goes to the animal designs, but quite frankly, nobody will read this for the art.
If you think over-the-top violence is hilarious, you will have a blast, but if you're squeamish, traumatized or disgusted by any of the stuff mentioned here, there if no point in forcing yourself onto this. And if you know you get turned on by guro, you gotta find out if those glistening guts pitch your tent or not because I have no idea if they might and I want to keep it that way, thank you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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