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Jul 5, 2021
Hedgehog Harry is a warm blanket and a nice cup of tea on a chilly day. It's the bittersweet pang of nostalgia. It's a pleasant memory from a Summer long past. Hedgehog Harry is about love, understanding, facing uncertainty, and growing up.
Harry's growth as a person speaks to the soul, and is both profound and relatable. His interactions with his steadily growing group of friends and his loving family are transparently human, despite them all being animals. Harry, and the whole cast of minor characters, represent a small piece of all of us, sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse.
I can not stress this enough:
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Hedgehog Harry is the world's strongest anti-depressant, and it's an undisputable masterpiece.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jul 5, 2021
"The World Is Mine" is ugly inside and out. The art is ugly, and while it does get slightly better as the story progresses, it stays ugly. This ugliness manages to be both consequential and apt, considering the subject matter displayed throughout the story.
The story manages to be both incredibly grating and relentlessly jarring. Occasionally the plot moves at a brutal, breakneck pace that manages to excite for a few scant chapters before grinding to a halt and indulging in what one might consider a "character study" or more appropriately "a fifty page monologue ripped from the LiveJournal of the average stoned teenager". The scope
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of TWiM's philosophy is incredibly shallow, but shouts itself from the heavens with a sense of self-importance that reads more like a midwit's manifesto than a magnum opus. Then again, perhaps that's the point.
Our characters suffer from developmental whiplash, and quickly fall into tropes of irreverent madness and bouts of multiple-chapter long giggle fits. Where occasionally there is a glimmer of introspection toward the human condition, there also swiftly follows an abrupt descent into what could only be considered catatonia, or perhaps mental invalidity.
This is not to say that TWiM isn't potentially worth a read; It stands on a precarious spire between self-indulgent teenage angst and bloodsoaked Lynchian masterwork. However, the whole of the piece falls short when compared directly to other manga that mainline ultraviolence as a means to describe humanity's fate and create an entertaining story. Purely in my opinion, its worst enemy is its poor pacing: Too frequently the story grinds to a halt to preach from its soapbox, when all it really needed to do was keep killing.
In the end, that ends up being the moral of the story any way:
Just keep killing.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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May 2, 2021
God help Himenospia, and God help us all. Could there be any better example of a manga that nearly reaches the "So bad it's good" highs of some of the greatest cult-hits in film, literature, games, or manga, and manages to stumble and fall flat on its face so hard that it becomes almost physically painful? It's not The Room. It's just a goofy sideshow of schlock that doesn't ever give you enough to say "I hate it but I can't help but keep reading".
All the pieces were there. Initially the story is intriguing, as the mystery of the wasp power and the power dynamics
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therein develops. The art is satisfactory, while not particularly striking, but consistent and clean throughout. Character design is notable and engaging, and never runs into the "All look same" issue that other manga might have problems with. Characters have at least a semblance of depth, and do show development and emotion to at least the slightest extent throughout the story. The plot isn't even particularly egregious or sloppy. It holds tight and manages to stay decently engaging throughout, despite being decisively over-the-top.
But it just falls flat on its face. There's no better way to put it. Plot points end up rushed to funnel the main narrative along. The main character becomes a side character for a large part of the final act, despite being the only emotionally investable character in the whole story. Plot progression is so forced and "told instead of shown" that you could very well read a synopsis and get just as much enjoyment out of the latter half of the story as you would if you actually read the manga itself (and you'd have saved a fair bit of time in the process).
Therein lies the only recommendation I can make for Himenospia. Read a synopsis. Giggle at some of the sillier or more egregious pages. Maybe enjoy how meme-worthy some panels are, if you are so interested.
But otherwise? Don't waste your time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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May 29, 2020
Do you like massive science-fiction megastructures? Do you like art so expansive and detailed that you won't be able to catch all the details even when observing the pages in full resolution for ten or more minutes? Do you like the idea of a gun that can blow city sized holes in anything it's pointed at? Do you like manga with minimal dialogue yet maximum visual storytelling?
Well, then Blame! is the manga for you!
Blame! on the surface is a heroes-journey sci-fi that quickly has its hundreds of thousands of layers peeled away to become almost a horror story: The future is a vast, cold one,
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run by unfeeling machines, perpetually building further and further upon itself till the heat death of the universe. As our protagonist Killy moves further and further through the megastructure, it becomes more clear the situation that he's in, and it leaves the reader with a haunting sense of scale: We are small, and we're never getting any bigger.
The story is subtle, although the plot stays the same the whole way through, you won't find any shounen battle manga tropes here. At times you'll find yourself confused and disoriented, but that is part of the authors intention, and it adds great depth (pun intended) to the narrative.
All this is coupled with Nihei's extravagantly excessive artwork which melds into a solemn march through despair - as cold and dead as the machines propagating the world of the story.
In all, Blame! is like staring down a mine shaft: Hauntingly beautiful, echoing and deep. If you're willing to take your time to reach the bottom, who knows what wonders you might find.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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May 29, 2020
What can be said about Fire Punch that couldn't be said about a natural disaster? In truth, that is the essence of Fire Punch: Unending suffering, loss, and the struggle to hold onto a light that burns ever dimmer day by day.
In some ways Fire Punch is sloppy: the art is stylized to the extent that it is difficult to parse, the story jumps and skips and runs back enough to be occasionally jarring, and the characters have more holes in their personality and motives than a block of Swiss cheese.
But in this madness, this turmoil, thus there is beauty - a cacophony of violence
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and despair and fingertips reaching toward hope that can never quite be grasped. Over and over again.
Fire Punch is just that: A flaming punch to the face, repeatedly, until you, the reader, are left dumbfounded and astonished at the sheer beauty of violence and hope bred from cold despair of the world created in the story. Fire Punch is a fight for survival in manga form, so esoteric and outlandish that it becomes hard to describe in its descent into madness.
And just like any descent into madness, chances are: You'll come back for more.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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May 29, 2020
Kasane is an unobserved masterwork, lightning in a bottle, one of the most hauntingly beautiful and devastatingly horrifying character dramas ever put to pen and paper, in literary work or manga all the same. Both beautifully composed through the dark depths and radiant highs of the characters and their dialogue and paced so desperately that a cold sweat forms in the reader, begging "Just one more chapter. Just one more volume" till its sudden spectacularly dire conclusion, Kasane is apologetically, ruthlessly, stunningly haunting. This manga will make your heart race, your brow sweat, your soul ache, and your blood boil. The sheer gravity of the
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tragedy, a train wreck in slow motion, all beautifully exposed on the page as it is on the stage, will leave you hollow, gasping for more as if it was the air that you breathe.
There is nothing I could recommend more than that you read Kasane, all at once, because once you start, you won't stop till you crash headlong into the ending.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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May 29, 2020
Ana Satsujin AKA Peephole sits in a very specific niche as far as mystery/drama/horror manga are concerned. It's not very horrifying, although it is gory and violent. It is rather dramatic, although more so in that it provides schlock and easily-predicted plot twists by the handful. As far as mystery goes, there isn't much to be found past the first arc, even if you're particularly naive and can't pick up on the generic tropes presented in the "trash gore-romance drama" genre of manga.
However, this doesn't mean that Ana Satsujin isn't an enjoyable read; Supposing you're a fan of this type of manga or looking for
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a little bit of garbage in your gore-stew. I myself enjoy schlock, and this manga embodies that entirely: Part Fatal Attraction, part generic serial killer manga, Ana Satsujin satisfies a specific itch that many B-grade manga approach but few actually are able to scratch. It's a shitty thrill ride that is well worth the, admittedly cheap, price of admission.
The characters are one-note, the plot points are contrived, and the twists are so on the nose you'll call them long before you see them; but the point stands, it's just so dumb and goofy that it's hard to put down. Consider it more a horror-comedy/black comedy and chances are you'll laugh and cringe your way to the end before you know it.
It won't blow you away, it's not a masterwork, or even particularly good.
But I'll be damned if it isn't "So bad it's good-ish."
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Feb 10, 2020
Historical violent manga are a dime a dozen, but Shigurui stands heads stacked gloriously atop one another above the rest. The story winds beautifully through its arcs and unfolds with exciting, yet poignant pacing. Yamaguchi's distinct and haunting art style lends gory and brutal weight of tone that is truly unsurpassed in the medium. While it may not be the most recognized manga, it is truly a classic, and required reading for anyone looking for a more grounded and terrifying look into the striking tragedy of the samurai era. This may be one of the most important manga of all time, and maybe one of
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the most impressive adaptations of a literary work in human history.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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