I usually have never felt compelled to write up a formal review in my life. Never has something so forced me to tears for better or for worse to want to tell the entire world whether to avoid or seek out something. But Kyochuu Rettou is truly one of the most foul things ever put onto paper that my poor eyes have had to bear witness to in a long time.
The story is from decades past of B movies = X scenario BUT giant bugs appear, how wacky! Just to be clear, I do not hate this setting. The giant bug section of fiction
...
can be extremely fun and enjoyable, even scary when done right or perfectly camp if done in tongue and cheek fashion; please see Terraformars or Earth Defence Force as good examples of what I believe are good uses of the trope.
To put it lightly the story was abysmally dull and contrived to the ninth degree. I'm not sure if the manga was cancelled or what but there never is any explanation, never any answers, never any payoff to story beats. There is nothing of substance to follow, you are left with no enjoyment beyong the characters and the art. You go through a short, railroad of events and moments that I had to force myself to keep reading beyond the few first chapters that showed something a little interesting.
Unfortunately for the longevity of the manga, that interesting part is the art. Although the rest of the heart, soul and body of the manga is completely barren and bare bones, the artwork and gore of it is actually quite good. I kept reading beyond a certain point for the gore alone, intestines come out in entire clumps, people get sucked into withered husks, cut in half, eaten alive and even more gruesome ends. As a closet fan of gorey slasher films, I found this to be personally appealing and for anyone else who is a fan of it, I'm sure you'll find the barest minimum of human entertainment beyond looking at a still frame of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
As for the environments, it is set on an abandoned island. The architecture is rare and barely worth to speak of, the different biomes of the island are just the exact same forest and two beaches. There is no crazy or wild or even eye catching fauna throughout the entire series. As backgrounds, it is entirely passable. I wish I had more to say but it is clear where the mangaka's strengths lie.
Certainly not with character design though, most female characters are an exact body type replica of high school girl with giant breasts. And considering the manga's constant use of nudity and sex throughout, I can see why they did that but it doesn't interest me and ended up adding to my disgust beyond the first chapters. Almost every character in this manga: male or female, teacher or student, main or side. Is a one-dimensional husk who has nothing to them, nothing of value or interest to see or find out about them, they are an exaggeration of one random trait (generally negative) blown up to the power of ten. This makes it extremely difficult to form any attachment or care to any single character in the manga, by the end I only cared about one and half cared about another. When there were a cast of upwards of around twentyish characters oveall this was disappointing to say the least.
Without spoiling any "surprises" if you could dare call them that, you will be wanting and wishing the entire cast dies horrifically. Maybe that was the point, maybe it isn't the mangaka is just awful at writing any living person and we are meant to hate them to the core of our own soul. I'm sure once you finish it if you still feel inclined to will go through the same coping mechanisms like lying to yourself like this to explain what you just read and wasted part of your life on.
Kyochuu Rettou is unenjoyable. To almost the maximum extent. The only bit of pleasure I could derive from this was some sort of petty, primal enjoyment of seeing characters I couldn't stand die horribly for the things they did to others. The other only enjoyable part was seeing the attention to a lot of the bugs when made so large and shows the mangaka did actually have a sort of passion for the theme. Which makes me question how... the entire rest of the manga was created. The artist can obviously draw really well, they have at least a passing interest and knowledge of bugs and can recreate them well in a gigantic setting. Yet, this piece of art is missing almost every single other neccessary component to be called a passable manga to anyone. If it wasn't for this slight hint of passion and good artwork, I would have given this manga an unapologetic one out of ten.
Feb 14, 2020
Kyochuu Rettou
(Manga)
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I usually have never felt compelled to write up a formal review in my life. Never has something so forced me to tears for better or for worse to want to tell the entire world whether to avoid or seek out something. But Kyochuu Rettou is truly one of the most foul things ever put onto paper that my poor eyes have had to bear witness to in a long time.
The story is from decades past of B movies = X scenario BUT giant bugs appear, how wacky! Just to be clear, I do not hate this setting. The giant bug section of fiction ... |