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I admit that I didn't expect anything from Aku no Hana, mainly due to the terrible reputation of its anime (made with rotoscoping), but after reading it, it became one of my favorite manga.

At first it is an uninviting story, as it contains elements that are not very comfortable for readers. The plot tells the story of 2 teenagers who start at 14 years old, and the manga has no ruler when it decides to talk about teenage idiocy, which ends up making the first act of the story a little heavy and even a little unrealistic for a manga that tries to get closer ... of reality.
But that's okay, all this hormonal stupidity is on purpose, because at the end of the day, this is a coming-of-age story, of moving forward and not forgetting the past, but learning to deal with its consequences.

It's a manga that I highly recommend, with a request for patience for the first chapters, as I know it won't please everyone.

An alternate history of Hataraku Saibou. Hataraku Saibou is softer and brings a light comedy, in addition to captivating readers with its charismatic characters. As for Hataraku Saibou Black....

Well, as the synopsis itself says, they are in a body in which humans drink alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, have a terrible diet, horrible hygiene, in addition to an addiction to masturbation.
A body in precarious health conditions, where, thanks to all this, diseases, germs, and serious health problems directly affect the main characters, causing many deaths and enormous psychological pressure on the protagonist, unlike Hataraku Saibou, Black brings a more "dirty" of the work and much heavier ... too, in addition to having small nuances indicating that it is for an older audience.

It wasn't something that surprised me, but it made me feel very sorry for the protagonist and think often about the conditions of the type of person they were dealing with. It's an interesting read for those who liked the first manga, but if you've never read/watched Hataraku Saibou, this isn't where you should start.

Uzumaki was the second work by Junji Ito that I read, after seeing one of his first works (Tomie), I would like to see one that was more critically acclaimed. Well, like Tomie, Uzumaki didn't bother me or make me uncomfortable, as is usually the author's intention, but rather entertained me. It was magical to witness how creative this guy is, the most diverse ways of showing the reader a macabre spiral lol, it was really fun. However, I feel like the manga was reminiscent of generic horror films. It was like watching a horror movie in a relaxed way. In fact, perhaps this is ... the magic of Ito's manga. As much as I think your manga are average, it's a fact that I liked the ones I read.

Just like Uzumaki, I feel that Gyo started out very well, perfectly conveying that feeling of strangeness, but little by little it was lost.

I don't know if it's us, the readers, who simply get used to the absurdity of ideas, but what I noticed is that Ito presents us with something we've never seen before and then makes it so absurd that we're not actually scared or uncomfortable, but yes, just admiring how quickly it escalated. Which for me takes a lot of the tension out of the scenes. In fact, that might be why I preferred the beginning of his manga.

I even had fun ... with Gyo, but for me, he wasn't as "charming" as Tomie or as bizarre as Uzumaki.

Okay, it was a very different experience. Totsukuni no Shoujo is unique, whether in its character or its story. It's hard to find something so different in an ocean of clichéd manga.

I really liked the story, especially at the beginning, as it was kind of a dark slice of life. In the middle (volumes 4 to 6), it really caught my attention, the plot was evolving very well, no matter how many doubts there were, it was really very good. At the end (volumes 10 and 11) it seemed to me that the author was a little lost, I'm almost sure that not even he ... understood everything he wrote haha. As much as this bothered me a little, because honestly, I'm not a big fan of interpretative endings; I still didn't think the ending was bad.

I'm sure that if Totsukuni was a kind of dark slice of life, with simple and well-written plots, as well as being longer, it would have become one of my favorite manga. Anyway, it was great to discover this work, I'm seriously thinking about giving Nagabe's other manga a chance.

As someone who has been following the success of Chainsaw Man for longer than I care to admit, I can say that the One-Shots are where Fujimoto truly shines.

Here he has much better control over the proposal and the story, the author knows well how to start, develop and finish the plot.
He is also a great character writer, managing to capture their more realistic and reflective sides.

Look Back itself is another one of those mangas where personal interpretation reigns. In my opinion, the One-Shot story addresses our wound of “what if...?” . The way we regret, how we torture ourselves thinking about the possibilities ... and what we could have done to avoid the tragedies that happen to us. The way we go back to the past and try to rewind the tape of our mind, instead of accepting and dealing with what happens to us.
But well, the manga isn't here to teach us a lesson, it seems to me more like Fujimoto's purpose has always been to make us reflect. Although the title of the work is “Look Back”, what is recommended here is exactly the opposite.

It is very difficult to analyze an autobiography, as it is a person exposing their experiences and feelings. It is regrettable what the author went through, before admitting to having depression, it is very clear when she describes her own appearance, being well below the recommended weight, wearing clothes that she herself describes as inappropriate or poorly cared for when she goes out in public, as well as neglecting hygiene itself, this is clear, not to mention the lack of explicit disposition in their reports at work and at home.
What I could take away from this is that, upon discovering herself as a lesbian ... and allowing herself to have sexual relations with a woman, it was then that the author found the opening to allow herself to be who she is, enjoy the things she likes and live her own life without having to satisfy her parents or the standards that were imposed on her.

I really hate speculating when it comes to this genre, it makes it seem like I treat other people's lives like entertainment. Well, I just think it was quite brave of the author to open himself up like that to so many people, exposing things that seem to me to be the kind we keep deep in our subconscious and deny until we can no longer do so. Related to how this actually helps people not only identify similar situations, but maybe show the solution to some common problems.

Is Emanon a pretty unique manga? I can't say for sure, but yes, he does have charm. It's the type of reading recommended for a clear mind, early in the morning or at the end of an afternoon, as the entire story is basically two people talking on a boat trip. It's interesting to see a character who has a memory of billions of years and the way she deals with the weight of that and knowing that she will never die, at the same time as we see what her presence does to other people's lives.

Omoide Emanon is a reflective and contemplative manga. It ... won't blow your mind or anything, but it's an experience that can be enjoyable for some and boring for others. Unlike SASURAI Emanon, I recommend OMOIDE.

Well, when I read Berserk, at first glance I loved the manga and was ready to defend it tooth and nail, after all it's very good. The world building is excellent, the characters are well developed and the plot is very well done. But I'm not here to praise, because, after all, we all already know the positive points of the work, but what about the negative ones?
As I started reading the manga weekly, I started to lose that hysteria that I had so much of, and about 3 or 2 years after reading it, I think I can speak lucidly about all the ... points that bothered me, but that at the time I I held back and let myself be blinded by the hype.

To start, I wanted to talk a little about the characters. Yes, the characters in Berserk are well constructed, but as the story progresses I feel that the author lost patience in delving too deeply into each one's individual plot, causing characters like Isidro to exist, who add nothing to the story, but are there for a reason. In addition to the drastic change in climate when it comes to “team”.
Guts was never a character who liked to work in groups or who cared about the people around him. Don't get me wrong, I loved that he started to value his companions and didn't let himself be blinded by revenge, knowing how to enjoy every moment he spent with them. My problem really comes from the fact that I think the introduction of this specific number of characters came too quickly, as if from one arc to the next we simply had an entire team of protagonists. But that's okay, that's not even my biggest problem with the job.

Being quite controversial now, I find Berserk quite problematic when it comes to sexual or sexualized scenes. Before you start calling me a feminist, needy of attention or any other term you use to justify my dissatisfaction with this topic, let's look at the reasons why I think this.

Berserk aims to portray a rotten world, dominated by violence and misery. The way Miura finds to demonstrate this is by filling his fights with blood and flying guts, in addition to portraying hostility and what is most perverse in each person. But there is also one more resource that he uses not only to introduce us to this world of injustice, but also to shock the reader, which in this case would be the numerous scenes of sexual violence.
Berserk has many, MANY rape scenes, and ok, I understand why these scenes were at the beginning of the manga, as it was during the Golden Age arc that we saw everything that was bad about that reality, but what about after? And when readers already knew what the work was about? What was the need for these scenes? Even after 300 chapters, Miura felt the need to draw an entire panel depicting the gang rape of several women, and for what? By now, everyone already knew how brutal the manga was.

Other than that, Miura's handling of sexual violence against men and women was shocking. Although there is only 1 case of rape of a man, a case that was not even shown, but treated with the seriousness it should have, on the other side there are around 20 scenes of sexual violence against women without the same weight, without the same seriousness. If you don't believe it, stop and notice that all the female characters were victims of rape or were naked at some point in the work, the only exception is Schierke, a child, who was harassed as a source of comic relief.
I'm still going to talk about the lost children arc, which besides not adding anything to the manga, has an underage antagonist who is naked all the time, just like the other children.

Anyway, I know that a lot of people will disagree with what I said, but this and other reasons were what made me give up on the manga, and even though I know that Berserk is aimed at adult men, I can't help but be bothered by the author's negligence when talking about such delicate topics and creating female characters. Well, here's my dissatisfaction, it's a good work, but as someone who is part of the female audience that consumed the manga, I can't let these things go unnoticed and continue reading normally.

Okay, I admit I had hype for this anime when it was announced, but after giving it some thought, I was reluctant to watch it and definitely should have listened to myself.

First of all, it's worth highlighting that Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a promotional anime, made to try to revive the hype of a game that was poorly received. It's like Diabolik Lovers, the difference is that Edgerunners has a better budget. Jokes aside, there are a lot of predictable things in this anime. The animation takes place in a cyberpunk world, and here we can already speculate the elements it will have in its narrative, ... namely: criticism of capitalism, social inequality, technology, lots of violence and nudity. Before watching the anime, these speculations were what made me rethink watching it, but I really thought about giving it a chance.

Starting with the story. Narrative is nothing new when we talk about a Cyberpunk setting. We have our protagonist, David, who suffers the consequences of living in a capitalist world dominated by technology, suffering first-hand the economic inequality that is what drives this reality. In this world there is a belief that the more body modifications you have, the cooler you look, however, everyone has a limit, and if you exceed that limit, not only will your physical health be harmed, but also your psychological health. David has above average resistance and this makes him believe that he is special and unique. In short: the story revolves around David deluding himself with the idea of ​​being different, when in the end he is just part of the mass of people manipulated by the thought of consumerism. I think this is one of the few decent points in this anime. Is it predictable? Yes, but I must give credit and say that it is considerably well crafted.

However, I can't say the same about the characters. They are all very generic, and no, generic is not synonymous with bad, but here they simply have a single face. I can illustrate this by saying that the screenwriter simply thought: “I need protagonists. This one is going to be strong, these are going to be crazy and this one is going to be beautiful.” They are all designed to fulfill a single function and that is all they do. We have the strong leader, the strong woman, the crazy brothers and the pretty girl who is the protagonist's romantic partner. Only. Don't expect them to be or do anything more than that.
In order to convey the message that no one is special, the anime kills most of these characters, but especially those who could add something. What's the point of extending Harley Quinn 2.0's participation, if she literally doesn't do anything or change anything in the story throughout the entire anime? That's it, the secondaries have no other function than to warn David that he is sinking. They have no development, and that's fine, I don't expect to find super humanized characters in 10 episodes, but they also don't make an effort to really be something, there is no charisma in any of them.
And while we're talking about David, why not mention his lack of personality? The character goes through tragedies, but he is so apathetic and indifferent that he only makes all the events that should bring some weight boring. “Ah, but this is to show that he is keeping everything to himself”, right, and for what? The point of David's """"development"""" is that he thinks he is something he is not, in the end his traumas were of no use as his mind would be corrupted anyway, plus he literally changes practically nothing in the character's destiny. There is nothing to say about him, or assume what he should be like, because he doesn't even have a personality trait.

What about action? This is one of the main points of this anime and I must say that it had everything to be quite decent, but it isn't. What happens here is the same as what happens in Junji Ito's manga, for example. I love the beginnings of your mangas, but the endings are always boring and leave a lot to be desired. This is because his stories are intended to be grotesque and shock the reader with their bizarreness, however, the author gives everything he has right at the beginning with the aim of catching the public's attention, and this means that as the story progresses he has no nothing more to deliver.
Edgenrunners is no different, they deliver so many striking action scenes right at the beginning, that there is simply nothing left that will impress you later.

This brings us to another point, I really think Cyberpunk hurt itself a lot by having 10 episodes. The animation doesn't have much to offer and it goes on so long that there comes a time when you simply beg for it to end. There are episodes that simply don't add anything, and if they do, it's for a mere 3 minutes. And why is that? The anime doesn't make a point of providing chemistry or strengthening the bonds of friendship between characters, that crude romance between Lucy and David is pitiful, and can be summed up simply as: "hi, you're very pretty, will you date me?". It's simply that, and it gets annoying how much they push the envelope trying to convey an image of companionship, an image that doesn't exist.
And speaking of Lucy, I must say that I laugh every time I remember her backstory. In one of the "reflective" moments of the animation, she opens up to David and tells him about her past and the reason for remaining so distant. What happens is that his backstory should give weight to the character, but it becomes pathetic when you realize that he doesn't even make an effort to be a little original. Where did I actually see children being exploited in laboratories and being the only ones to escape, whether by miracle or a revolution? Oh yes! Kiznaiver, Zankyou no Terror, that rubbish Darling in the FranXX and I can even take a risk by mentioning Classroom of the Elite. They all used the same backstory for their protagonists. Why am I citing this? Because it's hilarious how much the anime producers didn't even try to give depth to the animation.

To be a little fair, the anime isn't all bad, as for the production, we're talking about the popular Trigger. The animation is beautiful, the colors, the contrast, the neon (haha), it's all very beautiful and very reminiscent of BNA's style, which although I have my own controversies with, its beauty is undeniable. As for the soundtrack, I have to disappoint and say that I was so disgusted with the anime that I barely paid attention to it, but from what little I heard, I really liked it. The entire production, except for the direction of the episodes (there are even too many of them), is to be congratulated.

Lastly, I wanted to open up a space and say that I really like the criticism that the Cyberpunk world brings. He shows us a reality not so far from ours, where large corporations, seeking profit, create needs, as well as the solution to these needs, making society submissive to them. In this case, we are talking about technology, humans become dependent on it to survive, and we can see how much social inequality increases. If you don't have a thousand and one upgrades, or how to pay for them, you're nothing more than scum. It is a strong message about consumerism and a criticism of large companies that end up controlling society's lifestyle.
However, I want to emphasize that this is not the credit of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners or Cyberpunk 2077, it is something that comes precisely from the "subgenre(?)" Cyberpunk, which shows us a world where money buys technology and technology is everything. Just wanted to say how much I appreciate this review and everything.

Conclusion: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is not good at all, I would even say it is mediocre, but I also can't say whether it is fair to give this verdict for a promotional animation, where producers don't usually give their all. If they really gave everything they could... well, result: going back and doing everything from scratch because it didn't work. Jokes aside, I think it's a very average anime and doesn't even remotely deserve to compete for best animation of the year. I recommend it for anyone who likes action and just wants to have fun. More than that is overestimating.