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Note: Regardless of the score I give it, I rate this manga somewhere between a 7 and 8.

Many people that are familiar with Hiroya Oku will have come across him through Gantz. With the level of fame that Gantz received and it's fairly long lasting reputation, one can't help but compare his other works to it. The scale of the manga was impressive and, though I know there are many contrasting opinions on the work, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I mention Gantz here, as I feel that Inuyashiki bears many similarities to it.

Short summary of start:

The MC-Inuyashiki Ichirou-is a middle aged man, though, due to ... an illness, appearances would lead you to think otherwise. He his unhappy with his life, which is uneventful except for the constant arguing of his family. Following discovering he has cancer and only a short time to live, alongside his inability to tell his family who he feels would not care, he goes out alone to a park to sit and cry. While there, a spaceship crashes ontop of himself and one other person, killing them both. The aliens on board, in an attempt to fix their mistake, rebuild the two as machines that simply appear human before leaving again. The two retain their personalities, but are granted abilities as a result of their new bodies. Inuyashiki, who has always felt helpless, decides to use his newfound powers for good, treating the ill and saving lives while the other, a highschool boy, becomes conceited, believing himself above others and, simply because he can, decides to use his abilities to kill others and make himself feel "alive".

Thoughts etc.:

I think the idea behind the story is a very interesting one: what do people do when suddenly granted huge amounts of power.
Our two MCs are polar opposites and therefore destined to clash due to their differing opinions. The first part of the story is very well done, there are some great chapters where we see the two figuring out how to use their powers (both unaware of the others' existence) and how they change as a result of them. The tension is handled very well and when they finally meet there seems like great promise for the story.

It just feels like it accelerates too fast.

One thing I think you can never fault with Oku's work, is the art. The attention to detail is astonishing at times, faces are very expressive, characters are both threatening and sensitive where they need to be and, though the backgrounds can often be obviously photographed to speed up drawing times, it creates a great sense of realism that brings the story new life. The mechanisms of the bodies I think are the most impressive feature of this manga's artwork, the creativity and detail makes each page very interesting to read. The character designs in Inuyashiki are much more realistically drawn than the average manga; this can either work to your taste or not. It's something I've seen criticism over, but personally I think it aids in the storytelling.

There is an odd sense of the ending of this manga being both very good, but somehow rushed at the same time. I think the way it ends itself, was well thought out, though certain details of it seem like bizarre additions. I won't go into too much detail so as to avoid spoilers, but when threatened with a world ending catastrophe, both Inuyashiki and the boy end up using their powers together to help divert it consequently killing both of them. This comes only a few chapters after they had been fighting a battle that threatened the whole of Japan, a battle that obviously displayed the antagonist's lack of concern for the populace. This is what makes it, to me feel both rushed and conclusive. If there had been some event that brought some more middle ground between the two MC's the ending would have flowed more smoothly.

To summarise I do think it is worth a read. There are some definitely great moments that will stick in my memory and I did like it overall. I just feel that it didn't reach its full potential.

I'm going to be honest, there is nothing in this manga that is new.

I came across it when I was looking through Okayusan's (the artist for this manga) manga list. For any that don't know them, they're a doujinshi artist that does some really quite exceptional art and so, seeing an actual published manga they had drawn, I decided that I would give it a try.

Short summary of opening story (skip if you want no spoilers):

The story starts with our MC, a talented pianist, performing Franz Liszt's Mephisto Waltz in a piano recital only to find that in the final few bars, he loses all ... movement in his fingers. Distraught by the loss of his primary skill and therefore future goals he despairs. It's a story we have heard before, only not done as well as others did it. Anyway, our MC mopes around for a bit before discovering an arcade fighting game through a video and is surprised to find the character being played, is a mirror image of himself. Intrigued, he sets out to find this game at his local arcade and the story continues from there.

Thoughts:

The art really elevates this work and is in my opinion the only thing that stands out. The characters are fairly bland, the story is very predictable and it's so short that it never really gets anywhere, ending almost abruptly as though there were plans for it to go further but it never did (it may have got cancelled I'm not sure).

But as I say, if you're going to read it for anything, read it for the art. Okayusan adds a great deal of detail to each drawing through prominent shadows. It gives the images much more depth and can make some really quite amazing pages that create a great sense of movement.
To summarise, unless you want to see some pretty eye-catching artwork, I'd give this one a miss.

I'm going to split this into three sections, the beginning, final "arc" and the actual ending.

I think the start of this manga is handled exceptionally, the first volume can be somewhat slow as we are introduced the the MC and the first wave of characters. I would say the story only fully begins from volume 2 at which point the true zombie nature of the story is brought in. But the way in which we see the spread of the virus, from multiple perspectives and in different formats, be that message boards, the MC's view or news articles really gives a good perspective of how ... something like this could spread to the extent it did without much opposition in the early stages.

Some of the characters can be unpleasant but I think extreme situations can bring out bad sides in people and especially when sudden power is achieved, as is shown in the shopping mall arc, this can be exaggerated further. This worked well and gave a good range of characters and interactions that both provides tension, pushes the story further and gives new insight into the nature of the virus.

There are numerous points throughout where the story will split off from our MC and we will see other characters battle the zombies in their own way and from this we can see how wide spread it is and watch the new developments of the zombies.

To summarise the first part, I think it gives a very believable account of how a zombie infection could spread throughout humanity and the various ways people would react to that.

The following may get a little spoiler ish:
From, I would say, the death of Oda, though there were certainly references before that point, the story takes a significant shift to the nature of the zombies, pushing it from simply an unknown infection and attempts to put reasoning behind its occurrence and why it effects people in the way it does. Some may not like this so much as the "survival" element gets reduced to an extent, but I do think it is an interesting idea and the interactions that occur between Hiromi and the mass brain provide interesting insight.

To me, the ending could have been handled much better. The actual conclusion was alright I feel, but I felt as though the writer forgot the objectives of the characters. For example, Hideo went to Tokyo in order to save Hiromi, but it seemed to slip his mind somewhere along the way and he his actions seemed to lose meaning really. The final few chapters felt like they had just been stuck on the end and I don't think they were necessary.

I enjoyed it on the whole, the art was very good, characters mostly believable and plot line was well thought out up until the final stages. Give it a try, but if you do I recommend getting past volume 1.

This was a bit long-winded sorry.

The first thing I would like to say about this manga is that I feel it is very difficult to give it a numerical rating. Up until now, my rating has been based upon a mixture of my level of enjoyment and the level of success that the series has in doing what it intends to do, be that tell a story, put across a message etc. For this reason though I have given an overall score with this review, I would like you to ignore it and just read what I have written.
Kuzu no Honkai is a whole different kettle of fish from the ... average series. To me, Kuzu no Honkai was not "enjoyable", I did not like the choices that the characters made, it frustrated me to see them sink to deeper levels, and furthermore to cause others too feel despair as well. However, it never sought to be a tale that viewers could relate perfectly to, it is a tale of our main characters choices when faced with an unrequited love and the repercussions of those choices. It fulfils its intentions perfectly, showing true consequences of this unpleasant underbelly of love where people will do whatever they can in an attempt to achieve that which is out of reach.
I think many negative reviews are based merely on the fact that it is a difficult manga to find pleasant to read, with people overlooking the fact that it does in fact do everything that it set out to do in the first place very well. i would certainly recommend it, there may be others like it, but it is the first time I have come across something like it. The art style is also very impressive, something I did like about the series a lot.
Finally, the follow on Scums wish Decor, brings a slightly more pleasant conclusion to the series, with it taking place a number of years later, looking in on the way the lives of the characters we have seen progressed and where the events of the main series brought them to. So even if you did not like the unresolved state in which the main story leaves you, hopefully this will be a better outcome in your opinion. .