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What a lovely series. I've found that this author's works are very calming and inoffensive; I always read these when I can't stomach anything else. This story matches the pace of real life much better than whatever else I've read: no emotional rollercoaster, no cheap drama to elicit false sympathy; no long drawn out shouting matches of feelings and relationships; no over-narration; no gratuitous violence, sex, sticky feelings, come to think of it, a good analogy is Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, but for adults with more politics and fewer gender jokes. If you like Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun but also like politics, you will like this.

Eumenes is ... the main character, he's mostly a realistic version of a nice, normal guy who is pretty smart, lucky, with a good memory and good hand-eye coordination. Thank god for a character that isn't made into a puppet of an morality argument or a cripple of a damaged backstory. We see his life, nothing's obviously over-exaggerated, thank god, except maybe how quickly girls fall in love with him, but that's ok because the author is trying to draw a parallel between the Illiad and this work. I loved the Illiad, if you love the Illiad, you will like this.

Wow, you must be thinking, this sounds like a godawful bore of a series. That is where you are wrong! Because the author doles out drugs to the reader in moderation, the parts of the story that do have feelings pack a poignant punch. But what does that do? It means the story actually feels meaningful. Surprise! I cried when I read this, just a little bit.

Also, little Eumenes is a friggin' psychopath, man. So there's that.

By the way, personally Historie > Parasyte because it's less in-your-face didactic and more history. This author tends to flounder and run around in circles once in a while, but with the crutch of actual history to fall back on, I think he will write really interesting work.

This is honestly a pretty lackluster series. It's another one of those guilty pleasure reads, terrible writing carried only by merit of h o m o s e x u a l m a i n c o u p l e. But then why am I writing a review for this? Well, if we sort all manga by "has decent non-angst-driven non-romance plot" and "ample h o m o s e x y," in the tiny little almost nonexistent sliver of overlap, Silver Diamond soars to the top.

Remember, kids, define your market and you will succeed, even when you shouldn't.

I didn't really like this. This is not a manga for people like me, who value meaning, ambition, purpose, ya get it. However, even I can recognize that this manga is amazing. It is the scariest manga that I've ever read, it beats out the "disturbing" scary of Junjo Ito, the "gory" scary of your stereotypical apocalypse survival horror manga, and the "existential crisis" scary of psychological horror, it comes close to jumpscare shock. Why?

Because everything is so goddam pointless. I believe "I Am a Hero" is actually one of the most realistic tellings of an survival horror story. The realism is precisely what gets ... to me. The freaking monotony of the dude's life before and after the event, his averageness (to be generous,) the fact that people just get super well adjusted to having crazy dead people around very quickly just freaks me out. I thought there would be more delusional people or people who just snap, but no. They even treat the zombies as people, like what the hell?

Anyways, I finished it but I'll never touch it again. It's too weird, I don't think I'll ever come to terms with it. I don't really wanna think about it either. Whoever wrote this is a madman. Insanity.

And that, folks, is how to scare someone out of a fandom.

Man, this is my favorite manga of all time. It is by far not the best written, the most insightful, nor the best drawn. However, it is the only manga that has duped me before I dumped it, and it is also the manga of my favorite character and my most hated character!

Now I must confess, I don't really feel anything when I read. I can tear up a little at sad parts and laugh at funny parts, but it's not powerful emotion. Even in Berserk, at the betrayal's climax, I was like, "meh, this dude is so ungrateful."

But boy, oh boy, Shiki is ... brilliant. Fuckin' awesome. I felt elation. I felt rage! The story takes you on a journey, through stupidity, to imminent extinction due to stupidity, to the most satisfying death I've ever read about, then to a fuckin' party, then at the finale, to the greatest betrayal--of the author, against you. And you never would have seen it coming, unless you actually stopped and thought about the symbolism but no one does at gory! action! death! scenes, so you can't even chuck the book away before the author nabs you. Because it ends right there.

Anyways, I don't really think it's spoilers to go ahead and say I'm a die-hard Toshio fan, and sometimes I surprise myself with my unfounded vicious hate of the Shiki. Then, I have to step back and think, hmmm, why do we have such great potential for cruelty and disgust? What about fear robs us of our compassion, our reason, our apathy? And then I reflect upon myself...but not really 'cause Toshio is my favorite character w00t Abraham Lincoln, vampire slayer

Honestly, I usually don't tell people I've read Pandora Hearts, 'cause its so goddam clichéd: gothic, angst, hidden personalities, beautiful bastards, glory in death, etc. But I will review it because despite the fact that I only tolerate it as a piece of work, I actually do enjoy it a lot.

This is the story of a bunch of personality disorders. It is not a story about a boy who finds his true home, or about a girl who tries to recover her memories, or about fighting the 4th wall, it is first and foremost a story about therapy for personality disorders and how the entire ... plot convolutes to fit the narrative of this.

Anyways, I like reading it 'cause I like reading about personality disorders and self-victimization and man, this story is rife with the best of the best! You've got masks upon masks and a martyr fetish rivaling Harry Potter fanfiction! This is such a great guilty read.

Read if you're a masochist!

Well, there are already too many reviews for this manga but I liked it so much I had to write my own. This is what happens when you get an actually smart author to write stuff: you get cool stuff.

It's not actually completely fullproof, though. Some of the stuff, like the smuggling game, does require suspension of disbelief (e.g. Mr. No Eyebrows should have realized the deal Akiyama made with the "spies" and found some suitable way to dissuade them immediately after they mentioned what Akiyama said in the room,) but whatever. Also, some of the games, like the 2nd round game is an ... example of stuff you would've come across if you studied engineering, so lol that was ruined, but otherwise it's real cool! The games are cool, thought out, and unique, the explanations are pretty good, what's not to like?

Well, the story does rely on the other characters being stupid a lot. On the bright side, who I thought would be the stupidest character is actually (plot twist!) the wisest them all. Character development is honestly like of erratic, though. Also, at the final game, it seemed like the author had run out of steam. I honestly liked the previous round much better. Finally, the ending is kind of abrupt, but it's also at a nice point where he can write a sequel if he ever feels like it, so hate the sin, forgive the sinner.

The art is great! The expressions are a treat.

Read this is you want to read an illustrated version of a trading company interview + tech company interview's bastard child proctored by Satan.

A cute lil' slice-of-life gore manga! Great leisure read, well-crafted but light enough to be enjoyed at your pace.

The story follows the supernatural and violent (and sometimes just violent) accidents of the two main characters and the other hodgepodge side characters of the supernatural club. It is very, very slice of life because the story is a cycle of: nasty stuff happens, our protagonists narrowly escape, and then we accept it, forget it, and move on to the next chapter.

The reasons why I rate this so highly are because one, the story is very clean, two, the protagonists are well-developed and, three, the art ... works well with the story format.

By the first point, I mean that the narrative flow is never broken and usually smooth (think of it as the difference between reading a book and reading a light novel, not a malicious judgement in any way.) The author cares a lot about composition, and it makes it easy to read!

The second point is why I find fault with comparisons between this and Junjo Ito's work: they stand on different bases. The protagonists in his story are heavily overshadowed by the story's horror elements; heck, you could swap in new protagonists in every chapter of Spiral and I probably wouldn't even notice. This is because Mr. Ito writes horror by emphasizing, deconstructing, and analyzing a theme. However, this work is heavily defined by the protagonists, such that you wouldn't have a story without them. That's because this author wants to make you feel like you're the one becoming a monster, and in turn, actually desensitizes you to a lot of the fear. So it's actually not a scary story, just a disgusting one. Also, I really like the main character dude 'cause he's so blasé.

The third point just has to do with the story being unique. The art's cute but the shading and sparse lines make it look creepy and gothic. It's interesting, I like it.

Read it if you like Detective Conan but with more death and less mind-bending explanations.