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I went into this with high hopes for a brutal and bleak masterpiece. I do not understand how this is so highly rated. Usually, after "feel-good" is crossed from the list and "depressing" is added, there is, at the very least, some relatability or profound message. The artistic appeal of this story seems like such a waste. The character design, symbolism, and intense narratives are absolutely trampled by an unpleasant and unrelatable set of characters. The only people that stick around for this kind of story are typically die-hard pretentious readers that insist your palette is unrefined for not appreciating such a masterful depiction of ... human nature. I can at least understand why people want to see normal people make bad decisions in hard situations. The problem is that the characters in this story are not normal and make bad decisions nonstop.

When I first started the story, I genuinely thought the presentation of the main character accurately represented a young child with his worries and youthful immaturity. But, I simply cannot relate with the vast majority of punpun's thought process after he grows up. Many of his conclusions objectively don't make sense. I do understand that the characters' lives suck, but I have so little sympathy for any of them because they don't pursue self-improvement or change at all. Again, if they really tried to better themselves and lost to the powers that be, it would be a relatable tragedy. But, here we are, following the most bitter and mundane nonevents of the low-functioning mentally ill. I gave the characters 4/10 and not 0/10 because I'm pretty sure the author made them suck on purpose.

A bitter, irrational, depressed main character, punpun, has a bad home-life in his childhood. I don't think that he is a victim of circumstance. He is not continually dealt a bad hand as the story continues. His emotional state just spirals down from then on. This is not a story of overcoming adversity, either. The main character's delusional pessimism regarding himself and the world around him lead him to stagnate and wallow in self-loathing for the whole of the story. Others in the story have more tragic situations, yet punpun just never shapes up. Not that any of them do either, though. Read this if you want to suffer. I don't mean that in a poetic tragedy way, I mean that it's a controlled dumpster fire. I do not see the appeal.

If you are a vanilla supremacist, you'll love this. The main character is a hitman who doubles as a vanilla romance enthusiast. He uses the masterful stealth skills polished by his profession to carefully observe and protect potential couples from the wicked snares of ntr and other metaphorical beasts of the hellscape. It gives me Gokushufudou vibes from the gap between profession and personality.

I love this hidden gem. It's a shame it's not very popular because it's a genuinely funny manga. I don't rank many stories a 10, but recency bias and personal preference prevent me from finding anything this comedy needs to improve ... upon. I wish the chapters were released more frequently, though.

Godspeed, brothers and sisters. xx

I only see one other review for this, which is obnoxiously long and absolutely shits on the manga with pages of elitist pessimism. So, here I am to keep the balance. If you like Dr. Stone, you will like this. It has the same science-y shounen solutions and great potential for the main series despite the absence of the main characters. There's also a healthy dose of tragedy. 10 billion percent recommend. However, the story focuses less on Byakuya than I expected, as most of his development was already depicted in the main series. The title implies we would learn a great deal more about ... Byakuya than we did, but it also creates opportunity for the well-done unexpected shift in focus that occurs in the latter half of the story.