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Disco Elysium meets Psychonauts on a geopolitical scale. Bonus points for the dynamic duo actually going inside each other for once! Er, each other's brains, that is.

Limbo The King (LTK) is an action-packed detective scifi manga about two guys fighting a disease which can only be cured by entering the comatose brains of the afflicted. The main mystery revolves around three questions: what is the true nature of the sleeping disease, how does it spread, and where does it originate from? The answer can only be solved by the small, limited population of people who are capable of diving into people's brains and fighting their ... inner most demons: their memories. Through the eyes of King and his coworker Adam, we get to see these mental worlds unfold, attack, and peacefully collapse once they conquer the disease.

LTK is an exciting read, both for the entertaining dynamic between the MCs as well as how the mystery and scifi elements engage you to try and solve it. It is equally plot/mystery-driven as it is character driven. This is especially evident in the mental worlds of the comatose/diseased patients. Exploration of these worlds is equal parts about the psychology of the patients traumas as it is about the logistics of how brain diving works in the first place.
The dynamic between King and Adam displays this balance as well. They have a fun dynamic which deepens over time, and the main activity which nurtures their dynamic is their investigation/the scientific process behind it. Its evident that the mangaka put a great deal of effort into making sure everything's connected, which I deeply appreciate.

There's some major things holding it back from being a nine though, which I shall detail here. Major spoilers ahead.
The mystery has great pacing in the first two volumes, which starts to fall flat at the very last volume. What made its pacing so great initially is how it slowly built up the elements over several chapters, clearly creating a puzzle for the readers to solve, but never fully answering your burning questions/hypotheses. Well, LTK just throws all that shit out the window in volume three. It got real bad once Adam got into a car accident out of left fucking field, by which point it starts throwing random bullshit twists at you. What was once a carefully constructed mystery, now has new left field elements being introduced and added within panels of each other.
The twist villain is the epitome of this, the most egregious one. He's some random guy who just so happens to be King's childhood BFF who we never see until the last five or so chapters. So this whole mystery has been building up to...some nobody yandere who created the disease just to be a yandere? Fucking really? I could maybe excuse it if he's been there since the beginning. But no. He's just some random fucking guy. It pisses me off.

But I'll give credit where credit is due. While the actual mystery element of the ending was a complete crapshoot, its clear the mangaka was building up to a clear and satisfying unifying theme with this whole story. Life is worth living in a world full of suffering, and without the triubulations of the past, we wouldn't be who we are today. Suffering creates beauty and meaning, even if it hurts. That's a damn good message which hits home for me, and is what keeps the rating floating high overall. It also gives a satisfying conclusion for all the brains which have been dived so far, and to the journey between Adam and King/Rune (although its King's individual journey which is the most impactful). They also did a bait and switch at the end which makes the viewer almost think that King falls for the bluepill, which is the one actually satisfying ending twist once it turns out to be a trick.

Overall, its a fun read! Very engaging characters and mystery, even if it kinda fucks up at the end. I'm interested in seeing the rest of the mangakas future work.

>tfw no qt nato tactical cyber loli gf to kiss and make out with to extend her cyber loli life so she can be my cyber loli wife

why even live

Have to write more, so here goes. The plot is about girls who are sentient millitant weapons stopping an alien miasma from consuming Japan. It places emphasis on the relationship between the loli and her owner/commander. There are some yuri elements to it too. The lolis are lewded, in an especially fucked up way at the start of the manga + some eroguro throughout the plot, but it turns out progressively more wholesome as time goes ... on. Shoujo Yuuki isn't especially deep, but if you want some short bittersweet moe with a goregeous artstyle, I'd say it's well worth a read.

Junji Ito meets Animorphs. And its pretty fucking cool.

I agree with the public fanfare about Dear Anenome being both trope heavy and not that scary. But it's worth a read for the sheer thrill of the artstyle alone. Harkening back to Junji, a lot of his stories rely more on coolness factor rather than creep factor, which is exemplified through each page flip here too. Its unique monster designs and real life biology lessons are also a treat. The animal biology is based on real life biology, so this is a great manga for zoology enthusiasts as well. I'm curious to see where this manga ... goes and will continue to support it as time goes on.

Jagaaaaaan is a strong premise with extremely loosely-bound ends interconnecting said premise. It starts strong, keeps that momentum rolling for a while in its infancy, ends with an absolute bang, but the entirety of its middle is held together by straws and lube.

A lot of lube, since the mangaka does an absolutely godawful job at disguising his thiny veiled fetishes all throughout the work. Robahata, Moroha, and Yadori are all prime examples of this. All three are guilty of turning an otherwise philisophically interesting battle series into dubcon and noncon pornography. Not for the sake of cultrally taboo discussion, or exploration of desire as ... some like to argue, straight up pornography. If the mangaka wanted to take a deeper look into these issues, they wouldn't be made light of and treated as a joke. "Erm atchually, Yadori-san giving a sloppy titjob to a FUB billionare is extremely integral to the plot!" my ass. These scenes feel like they don't even belong to the same story. It's pure masturbation, and jarringly disconnected masturbation at that. That is my number one biggest gripe with this manga. It's why I find it impossible to reccomend to just about anybody. If it weren't for these gripes, Jagaaaaaan would EASILY be a 9/10 read.

That said, the psychological premise behind indiviudal's innermost taboo and selfish desires highly piques my interest. Jagasaki-san sells the premise really well with his desire to shoot and bludgeon anyone who pisses him off. A desire I'm sure most can connect to in some way or another. Almost all of the early monsters have this shared quality about them. They're unique, have intrigue relevant to a real world problem, and all clearly establish the tone and theme of the piece. It's bound to make you uncomfortable. And it's a damn good discomfort, one willing to challenge your moral compass. An addictive introspective discomfort found few and far between throughout media. It's the embodiment of the phrase "art is meant to disturb the comfortable, and comfort the distrubed."

Its artstyle is also one of the most unique I've ever seen in the industry. It's so grotesque, yet impossible not to marvel and stare at. The raw expressions are the most captivating. Even monsters lacking any resemblance to the human visage perfectly capture the ugliest, intense, and inexplicable emotions across the human spectrum. The quality of the monsters themselves are also top notch. Even when the creativity in other areas is lacking, the conceptualization of the monsters are always fresh, even when the metaphors and internal logic behind their abilities start to lag in the later chapters.

And oh boy, do they lag. Hard. The logic, the art, story, characters. Especially the premise. The middle of Jagaaaaaan completely loses sight of what the story set out to accomplish. Jagasaki himself is a crystal clear example of this. Jagasaki before chapter 68 (the general consensus for the series prime, which I wholeheartedly agree with), and Jagasaki not long after are two completely different characters. One is an unapologetic anti-hero who revels in his complete disregard for human life to a...sympathetic moralist who feels pity for his murderous streak? What? Is this even the same manga?

The monsters as well, lose their human qualities, and become more force of nature villains. Villains like Chiharu and Nomen, both literal forces of nature, come to mind. All the monsters who came before have one commonality; they're all perfectly average people you can walk past the street, one's you've met before, perhaps can even see within yourself, but who have all their worst flaws turned up to 11. While Chiharu and Nomen are not people at all. They're Saturday morning cartoon characters with all edge, no point. All the background monsters share this quality as well. The whole DDL arc very clearly showcases this. Also, as their humanity falls apart, the logic behind their powers become total bullshit. Its primarily the powers with lengthy expositions behind them which fall prey to this. Like the whole energy cancelling bullet immunity thing which is a repeat throughout the later villains, which somehow manages to get even more reatarded each time its introduced. And you know what else gets more retarded each time its introduced?

The art. It lost all the soul and charm of the original, as well as its expressiveness. As the character's original intent dies, the spirit in pen and paper dies with them. Go look back for yourself to see how drastically different the character's designs are. It's almost as if they were outsourced and drawn by a whole different mangaka entirely. The monster designs thankfully remain cool though. Especially the very last and final arcs, where the main villains finally get the depth they've been desperately begging for.

Chiharu and Nomen are at their peak here, as they finally have clearly defined roles. Nomen is a complete and utter rejection of desirious human nature, and wants all of humanity to be a placid hivemind clone of him. To "become one". He's like the Third Impact's persona if it was really into vore for some reason. Chiharu serves as Nomen's antithesis by completely embracing all of the ugliest parts of humanity. Nomen is the Shinigami of human nature, while Chiharu is human nature's ultimate lifegiver and defender. Here, their roles as forces of nature make sense as their metaphors are clearly established. Jagasaki also returns to his origins as a bloodlusty asshole who's only motivation is his homicidal streak. These final chapters also end his character arc in an extremely satisfying way through the best girl in the entire series, Belle-chan.

Belle-chan is Jagaaaaaan's saving grace. She's a perfectly average woman. All she want is a quiet, peaceful life, and for her boyfriend to be happy. She showcases sex as an act of pure lovemaking instead of a crude act of violence. She wants Jagasaki for Jagasaki, not for him as Jagaaan. She is all the pure and unapolegetic affections of a woman which give men purpose and strength to live. She is the purity of desire and the antithesis of the notion that all desire is evil. She is the spirit of the innermost human soul. She is best girl, holding the weight of all of Jagaaaaaan's epic highs and lows by her breasts--I mean. Shoudlers.

TL;DR: It's a good yet questionable at times read for anyone who likes cool monsters, psychological elements, and cute girls, but I definitely can't reccomend it to the faint of heart given its sidebacks. But, if you're willing to look past those, it introduces a lot of novel concepts and is well worth the read, especially for its thought-provoking beginning.