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I came late to this classic. Often considered one of the all-time greats, 'Monster' takes on ambitious subject matter - an exploration of the nature of evil itself, taking place on an international stage, wrapped up in an epic conspiracy thriller - and feels appropriately worthy because of it. Johan Liebert is one of manga's all-time charismatic villains, and rightly so; his unique genius is understated and all the more terrifying for it. And though his motivations suffer a little from Jokeresque non-directional nihilism, it does seem a shame to criticise this manga's writing in light of the derivatives that came after it. Like I ... said, I came late.

I was surprised at how plotty this work ended up being. In 18 volumes, Urasawa squeezes a lot of mystery and a lot of characters in. For all the publicity surrounding its protagonist and antagonist, they appear surprisingly infrequently after the inciting incident. This truly is an ensemble piece, though some characters are more interesting than others: my personal favourites being Mr Grimmer and the 17-year-old Vietnamese doctor whom Tenma meets in the second act.

Thematically the manga is a meticulously crafted prism, refracting what I believe is its ultimate question - could a person exist who cannot be redeemed? - through its dozens of subplots. Everyone here has a detailed motive for doing what they do, often explained fairly conventionally through flashbacks or long speeches. This is not necessarily a misstep either, since the Campbellian conventionality of its storytelling is part of its charm and it keeps the pacing nice and brisk. (Personally, I found the deep dive into Czech political intrigue late in Act 2 to be a bit of a slump, and would have preferred more time with characters like Eva, Roberto and Dieter in that space - but this is likely a matter of subjective taste.) The diversity of the characters in age, temperament and motivation is appropriately reflected in art which makes everyone distinctive and characterful.

This is an eminently critic-friendly work, as you have probably gathered - it's worth giving a try for its sheer renown, and if you like the thriller genre you can't go far wrong with it. A bleak but fast-paced and graceful noir about the scariest human being you could possibly imagine, 'Monster' hasn't lost much of its impact in the 25 years since it first began serialisation.

Honestly, this manga is so short it's hard to write a lot about it - but it uses its limited space to create a deliciously dark modern fairytale which doesn't pull punches. Be warned: this review will contain spoilers, though I think this story feels enough like an old legend that 'spoilers' are kind of irrelevant.

The characters themselves don't really get that much space in Rokuyoku. The girls' friendship at the beginning is genuinely quite sweet, but the manga trips over itself to get to the nastiness. We see Yoshika plunge into an abyss of malevolent envy within the first few pages, but we don't ... really see what's so special about the boy she supposedly loves enough to rip her best friendship apart.

This may be deliberate: seeing Yoshika steal everything from Yukina, causing horrible injury and ultimately death, in a more developed context might make the whole thing a plodding, mean-spirited downward spiral. Instead, we get a vignette told with clinical efficiency and an odd, ambivalent curiosity about Yoshika's motives. It doesn't help that Yoshika is drawn in the same romantic, doll-like style as Yukina, meaning the weight and pain of her envy are felt far less by the reader.

This doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it, though. It's not often that shoujo and schadenfreude (along the lines of the darkest Grimm stories) are found together. Other commenters say they wish it was longer; I don't agree. This would work superbly in an anthology of shorter horror works - anything longer would dull the eerie mood and overexplain its freaky final moments.

I started this manga and it was an 8 by the end of the first chapter; a 9 by the end of the 15th. By the 90th chapter, I was in tears. I didn't want this to be my first 10 on MAL, but my experience with Chainsaw Man was just too great not to. Read it.

This story could be told in the simplest way. It does have some level of intrigue, especially as the second act draws to a close, but it's a pretty straightforward arc from A to B (albeit with a nicely-foreshadowed third-act twist). Where Tatsuki Fujimoto really excels is in the ... detail. The sequential art offers a sensitive, pitch-perfect sense of mood and timing: an abortive hookup after a work party; the eerie brightness of a classroom after hours in a thunderstorm; the sky above a suburb, before the peace is ripped apart by an explosion; a laughing woman; a devastating list of names.

The characters, too, are expertly drawn. I don't usually like Denji or Aki's character archetypes in manga, but you can bet they both broke my heart several times over. I felt Denji's bonds with Power, Aki, and especially Pochita like a punch in the heart, and [[BIG SPOILERS YOU HAVE PROBABLY GUESSED]] Makima is the scariest villain in recent shonen. If you wanted to, Chainsaw Man could very easily be read as a manga about the emotional debts people owe to other people, and how taxing it is to fulfil them. Sometimes, relationships can never be dealt with in a way which satisfies everyone, and understanding that can be unbearable. Hence it can just as easily be read as a story about grief and loss, even though about half its main cast can't really die.

In my case, one of the first things that made me really fall in love with this work is its sincere, serious treatment of the workplace. It compassionately draws characters of all ages and nationalities and confronts them with a subtle, truthful vision of working life; at times it almost becomes a very dark sitcom. Even though Denji is 16 at story start, the manga makes very clear that this is a story about an adult world.

And then a man with a chainsaw for a head rides a shark into the side of a building.

Honestly, this is one of the best action movies I've seen and it's not even a film. If that's what you're here for, the art is dynamic, characterful, visceral and often gruesome - and the fight scenes don't let up. There are many of them, and all the while Fujimoto is endlessly creative with setting, framing and choreography.

The story has just reached an important pause: I exhort you to take this opportunity to get through the first 97 chapters and prepare for whatever's coming next. It's a hell of a ride.

This is an incredibly divisive title - I'm on the side of liking it, though I think its author could stand to give its readers more credit. By nature of its premise, this review is going to be at least a little spoilery; I'll put the big ones after spoiler tags. Be warned.

THE GOOD
The character designs are attractive and colourful. Our protagonist is scheming and intelligent, but realistically out-of-touch socially - her fake sweet-anime-protagonist demeanour is (unlike what many internet commentators will tell you) a liability, which is easily seen through by the smarter characters after a while. Throughout, I wanted to spend yet more ... time in Nana's head; her thought processes were well-written and a hell of a ride to follow through. The [BIG SPOILER] exploitative hold her immediate boss has over her is appropriately tragic and fury-inducing, and will have you nearly screaming at the page. There are moments in which you WILL cry - one standout event is close to mawkish, but has a real emotional core amidst all the melodrama - and I quickly started testing myself to see if I could solve some of the mysteries faster than Nana did. You will probably connect in very different ways to each of the three (later four) leads. The battles of the mind are almost always better staged than the physical ones here, and there are some genuinely thorny ethical questions that get raised later on.

THE BAD
Most everyone Nana kills is proven to be unpleasant or evil by the end of their arc, which I'm not fond of as a development. I wanted them to put more thumbscrews on our murderess MC - having her manipulated into killing sincerely well-meaning students, and then dealing with her guilt over doing so, offers both her and the reader a much trickier conflict. The setting itself is an unfortunate combination of outlandish and underdeveloped, which is thrown into relief when [BIG SPOILER] the manga moves into the city: the backgrounds instantly get livelier and more interesting. I'd have liked to see the manga set at a normal school in a big city, with the superpowered kids forming a clique within it. The superpower-school setting seems like a poor attempt to ape My Hero Academia, and as many other reviews have said Talentless Nana suffers for it.

If you're OK with not always liking a main character, you take enjoyment in psychological mind-games, and you love a deliciously dark, B-movie story, you'll enjoy this manga just fine. It's no work of art, but it's a solid popcorn thriller.

I kind of can't believe this title has had so little attention. It's a slick, self-serious shoujo adventure manga with a touch of the Gothic, set in an exclusive school with a mega-genius main character and chess motifs. It has all the makings of an explosively popular manga - but that 'kind of' wasn't a figure of speech. This manga is WEIRD.

The first chapter sets the tone. Its concepts are extremely intriguing, but the art can get confusing when the action starts and the pacing is incredibly uneven. Our MC is a pretty standard Light clone, but his tactics involve more negotiation and people ... skills - a nice twist. The webs of control he weaves around his classmates are a nice way to introduce quirky supporting characters with fun designs, though so far characters who aren't our MC have a nasty tendency to disappear from the narrative. When one of these characters is vitally important to the MC's arc this gets irritating. Very important plot revelations are timed strangely and glossed over, and it's never clear if a character will be a protagonist or not. One chapter introduces about five new protagonists at once, while supporting cast members with unique designs and cool gimmicks are neglected.

The whole thing reads like a freeform RP on a forum, which isn't necessarily a bad thing - I enjoy the ride, and my pacing complaints may be a little overblown as someone who's used to reading shorter work. Kyokou no Ou does, however, have all the muddled plot and wildly varying character writing this would suggest. Our female lead is woefully underdeveloped in both design and motivation: an absolute travesty in a shoujo manga that establishes its characters' traumas and deepest desires using literal superpowers and monsters. Other female characters are decently interesting, too, so I have no idea why the author dropped the ball on her. I found myself excited at the prospect of her being potentially killed off early on to make room for more interesting characters, which is VERY rare for me.

The 'your fears and desires made real' concept for the imaginary world allows for some really creative choices, including some genuinely creepy monsters. It's a world I found myself wanting to explore, and got me wondering what my powers and fears would manifest themselves as (a sign of a surefire hit for this kind of manga).

Yeah, I have a lot to write about this title. Do I recommend it? Yes - it's an entertaining ride for readers who like the look of the cover. But be prepared to have a lot to unpack afterwards.

'Goth' absolutely smashes the ball out of the park with its first chapter, which is appropriately nasty, queasy and - importantly - grounded. Sure, it has some outlandish moments; but the murders are appropriately gruesome rather than glossy and the main character's conniving nature is established in a surprisingly realistic way for this kind of manga. I'd like to see more sociopath MCs in a realistic setting without being a fantasy super-genius, especially if they're as well-written as this one in as few chapters.

When the stakes get higher, everything drifts off into more anime-mystery land. The two protagonists seem surrounded by an uncommon number ... of serial killers; one of the mysteries in particular concludes with a pretty dangerous assumption on the part of our 'hero', whose murder-solving gets more and more effortless with each segment but feels less and less earned. The final case ends with a pretty boring and easy-to-call twist, and it's a real shame to see Yoru's character slowly descend into damsel-in-distress when she's so intriguing early on (one episode has her casually dressing up in the clothes of a murder victim, which is appropriately unnerving but doesn't quite match up with later character revelations).

With a more even balance of power between the two leads and with more commitment to a scuzzier, uglier tone, this would have been an easy 10. As is, it's a solid 8 that doesn't outstay its welcome and has rather beautiful art. The ending is disappointing but it's fast-paced, efficient and tense throughout.

ALSO BE WARNED: Others have mentioned that this is a very gory manga. They are not kidding. This ran in a shonen publication(?!) but it reads far more like seinen in every respect. Discretion very advised.

'Conductor' does surprisingly well with fairly weak-seeming material.

The protagonist and supporting characters are nothing you haven't seen before: plucky and well-meaning female lead, cool genius with a heart of gold, severe (and severely wealthy) musical prodigy... Nonetheless, I was led to genuinely care about their travails at least to some degree, and the repressed-memory twist is well-executed if very pulpy.

I'd have liked Naomi to be more proactive, but her emotional life was well-drawn and I cared about her wellbeing more than her objectively-more-interesting supporting cast.

If you like campus novels/manga, Gothic melodrama (especially of the modern kind) and conspiracy mysteries, this isn't a bad ... diversion at all; particularly since it's only twelve chapters long.

[SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT]
I found the climactic twist extremely obvious, all the way up to calling the death of a major character leading into Act 3 - but it didn't help that an important character is displayed on the cover such that it's not hard to guess.

Might also have been nice to have a few more chapters to develop the relationships between the core five, *especially* Takumi and Naomi; but all the protagonists suffer. A deeper, 'Secret History'-style look into their psyche would have benefited all of them.