Gangsta.

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I have not finished it yet, I have read the first 5, but they are amazing and I really enjoy the whole series, the manga and the anime. Worick and Nic are some of the best anime characters I have ever seen, and the way they are portrayed make them very cool. The art is fantastic, though some parts could use improvement, the story is very well written and I enjoyed it massively. Nicolas is best boy, an amazing character and I loved his back story, the way he deals with everything is admirable and his relationship with Worick is a very unique kind of ... relationship that I haven't seen before.

It´s a shame that the last chapter came out nearly 5 years ago with no continuation in sight.

Gangsta was the first manga I consciously bought. I watched anime growing up and even had some volumes of Shaman King, but I never gave it much thought as a medium. But sometime in the early 2010s I really got into anime and wanted to read some of its source material. When I went to get some volumes, Gangsta kinda fell into my lap and since then it holds a dear place in my heart.

I still think Volume 1 is phenomenal. Gangsta looks stylish, the main ... characters seem interesting and it just has an edge to it. It doesn´t feel edgy but rather rough I´d say. Having a hooker, a deaf guy, and a gigolo as main characters also is something way out of the norm. And while I mostly enjoyed it till its hiatus I have to admit that the narrative kinda falls apart after the first 4 volumes.
It´s just too many characters pressed into little space. This feels especially egregious when you think about Marco Adriano becoming a full story while the main characters didn´t even have one full arc focused on them. Alex feels pushed far to the side after a short while and while Worick becomes more involved in the main plot during the ending, we will probably never see how that pans out. Also, the roughness switches more to edge and shonen tropes when the destroyers get introduced. This isn´t necessarily bad, but it wasn´t nearly as engaging as it had been before. Also the concept of twilights never made that much sense. Why do people hate them? Yes, they are stronger and dangerous but it is never shown how bad they are on a moral level. Also invoking Asimov´s three rules just seems out of place for them.

When I reread this now over a decade since I started it I have to admit that Gangsta isn´t this forgotten gem, but rather a roughly shaped one. There are great ideas, I love the vibe of Ergastulum and want to know how the story ends, but there are clear problems in many of the narrative aspects. Be it the clear lack of a focus for the story, too many characters, or the world-building. Despite that I still wish that Gangsta at least had gotten an ending and not just vanished into nothingness after a mere 8 volumes.

I started reading this manga after catching the first three episodes of the anime, which I didn't finish because I heard from others that it was abruptly ended when the studio that made it was shut down. Plus, I had heard that the manga was better, anyway.

If you were told that, don't believe the hype. It's not that good. In fact, it's mediocre. The biggest problem? Gangsta feels like the author was dying to create some gangland action manga and had a hard time coming up with anything remotely original...so decided to add a supernatural element (as in vampires)...but then realized that vampires would be ... too corny...so then invented a new type of human being that is kinda sorta supernatural (like vampires) except is called "twilights" (haha, get it? twilights?).

The manga already lost me with this premise, but I hung in there because I wanted to know the backstory behind the two main characters one of which is deaf. Afterward, I just lost interest. Basically, the manga is a generic story about a war between mafia families, needlessly complicated by this whole other angle about "twilights" and "tags." The fact that there are these new types of humans adds absolutely nothing to a generic gangland drama.

The backstory behind the twilights (all the laws, guilds, status, etc.) is are also incredibly convoluted, too horrible muddled and complicated to make it worth the effort of making sense of it all. Even the author has trouble keeping everything straight. In one scene, he explains that the twilights are called that because they have a short life. The reason? They use drugs that are so toxic that they shorten their lives, but the drugs are needed to extend their lives because otherwise they'd live a short life. I know. (I had to read that at least five times to make sure I read that correctly.)

By the time of the "twilight hunter" arc, I was done. Not only was it extremely derivative (there was a "superhero hunter" arc on One Punch Man), I just didn't care enough about the manga to continue. Besides, it's usually a bad sign when the author starts introducing a whole new bevy of side characters and subplots and veers away from the main characters. It shows he's lost interest or is wondering where to go next with the story. 3/10