Shounen no Abyss
Boy's Abyss

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Missed opportunity for greatness. But good none the less.

I followed this manga a while back. I was in this arc of reading sort of edgy material (Tokyo ghoul) (Berserk) and wanted more. Then I stumbled across this manga where it was dark edgy and truthful while also dealing with a lot of mental problems but not being action focused but more drama. I caught up to it on chapter 173 and slowly waited for the chapters to come out. I hadn't even realised but the manga had come to an abrupt end.

From the start I loved the themes and how the story played out. ... Every bit of it was unique for and something I had never seen before. The characters the mystery and the strong emotional feelings that were present during some major parts. It was ready to set up some major action and create a beautiful finale but, that didn't happen. It was short and didn't fill in any of the gaps that were left untouched. It felt rushed and kind of missed its whole big plot. Up until that point it was perfect just to let it drop and rush the ending. Even though I have given it a 9/10 here it may be closer to an 8 though its a mixed feeling.

This show cuts deep and you should definitely read it for the journey. Although the ending was lacklustre and a wasted opportunity it leaves room for the imagination and if not anything it does wrap everything up well and fix the main struggles characters face in the manga.

So, it's finally over.

Being made by the same author as Hatsukoi Zombie, I was very interested in this manga since the first chapter came out. Not only is the art style very different from the mangaka's previous title, but so is the entire genre. To the author's credit, transitioning from a shounen romcom to a psychological seinen is, I imagine, not an easy task.

I never truly enjoyed it after chapter 100, but at that point, I just wanted to know how it would end. The teacher was probably the sanest insane person in the entire story. Aside from the quality of the art, she was ... the only reason I kept going. Nobody else really made sense to me, it was drama all over the place, everything seemed random. The title tries way too hard to present itself as being "dark," while overall it's just a complete mess of bad character writing.

It was a "fun" mess nonetheless, despite its flaws very unique also.

As someone who is a fan of "Hatsukoi Zombie" and is quite fond of "Himegoto: Juukyuusai no Seifuku", I was going into "Boy's Abyss" with a positive attitude and hoping for an interesting read as the author had already displayed with their previous work. But, something felt off as soon as Nagi and Esemori's beginning character personality and development was introduced.

Despite being a major part of the manga, the dark themes such as self harm, rape, and adultery serves very little purpose in character development or plot progression. They were usually there for a sort of deep emotional emphasis, which was not successful at all. ... The only effect it had on readers, in my opinion, with such a large amount of atrocities happening one after another is that it numbs the readers and makes decencitize to these horrible, borderline criminal (well some are criminal), actions, which just dilites the dark themes and turns the manga into a torture chamber for the readers.

The premise of story was actually quite interesting. The mystery of an idol and her obession with double suicide with the main character was a good hook, and a strong theme around "people borning into a town never leaves the town", and the mental anguish of the main character's struggle between prioritizing his future by going to uni in Tokyo or taking care of his struggling family at a young age was very interesting. However, the paths and methods that the author took to tackle this premise and these themes was unbearable. The way that the characters' motives and reasoning behind their actions were presented was convoluted and always ill intented. This ill intent could be conveying the evil nature of people or just people from this cursed town, but this barrage of evil, atrosicities, and other distusting shit are really not enjoyable to read. To add on to these weird and uncomfortable character traits followed by convoluted plot points, the characters are just unlikable.

The characters are irredeemible. All of them just slowly decend into despair. At the beginning at least the author gave us a little hope for some of the main characters to turn around and change things. But by the end, they all keeps getting weirder and hopeless, which honestly feels like their in despair for the sake of the mood of the story because these characters just make no sense. The solutions of each character arcs were very dependent how likable and much we cared about these characters, which was nonexistent for me, so the conclusion was extremely unsatifying and empty.

Personal opinions. I mostly either hated or just did not care about the manga, so I really did not enjoy reading this. Buy by chapter 100 I was locked in to finish it because I know I will definitly drop this if I stopped at any point, and some moment were like watching riduculous car crash, so it's not completely unreadable. I also liked the character of chako and sensei at the beginning because of the struggle of helping themselves or important ones around them while juggling around family problems and potential societal backlash (well the sensei is breaking the law, but as a fictional plot device...). But then they just went crazy... thanks.

To conclude

While having an interesting premise and theming around the human relationships of a certain countryside town with decent art and well designed characters that started at a 7/10 (good) for me, the story and characters really dragged down the score to around a 4/10 (bad), but since this manga was a little infuriating to read (hate reading),which avoided complete boredom soit got boosted to a 5/10 (still bad tho).