Ningen Shikkaku

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Japanese: 人間失格

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 3

Chapters: 12

Status: Finished

Published: Feb 6, 2009 to Apr 21, 2011

Genre: Drama

Themes: Historical, Psychological

Demographic: Seinen

Serialization: Comic Bunch

Authors: Furuya, Usamaru (Story & Art), Dazai, Osamu (Story)

Statistics

Score: 7.97¹ (scored by 10,793 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #862²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #469

Members: 42,138

Favorites: 793

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Kodansha USA

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7.97

Ranked #862Popularity #469Members 42,138

MangaComic BunchFuruya, Usamaru (Story & Art), Dazai, Osamu (Story)

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Volumes: /3

Chapters: /12

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Synopsis

While working on a shounen manga, manga artist Usamaru Furuya comes across a website titled No Longer Human, an online diary created by a man named Youzou Ooba. Youzou describes his own life as one full of shame, particularly detailing his descent from a popular and high-ranking high school student to a slovenly-looking man with white hair despite only being 25 years old. Astonished and captivated by this rabbit hole of misanthropy, disconnection, and lust, Furuya decides to continue reading and eventually uses his artistic talents to chronicle the troubled man's autobiography.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Ningen Shikkaku is an adaptation of Dazai Osamu's novel of the same title, originally published in 1948.

The series was published in English as No Longer Human by Vertical from October 25, 2011, to February 28, 2012, in a left-to-right format. Kodansha USA later released a complete omnibus edition on November 1, 2022.

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Ooba, Youzou

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Horiki, Masao

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Reviews

Jan 5, 2024

berserkersoul

Recommended

*~CONTENT DISCLAIMER: manga makes mention and/or depicts sensitive topics like alcohol/drug abuse, sexual violence, abortion/miscarriage, and child sexual violence~*

TL;DR: a tortured young man tries to understand what it means to be human and leads him down a rabbit hole of bad impulse decisions that ends up worsening his situation. his endless wandering leads eventually causes a psychotic where he nds up being completely consumed by his madness. this story is absolutely beautiful and terrifying. it was such a great read but NOT for the faint of heart. if you like Berserker, you may like this manga.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SYNOPSIS: youzou is a troubled individual struggling with identity and ...

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Jul 12, 2023

Temoblanks

Recommended

Not really a story but more of a character exposé. The character, Yozo Oba, is young, rich, charismatic, talented, good-looking, sensitive, and innocent, much too perfect to see yourself in, but kind of an "I wish I was like that" character. To his perfection gets added a dose of psychological trauma which will be the source of conflict that spins his life out of control despite how easy good things happen to him.

From trauma, to depression, to despair, to addictions, to paranoia, to ruin, a progression that feels very real that touches your deep fibers even if the character originally felt too perfect to be ...

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May 9, 2018

Matthew_S

Mixed Feelings

No Longer Human is a manga adaptation and modernisation of Osamu Dazai’s novel of the same name, following Yozo Oba, a young man who is terrified of other human beings and feels himself alienated from them. I see no problems in adapting the story to a modern setting, as alienation and fear and mistrust of other people exist in any time period. A story with these themes can be told well no matter when or where it is set, as it’s something everyone has likely experienced; but I find Furuya’s manga adaptation to fall short of Dazai’s classic novel in depicting that state of mind. ... No Longer Human focuses heavily on Yozo’s severely broken perception of the world and how he keeps destroying himself in mind and body (helped in no small part by his environment); and in stories like this, my expectation is that the character’s actions and mindset be clearly understandable. In this pursuit, the manga succeeds partially, but it could have done so much more.

The core of Yozo’s character is evident: he feels alienated and mistrustful towards most people, and he can only connect to them superficially, by behaving like a clown to make his classmates like him, and by having casual sex with women instead of forming fulfilling relationships. He goes through hell as he overreacts to his every failing and misfortune, beginning to abuse drugs and falling into a very dark place psychologically. The disappointing thing about Yozo’s characterisation is the fact that most of the time we’re on the outside looking in at him, instead of on the inside looking out at the world through his eyes, as in the novel. We have an objective view of him, not a subjective one heavily influenced by his self-loathing. Being directly inside Yozo’s head gives a much better idea of who he is than anything the manga does from a third-person perspective: the best examples of this are the passages ripped straight from the novel and displayed between chapters of the manga, which have the unfortunate effect of inviting comparison to the source. Now maybe I’m being unfair here, because novels by nature get inside a character’s head far more easily than manga, but it’s not like manga are useless at it. Solanin and Berserk are examples that prove that manga can express character emotions effectively: they build empathy for their characters through effective use of facial expressions and body language, as well as composition. Unfortunately, No Longer Human doesn’t do this nearly as well.

Occasionally, Yozo’s worldview will leak into the art: he’ll be depicted as a helpless marionette, or the people around him will be depicted as faceless beings incessantly staring at him; and one standout sequence shows Yozo drawing a manga, filling it with grotesque and horrifying images, venting his feelings through his art, clearly expressing exactly what’s going on that we don’t see the rest of the time. Although the manga’s artwork becomes more expressive as the story goes on, it is ordinary for the most part, and the occurrences I’ve mentioned are the exception rather than the rule, and arguably a case of too little too late. The artwork doesn’t do quite enough to communicate Yozo’s thoughts and emotions, leaving the rest of the job up to the writing.

Furthermore, Yozo is only given minimal backstory. His father is implied to be a major part of why he became the way he was before he was introduced at the beginning of the story, but the hinting at what happened is so vague as to be nearly useless. The novel, in addition to describing Yozo’s upbringing and early life, includes a brilliant account of his father offering him a choice between two gifts: a mask or a book. He wants the book but gives in to his father’s expectations and chooses the mask, symbolic of the façade he would put on for the rest of his life. Nothing like this is to be found in the manga, leaving us to guess at what turned him into such a broken person, which is unfortunate, as it makes him that much less understandable and relatable. Showing his childhood and giving more detail regarding how he grew up would have gone a long way in creating a more interesting character, and would have greatly benefited No Longer Human, which is first and foremost an exploration of Yozo’s character.

In conclusion, if you haven’t experienced No Longer Human in any form, then I advise you to read the original novel. While the story of alienation, betrayal, vice and self-destruction shown in this manga is certainly serviceable, and its strengths are hard to dismiss, many of the changes it makes cause it more harm than good, making it a decent manga instead of a great one.

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Ningen Shikkaku
No Longer Human
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