Crimsons: Akai Koukaishatachi

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A burning cold-blooded shounen adventure. Takes all the usual tropes and puts them in a nature story about salmon. The art makes for great jokes, where the fish alternate between cartoonish-anthropomorphised and realistic depictions of fish. When you see it you'll know what I mean.

Story feels a little dry, characters don't have much depth (maybe those are related). It's good though. Has kind of a Gurren Lagann spirit.

*Slapped by a hyper-realistic wet fish*
"Yuuka!! Don't you dare... ever let the world beat you!!"

A masterpiece in examining the human condition. Don't be mistaken by the genres listed here! What you'll get is not a watered-down gag comedy, but a raw tale of survival in a fish-eat-fish world - one which will keep you hooked until the end.

Our MC begins with a fiery personality and lofty aspirations ill-suited for someone who was only ever a big fish in a small pond. He struggles against the monsters of the outside world, wrestles with the monster growing within, and even contends with the crushing pressure of nature ... itself. His story is one about turning the tide despite being out of your depth, even when the game is rigged against you. A story about snatching happiness from the jaws of despair. A story about making waves or being swept away.
Crimsons.

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Story: 7.5/10

The series starts to reel you in around halfway through, although the premise itself is a little dry. Our protagonist and his chums dive headfirst into uncharted waters, but almost immediately begin to flounder. The eternal trawl for their personal utopia causes them to get baited by various fishy individuals who turn out to be little more than pond scum, similar to what you'd expect from a zombie apocalypse story. Yet, even when all of his efforts net him nothing, our MC refuses to sink to their level, and does his best to protect his school against their predatory tactics.
Disappointment! The shellfish desire for more! That's how the characters develop a sense of porpoise.

After a relentless stream of developments, many will feel that the last two chapters were a complete wash. The developments did end short of turning stale or wearing fin - even with all the unexplored plot potential. In any case, the manga scales back rather than jumping the shark or inundating readers with too much of the same, unlike this review.

The ending itself is rather unique in how it tackles self-determination, free will, and eternal recurrence, suggesting that there's a flow in all things yet without discarding the value of 'resistance'. It's hard to say whether the mangaka was angling towards a tragic or happy ending, and some readers might even think he was straight-up trolling the characters, though this review only touches the surface. If you enjoy those kinds of ponderous thoughts, you'll make a nice water flea.

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Art: 7/10

The most notable aspect of the art is that character designs often swap between hyper-realistic and stylized fish. This generally occurs during moments of high intensity, and adds an interesting dichotomy of reality and fantasy to the situations occurring throughout the story.

Or, well, the mangaka might just be showing off.

You might laugh whenever a glassy-eyed, hyper-realistic fish starts talking about his feelings, but many of the antagonists are actually impressively drawn. It's no joke when something with too many teeth turns your childhood friend into sashimi.

Most emotions are conveyed through expressions and poses... but these are fish! Without noses! The mangaka uses stylized fish faces to bring out a wide range of emotions effectively, but the differences can be jarring and sometimes inhibit the atmosphere.

The scenery is generally unremarkable, considering that it's an underwater world - but it's also reasonable to expect more random deep bodies of water than coral reefs or precipices, since salmon don't go that deep anyway. Unfortunately, that reasoning does little to deny the lack of immersion.

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Characters: 7.5/10

The character development is predictably centered on our MC, but there are definitely others worthy of mention - every encounter catalyses development, and all of them make a splash. Indeed, some fish are so GAR that they make humans in other series look like water fleas.

The MC experiences a shift in principles as he grows his sea legs. Consumed by his desire to fight against those who would go with the flow and the pier pressure which comes with them - he himself is soon enveloped by the laws of survival. Floating at the surface of troubled waters is his own metamorphosis into that which he hates! Even as this emo fish plunges into the abyss, even as he drowns in despair... he grapples with the corruption of his humanity!

The other fish in his school always remain a little wet behind the ears, but there isn't any undeserved salt. While the characters are kinda shallow, they're believable and difficult to hate when considering their 'sink or swim' ultimatum.

There's also a concurrent storyline following a professor and his student. The problems explored here mirror those of our protagonists; the struggle to overcome barriers, the search for utopia, and the taboo. Their narrative provides a more relatable side to the pursuit of happiness, but more to the point, it runs parallel to the commentary on pointless resistance...

...or I might just be overthinking it again, and it's all just about the struggle to seal the deal.

Finally, there are the existentialist water fleas. Where did man come from? Where is he going? What does that have to do with anything? Their monologues are both humorous and thought-provoking; interpret them to be the mangaka's footnotes on the themes of the story.
Vested in their tiny bodies is the undeniable proof that still waters do, indeed, run deep.

"The world is the will to power - and nothing besides!"
- Nietzsche, 'Crimsons' fanboy