Henshin
Metamorphosis

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Contains spoilers, if you care.

I will be blunt: there is absolutely no value to be found in this.

Discussing Metamosphosis is complicated. People will claim it's a deep, thought-provoking, innovative, subversive manga, but when you try to criticize it based on these claims, suddenly it's only porn and you shouldn't be taking it so seriously. So I will separate this review based on these two point of views.

1. Reviewing Metamorphosis as porn:

If you believe that Metamorphosis is exempt from criticism because it's only porn and it's not that deep, I have news that you might not like to hear: nothing is exempt from criticism, especially not ... porn. And to me, Metamorphosis utterly fails as porn.

I mean, unless you are a sick fuck, there's really nothing about this manga that is stimulating or hot or sexy. Here's what this manga is: seven chapters about a 15 year old girl being repeatedly raped and abused.

Sure, the art is nice (and this is literally the only good thing I can say about this manga), Saki looks very cute and I can't deny that the author is skilled at drawing sex scenes, but then there's this. It's seven chapters where this girl gets fucked by old men, playboys, prostitutes herself, is molested by bullies, raped by homeless men, by her own father, by her pimp. That's it. None of the sex in Metamorphosis is sexy. Nothing about it is satisfying. I don't know what else to say here besides that there's no value in this as porn, because it's a disgust and shock value fest that no one in their sane mind could possibly find to be good masturbation material. Unless, of course, you are into seeing young teenage girls being brutalized and raped by the most disgusting looking old men ever conceived for 30 pages, in which case I advise you to go to therapy and stay the fuck away from me, because what the fuck is wrong with you?

Some people will also say that this is a great hentai masterpiece because it has something resembling a plot, to which I respond, trust me dude, go read an eroge instead. I promise you it'll be more worth your time. Some also say that it hits different as porn because Saki gets characterization and character evolution besides being cute, which makes me go back to point one - in this case, WHY are you getting off on seeing this shy and naive 15 year old that you allegedly care about as a character getting gang molested? Seriously get help.

2. Reviewing Metamorphosis as something more:

Now here is where things start to get complicated.

The loudest claims in defense of Metamorphosis is that the manga is MEANT to be shocking and disgusting. It's meant to disturb you into paying attention to what you're sexualizing and masturbating to. It's meant to get so fucked up that you'll stop yourself and think "dude, what the fuck am I doing?" Well, let's assume that this really is the author's intent. Let's assume that Shindo L wanted to write something that would criticize the way people mindlessly interact with porn and are desensitized to the brutalization of women in it. But then this raises another question.

Why did he choose this means to do it?

Here's something about satire/parody/critique that people don't often understand: when you're attempting to do this, it's easy to fall into the trap of the very thing you're trying to criticize or make fun of. It's easy to try to make a horror movie parody that ends up becoming the very thing it's trying to make fun of, for example. And that's exactly what happens with Metamorphosis here: it's trying to set itself apart from other manga by provoking us to think about what we are consuming, but, ultimately, it's still what it is criticizing. It's still hentai. People will consume Metamorphosis as hentai. People will get off on those scenes of Saki being raped. At most, people will realize halfway through that what they're reading to get a sexual kick out off is fucked up and be like "damn..." and then carry on, forget about it in a week, read yet another prostitution rape manga in a month. This makes Metamorphosis completely ineffective garbage. How can you possibly try to criticize the disgusting traps in which porn falls into by showing us these exact things? Can you really say that Metamorphosis made you think critically about the way you are consuming porn, or did you just masturbate to it, get a little sad, then went right back to some garbage doujin that has virtually the same content as this? The thought that people even masturbate to this at all makes me sick - and that's what is happening, that's what is gonna happen. Even if Metamorphosis tries to wear a social/industry critique mask, it is no different from the very thing it tries not to be.

Now let's forget this assumption for a bit, and analyze Metamorphosis simply as a story, or as a more content/emotionally charged hentai.

Still a failure.

All you get, as I previously mentioned, is seven chapters of this girl being so miserable that at some point you just want this shit to end. Let's go over what happens again with some more detail. First she gets played and raped by an older guy when she's fresh out of middle school. Then by disgusting old men, which makes her fall into prostitution. Then gets bullied. Then gets raped by her father. Then called a vile seductress by her mother and kicked out of home. Then she goes on to prostitute herself even more and get even more humiliated and addicted to drugs. Then pregnant. Then homeless. Then beaten up and treated like subhuman. Then death. You see where I'm going with this? Well, if you don't, here you go: it relies ENTIRELY on shock value. Everything you feel here comes from graphic violence and sex. "Ohhh but I cried, it made me feel sad" Well NO SHIT! Who wouldn't feel sad after sitting through all of this? There are much better ways to go on emotional rollercoasters than watching Saki suffering the most vomit-inducing and vile shit in the world.

And speaking of it, there's also no depth to the depravity which Saki is subjected to. None! She is simply mistreated by everyone because... because? Everyone who ever crosses her path is iredeemably evil scum AND a rapist somehow. Including but not limited to her own parents, a group of high school kids and random homeless people. So no commentary about morality here I guess, just depravity. Whenever there's an attempt to have commentary made too it just doesn't land. What it has to say about purity culture is just a two liner that turns into disgusting sex, nullifying what it was just trying to say.

Then there's Saki as a character, who is, well. A nice and shy girl who wants to become cuter and make friends or maybe even find a boyfriend in high school. She's way too naive for her own good, but ultimately a good girl that you cannot really hate unless you're a psychopath. And... that's it. What else is there, really? What is so special about Saki's downwards spiral into a life of sex and drugs addiction? While likeable, she's not nearly as interesting a character as people make her out to be. She only has things happening to her. The treatment of her becoming an addict, a bullying target and a prostitute is surface-level horseshit with zero layers to it, and, again, shock value. You may argue that it's meant to be this way because she's meant to represent a blank slate of purity and how the world around us can corrupt us easily, but see again my point about the absurdism of the unrealistic abuse she goes through AND of the failure of metamorphosis as social commentary.

Then finally there's the ending where she just... dies. Fantastic then, we have Life sucks and then you die: The Porn Manga. What else is it even trying to say here? Talk about "the weight of bad decisions in your life"? Bzzzzzt! Saki barely even gets to decide anything on her own, because she is abused by EVERY SINGLE PERSON she meets! The chain of shit happening in her life is unlocked by people raping and taking advantage of her innocence! What else do you got for me? "People in the world are bad"? No SHIT, Sherlock! Could've figured this one out without having to look at Saki getting her pregnant belly beaten by random cartoonishly evil people on the street. If this is really meant to be commentary on human nature, then damn, it is a bad one, devoid of any depth and sensible look into what drives people into evil, or why people who are simply evil exist.

No comment about the cheesy, "look at how sad this is please cry" dying dream sequence of her in the future with her daughter (I assume it's a dying dream since the author apparently stated that she dies in the end). No reason to show us that, it literally added nothing to the whole thing besides another layer of slime by evidencing how hard it's trying to shock.

Basically, all that Metamorphosis is is a disgusting fiasco that is touted as a masterpiece by people with no critical thinking skills. I've seen this manga being called many things. Hot, realistic, sad, deep, interesting, unique, well written. Well, it is none of these things. It's gross, it's unrealistic, it's shallow, it's uninteresting, it's the same old waltz you've danced before with porn.

I'm begging you to use your brains and think about what you're reading. I promise you it won't kill you.

Really almost 8, i barely understand this.

SPOILERS ARE COMING!!!!!



So you are nerdy girl, then you change your appearance and few scenes later you are being drugged and forced, but this is H-read so you enjoy it instead of end the day with a trauma.

You fall in love with your raper, not ridicolous and dangerous idea its normal (sarcasm on)

... Later you decide play the escort role but everything turns on fucki... with a fat ass you have just meet, not disgusting at all, he has a big D, its amazing ohhhh forgive me boyfriend kun, really?! Another Hentai common and dangerous plot.

The dad chapter it is ridiculous (like everything in this Hentai). Your father rapes you, but again instead of a logical consequence, you enjoy the fuck and the abuse turns on your average day with a lot of pleasure of course.

Meanwhile you turn into the school whore, because you don't have any trauma (like every women/men in the world would have with a long past of abuses)

Next thing; your mother decides that you are a whore and kicks you out the house; Why? because you have seduced your own father (offff courseeee), so the deal is moving to your boyfriends house; start your career as a prostitute and enjoy your new happy life.

The rest of the manga it's basically, drugs, people abusing her, more drugs more abuse, 0 response to these things, more drugs more abuse, 0 response again and finally OH MY GOD WHAT I HAVE Turned ON?! And die because of an overdose

The thing is that is not only an awful manga, is bad H-manga too, 0 development of the protagonist. The idea is use a lot of hard and tragic scenes and a very tragic ending in order to impress and looks like you have a message, NOOOO you don't have any message you are a typical H-manga with a very dangerous concepts, nothing else.

This review may contain some spoilers.

"Emergence", as I've known it since I read a few pages months before it became so widespread, is easily one of the darkest and most depressing manga, let alone eromanga, that I've read. The outlook of it is very bleak and pessimistic, possibly to a fetishistic degree. It's not terrible, but I'm not saying it's good, either.


Beginning with the most attractive feature, the art is fairly good, with a distinctive style. It's very expressive, perhaps a bit too expressive, as I generally found it to bear a bit more resemblance to art that would better fit a more light-hearted and ... "mainstream" (i.e. not hentai) manga; however, this expressiveness did help some of the darker scenes to feel more "grotesque", making them less bearable than a more "standard", for lack of a better term, art style. As for the more anatomical aspects of it, while the proportions are fairly mild, the art is a bit more exaggerated than the average eromanga, Saki's body or poses sometimes looking downright silly in my opinion.


Moving onto the story, as you may glean from the synopsis, it's essentially the downward spiral of Saki's life after her high school debut that she changed her image for. A more accurate way to describe it may even be that it's a story that repeatedly beats Saki, and likely the reader too, down. The story is told in what could be called a chain of struggles and tragedies, each one involving sex in one way or another, understandable as it's an eromanga, and the degradation of Saki's mind (and eventually body). It's rather predictable in that things go terribly for Saki, though, of the manga I've read so far, it's unique in that the story is told from start to finish, going beyond where other hentai mangaka would leave off.

The writing is highly pessimistic in nature, and not above toying with the readers' emotions, for better or worse; personally, while I cried reading this, I admit that I'm susceptible to such writing methods, and will not guarantee anything. I found the ending more or less fitting of the manga, but I enjoyed a particular small moment of dialogue within the last few pages. Overall, though, I found the writing to be weak, and too reliant on easy gimmicks. While it was certainly tragic, since I've started thinking about the manga while writing this review, I've considered the possibility that an eromanga this sad is specifically so for fetish purposes, as simple shock value seems too simple.


As for characters, I feel as though there are no truly likeable characters in this manga. For a series that has the official English title of "Metamorphosis", the main character, Saki, seems to change the least in terms of characterization, remaining hopelessly naive even through the chain of tragedy involving her; many of the characters that you see less of in the manga show more change, in a few cases, very drastically. Even giving this manga the benefit of the doubt for being a hentai, no characters show anything beyond the role they were meant to fulfill, not even fleshing out that role beyond the bare minimum.


Personally, I did not enjoy this manga, and I primarily read it all the way through so I could understand what a few people I knew were talking about. Unfortunately, this manga was rather memorable, and further eromanga I've read have reminded me of this series, though I don't have any particular feelings about this other than regret.

I would recommend this manga for emotional masochists and those who like to cry, or, in the other hand, those who like to see fictional characters suffer beyond what is believable.


Overall, my experience with this manga was poor, and I feel as though it was trying way too hard to get a reaction from the reader, or that its tragic story was more meant as fetish bait than reaction bait.

To lighten this up a bit, in terms of hentai manga protagonist's suffering, Saki has nothing on Mai-chan.

Holy shit why is this manga's score even 7? let alone that, there are retards that would actually give this piece of shit a 10???!!! because "MUH It mAdE MeE fEEEEl BAUAUAAAAAAAAD" "iT mArKeD mEEE ""sO bRuTal"

Now for the review:

Story
It's pretty unexpected, alot of awuful things happen for no reason,each time the autor just wants something crappier for her, it should not be confused an autor's fucked up mind with an actual good story.
Also the last part where the teenagers appear was so "edgy", and made no sense at all the would be that cruel even less sense that the other characters. ... not gonna spoil the last part but i hope it's not a dream or else i'll get depressed.
Art:
It's pretty good overall, the designs are nothing special , it looks like an average hentai manga, i liked the progression of the vignettes( i have not much experience with comic books so that might be nothing special)

Characters:
The protagonist is boring a character the only characteristics she has are being stupid and love sex and then drugs
Everybody else is a one dimensional asshole who mistreats the protagonist the only somewhat decent character is maybe the fat guy she fucks the second time because he acually realistic compasion for her

Enjoyment:
The only reason i finished this crap is because it was 5 in he morning and i thought his would be traumatic and made just sleep(it has happened) but no it just made ask what am i even doing with my life?

Overall:
It's already 8:53 now so i gotta go to a pick up my credential for the sports club.
i just wanted to let this out. bye

it's a 2/10

God. This was absolutely disgusting. I genuinely wish I could go back to an hour ago when I hadn't read this. Also, MAL, where's your option for a zero rating? I think 1 is a little too high for this messed up piece of absolute dumpster fire garbage.

First of all, let's address this on the aspect of hentai. Sure, the art is good. The sex scenes? If anyone got remotely turned on by the sex scenes and even went as far as to getting off to them please STAY AWAY FROM ME. God. Do people actually find this stimulating? How can you, with any ounce ... of self-awareness, read about a teenage girl being brutalized and GET OFF TO IT? Even thinking about it gives me shivers. I was genuinely NAUSEOUS by the end. The worst part is that I know that there are men out there who are genuinely into this type of shit, and they'll read this and carry on with the rest of the day as if it's normal. And then they'll turn to even more extreme shit as the years go by.

Second, the aspect of it being some satirical, provocative social commentary. If this was social commentary the sex scenes would not be drawn to the point of fetishization. You can tell that they're drawn for men to get off to. The sex scenes (or rather, the fucking RAPE scenes), would be gritty and show how disgusting the men are and show off how it horrible really is. On the same matter, we shouldn't even GET the rape scenes, at least on an explicit level, because it's more jerk-off fodder for guys who are absolutely fucking batshit insane in the head. (Also, can I add, I want this author to stay the FUCK away from me.) Violence against women is often graphically portrayed in media unnecessarily, and this was another addition to that rotation. If this was social commentary, the main girl would not have one personality trait with absolutely no dimension without any meaningful character development other than her becoming a "slut", as the author so kindly puts it.

This is just gratuitous violence, both sexual and non-sexual, packaged as social commentary hentai. Absolutely disgusting. It was not provocative or deep. Lauding it as so undermines the media that handles situations like these with the nuance and empathy that it deserves. There are types of media and animanga that actually deal with this well, and this is definitely not it. I'm going to add a last "stay the fuck away from me" if anyone actually enjoyed this. Disgusting.

Why is it that when something becomes popular for being unsettling to read or watch, it's usually the most "basic" and stale material ever?

A note before dissecting this terrible piece of work to its core, it might be the case that I am desensitized to works like this already, so I will not discount the feelings of others less experienced in the realm of "fucked up" manga, but seriously, this manga did not make anyone cry for a week as some may lead you to believe. I am of course not flexing my "hard stomach" here, this is just to give context and to not ... invalidate other people's experiences too much.

The paneling and composition

Already in the first couple pages of this manga, the reader is presented with some of the most confusing to read pages of any professionally published manga. I will not name any names, but it is certainly even worse than a particular "dark fantasy" manga which reigns supreme in the MAL rankings. The author clearly does not have the reader in mind when writing and drawing this manga, and as we will get to later in this review, avoids this with more aspects of his work. A good mangaka guides the reader's eyes where they want them to go, in every single page. This involves exploiting the page's composition, paneling, and the placement of text bubbles. You want to give the reader a smooth reading experience that never removes them from the immersion of the work you want them to read. "Metamorphosis" certainly fails at this. The only rule the paneling here follows is moving the reader's eyes from the top-right to bottom-left of the page, everything in between is up to the reader's intuition and guesswork. In several cases, one is greeted with character cutouts that transcend panel borders and disrupt the flow of the panel in every way, as the full-body cutouts aren't properly implemented. A good example I can think of is on page 31 of the full work, the reader has to guess which order the speech bubbles are supposed to be read in, as they do not match the standard reading order found in most other manga. A good example of a full-body character cutout is from "One Piece" when Yamato takes off their mask. Having a good flow to your page is one of the bare minimum essentials of making a good comic, and is a rule all comic-book authors and mangaka abide by, except for the author of "Metamorphosis", apparently.

A side note

Why is it worth dissecting and criticizing a hentai like this? I would agree, it is indeed stupid and an obvious low hanging fruit to overanalyze hentai in the same way one would analyze respectable works, however, the manga tries to be more than a simple hentai, so I will treat it as such, even though it fails miserably in what it tries to be. In addition, the majority audience reception of this manga is one that gives the impression that this manga IS in fact something to be taken seriously.

The characters, character arcs, writing, and pacing

This manga is not a good example of what most uninformed individuals would refer to as "character development". Why might that be? The girl clearly changes drastically throughout the story in reaction to her experiences. Yes, there is the PRESENCE of a character arc in this manga, but in the same way as some certain story about man-eating giants attacking humanity hiding behind walls, it is not a good character arc. This is for two simple reasons: the character progression is too fast paced, and that there is zero prior character development (character development meaning the actual WRITING of the character, not the process of change they go through) before she begins to change and bad things begin to happen to her. Why should any reader care about what happens to poor Saki-chan? Any 3 year old could write a story with a character who has a lot of bad things happen to them. Here, I can write one now: 'there is an 80 year old grandma who is nice to her grandkids and she gets murdered on the street because people are bad. The end'. No one cares about that grandma for any reason beyond basic human empathy, as the only empathy she generates is through her existence as, one, a human, and two, as an elderly person. Nothing in that story I just created gives reason for anyone to care about her. This is the same for "Metamorphosis". There is no prerequisite for the reader to care about Saki-chan, or anything that happens to her, besides the fact that she is a fellow human, and a seemingly innocent girl who just wants to fit in (something lazy authors use to write easily relatable characters if they don't actually feel like writing a fully fleshed character profile).

Now for the pacing. Characters here just make decisions on a whim just to fit the narrative. "Oh, we just heard a rumor that Saki-chan is having sex with the boys in class? Let's all hate her without further notice! The author needs her to be alienated from her social circle and to apparently suffer more!", "Oh, I'm pregnant again! I will not abort the baby this time because I do not want to go through 'that' again." Now in this case, because we never actually saw "that", the reader is left to assume that she doesn't want to abort her baby this time because it would... hurt? Who knows. This decision is a turning point in her character arc and it is sudden without any form of buildup to it. Characters just change and react in accordance with what is required for the story. This is lazy writing, and the result is a main character who gives zero reason for anyone to invest any sort of emotional investment in them. Unless, of course, the reader is one of the many people who take characters at face value and relate and invest time into them on the basis of their mere existence as people, rather than doing it for any solid reasons like relatable character traits, decisions, or impactful actions in the story.

Saki-chan is also another example of terrible female writing by a male author. The author writes women as they exist in his head, there to satisfy his fantasies. Girls like this don't exist. And even in a work of fiction such as this, it is offensive to the reader to even portray a character so stupid with actions and decisions solely based on his male fantasy, and expect the reader to actually feel something for them. Now of course, it is a given that women in hentai manga are not realistic, and this goes without saying. But I happened to be unlucky enough to come across fans of this manga praising it for being "realistic", so excuse me.

Also, just a last note for the writing, this manga was insanely predictable. Now this may be an obvious case for hentai manga or erotic works in general, but this really stands out as it isn't even predictable in an absurd sense, it tries to actually portray itself as a solid story with shocking twists and turns.

It fails as a story, so how does it stack up as a hentai?

To cut it short, it fails as a hentai too. I will not try to boast, but this is one of the most visually mild hentai I've ever read. Most of this aspect of the manga comes down to each individual's taste, but people shouldn't waste their time on this manga if they want a good hentai to satisfy their business. It is stale and lacks creativity. Even in the subgenre of "ugly bastard" or "old man", something I dislike to begin with, there isn't anything noteworthy or new in this manga. I would rate the hentai aspect of this manga a 4/10, as there were a few good panels.

So then why isn't it a complete 1/10?

It certainly almost is. But the way the author draws male testicles is nice, and some of the tragic things that happened to poor Saki-chan near the end were definitely kind of infuriating, so I guess the author got me there. But this impact lasted until the second after I read the last page, so as far as an impactful read, it was quite weak.

Conclusion

"Metamorphosis" is truly one of the most overrated manga and hentai I've ever come across. The fact that it has over 40000 members on MAL proves just how easily impressionable tiktok teens are, with the slightly unsettling experiences Saki-chan goes through being an easily advertisable set of events that strike the interests of normies on the internet whose tastes are shaped by the instagram, tiktok, or youtube algorithms. The manga fails as both a story and as a hentai, and is a waste of time for anyone beyond the mental age of 12 looking for something impactful to read or something to satisfy their hentai business.

Roughly 200 pages of misery porn with no greater value beyond that.
The story, while not incomprehensible offers so little for the reader to extract from it that there really isn't any reason to read it at all past the initial shock value. No excellent characterization, incredible art, or thematic depth to be found anywhere within the work give little artistic merit to it's existence and as such I can hardly recommend it to anyone looking to read it for anything save the aforementioned shock value.

The only thing keeping this from receiving a 1 is that it is not artistically broken.

"This series was in part my attempt at seeing how much of that I could destroy — which is why I started off with a romantic comedy trope, just to see how chaotic I could make it from there." – Inio Asano on Oyasumi Punpun. This will be relevant soon.

Anyway, Henshin, or: How People Keep Trying to Find Deep Meanings in Porn

My first contact with Henshin was through those anime pages and groups on Facebook, where people would spend a considerable amount of time posting anime aesthetics, lo-fi hip hop, and displaying a rather unhealthy obssession with ahegao. That last part alone should have made ... me wary enough, but well, what's one more terrible manga to the list?
I should have known better than to fall for the "hentai with a plot" deception, but people kept bringing it enough to catch my attention, so I might as well take a look for myself.

The plot is very simple: a girl changes her appearances as a means to change her life. This one good decision led her to bad decision after another in order to get her into the most deviant and abhorrent sexual situations possible.
...that's it. That's the whole manga. To sum it up, it was the narrative equivalent of abusing/killing off the dog so people would feel sorry for it. It really has nothing going for it other than sheer shock value and emotional manipulation. And it clearly worked, considering how popular it got, but it takes little retrospection to see how bad it is.

Somehow, I've seen this manga being labeled as a "coming of age" countless times — only that, you know, coming of ages usually features growth, introspection and choices made by the main characters. The story wants you to believe it does that, but from the first page to the last, Saki never gets to be anything else than a vapid, empty character only meant for channeling sexual depravity, as if we didn't already have plenty of those around. The only kind of introspection she ever gets until the bitter end is things like "oh no I don't know what I'm doing" or "I loooove sex" (that's not hyperbole, she literally says/thinks that), which tells a lot about the choices her character is ever given: whether her actions are influenced by other people, drugs, or her unnatural craving for sex (always external factors, not once her own resolve), in the end it doesn't really matter: all of them are just excuses for her to get into more sex, and even if she is for a moment shown to be conscious that something's wrong, it doesn't really matter: she does it anyway.

Along the way, in those aforementioned anime pages and discussions, somehow Saki started being called the "female Punpun" (as well comparisons with other characters, like Shinji and even Bojack Horseman for some reason). However, even Inio Asano was conscious enough that a whole story centred around a sad boy being sad all alone in his room wasn't enough to engage people. What made Punpun interesting was his sprawling cast of side characters, that introduced all kinds of points of view and different narratives into the story. Although Goodnight Punpun has its fair share of snob cynicism and Punpun himself ultimately kept his self-destructive and egocentric personality, he was never given a shortage of options and paths to take. Through all his life he was introduced to both evil and good, irresolute and determined people, people that tried to help him and that only made him become worse. It was this diversity that made the story, the universe, and Punpun's character believable, even though it was all still so absurd: nothing was ever only black or white, there were myriads of colours that influenced its characters, and even though the story maintained a cynic and toxic look at reality, it always tried to keep some sense of narrative cohesion. This also reflects on the opinions people have about Punpun: some pity him, claiming he was a victim of odds, some consider him to be the absolute worst.

Henshin, however, does not have that: every single character is depicted as despicable and egotistical, always leading Saki into a even more disgruntled spiral of helplessness even if it meant acting in completely unrealistic ways (like a mother who's so oblivious she immediately believes her husband's claims of being seduced by their own daughter without even considering listening to her side of things), which makes the story completely unbelievable and dumb. Even the one character who shows the least bit of kindness does so as just a way for the plot to spit harsh truths and making Saki even more miserable. It tries too hard to make us care about her by introducing her to gradually more and more screwed up situations, trying to force a sense of shallow pity into the reader, instead of making us care by turning her into an actually believable character or give her the least bit of humanity. It's even sadder to see people deeming her as a "strong" character, when she does nothing but be carried by the plot instead of carrying it, which is not a demonstration of strong character writing, at all.

At first, I thought the art was being purposefully drawn to be as coarse and crude as possible to fit how horrid the whole idea behind the story was, and I've seen some people rise in its defence based on that — only, it wasn't actually doing that. By taking a quick check at the artist's other works, it seems like this is his actual style: somewhat bloated bodies, exaggerated anatomy, and themes such as humiliation and rape (even things like anthropomorphic sex roosters). It also constantly uses the 'ahegao face' (which might explain why it attracts so many edgy teens), so it's hard to defend that those scenes weren't intended for at least some kind of audience to enjoy (namely, Shindol's audience). It simply doesn't add up.

On trying to see how chaotic he could get from the simple premise of self-improvement, the author ended up with nothing but self-deprecating onanism — which seems to be all the rage these days, so it's no wonder it got so popular. People might throw the words 'subversion' and 'deconstruction' around it, but it does nothing of the sort, and attempting to find any kind of deep meaning in Henshin is just a roundabout way to not admit they enjoy a work that has nothing to offer but cheap shock and porn.
In the end, Henshin is just your average hentai doujinshi, only it's not really appealing unless you're into some really screwed up stuff, and it doesn't work as a story of any kind, so I got absolutely nothing out of it rather than disgust and a deep impression of lost time and that the people who revere it as quality story-telling should find better, healthier hobbies.

Frankly, I shouldn't even have that much to say about this and the fact that I do makes me a little queasy: it's a hentai, it's supposed to be mindless and stupid and generally not worthy of any deep analysis. However, the moment people start acting like it has a story to tell it might be judged as such, and the story it tries to tell is complete and utter shit.

I don't know but for some reason i just want to drop a review of this manga here.

I found this manga like two years ago but didn't read it, so i'm really late with this review.

It felt like i'm the only person who hasn't read this, so i just kinda half-jokingly decided to read this. And in the end i just couldn't stop reading this...

And that wasn't because it was good. No, the opposite it was BAD but i still just couldn't defeat my curiousness. So i read and read until it was over, it took me about 2 hours. I started this in midnight ... and finished at 2 am.

It was definitely one hell of a experience.

I'm not gonna give any specific rating on story,art,character and enjoyment for this manga. Because i feel like it's the right thing to do with this manga.



The story is very sad, i think that's what we all can agree to. From the beginning to the near end, i thought this manga was just made to be grose and brutal without any good story. Like pretty much all hentai (except vanilla) i've watched.
But i took me quite long to understand that this story is actually pretty interesting and also realistic. I really think that the life of a prostitute with bad circumstances wouldn't be far away from this. At the end of the series i really felt bad for Saki from what she had to go through.
In the end, your own decisions are always the most crucial thing.


I really feel like the all the characters were just meant to be hated except Saki whom i just couldn't hate. Saki claims herself to be a weak person and in the end, she really was. You can see that she was almost like brainwashable, from the start to end. But if she would've not been so naive and made the right decisions she obviously wouldn't be that weak of a person. I gotta say one more thing about the characters. Her mother... what a wise person. I gotta say if i would have a 16 year old son and he would have intercourse with my wife... Of course i would beat the shit out of him. I don't know if Saki's dad ''raping'' Saki was his somewhat plan to get rid her or just wanting to claim his daughters virginity to him (which he failed, was too late) because his wife wasn't virgin when they had their first time. But anyway that was the moment that i almost stopped reading but.... nope i decided to just move on.


The artstyle was pretty good not gonna lie. I respect Shindo L as an artist but not because of this work...


My enjoyment changed quite often during the time i read this manga. I would describe it as a horrified yet curious experience. This one really reminded of school days but with opposite gender and a bit more extreme. Although Makoto had sex just for fun and Saki did it for money and i guess fun as well. By curiousness i don't mean it's exactly good because now i really start to question my own life decisions by deciding to read this manga.


Overall i still can't give this a good rating. For everyone thinking this one is a masterpiece i strongly disagree. Story was decent, but i really didn't want to waste 2 hours of my life for this. But i already reached the point of no return before i realized it so i just couldn't stop.
What we all learned? Don't fuck your dad, don't do drugs, don't sell yourself, wear protection and always remember to hide the money you pick up from the locker (You know :D)

I just can't believe that this manga is rated 7? Are y'all okay?

How do I begin... I stumbled upon this manga because of memes and posts talking about how sad, impactful, and well-written it was for a hentai manga and I went on-board with that in mind. My expectations were incredibly high since I'm a young woman trying to enjoy more erotic and heavy-plot content and it was inevitable to feel weird out by how fucked up this shit was.

So let me begin per section.

"Metamorphosis deconstructs how hentai is viewed" my ass. I'm a believer that even hentai is an object of criticism as ... any other type of work. So with that in mind, the story did not provoke me nor triggered the need to start questioning myself about anything. What's in the plot that would've made me feel like this hentai is trying to give me a message? Nothing. Just purely shock value content. I totally understand that some people may have cried while reading it but is not because the story is rich in content or social criticism neither realism, it's just because the events presented here are just dreadful.

What part of the story is giving you the idea that our views regarding erotic content should be questioned? It doesn't exist. I can search for other hentai manga with the same topics and I assure you that it will probably be more well-written than Metamorphosis. Even if the intentions of Shindo are to ask ourselves what the fuck are we doing reading hentai, the message simply doesn't come across because it fails in its delivery: Metamorphosis fails as a social critique because this is not a story to think about it, it's just porn -the one that could be qualified in some type of disturbing media iceberg.

I couldn't even read the whole thing because the so-called story is so repetitive that I just wanted to finish it! I want you to recall the events told here: Saki wanted to be more out-going and those attempts led her to become a victim of rape, bullying, and abandonment till her death. Nothing else, a whole repetitive cycle of brutalism against this girl by different people, there is no questioning in our own values -other than "Why I am reading this?"- neither about the characters and their motives. More about that further in this review though.

Are vile and disgusting people out there in the real world? Obviously, but this is well-known without needing to read a hentai manga where the protagonist is violated just because. Even in that aspect, Saki didn't have any reason to be involved there. There was no real reason that led those events to happen, they were not a consequence of a bigger and impactful motive. The cruelty here just happened because is pure shock value from the author.

And the final, oh my lord, the final.

Shindo was not satisfied with Saki living through those horrible things so he decided to just kill her. Once again, there is no instance to use any critical thinking skills here. Yeah, she lived that way between addictions and sex and then what? She died? How sad, poor little girl, yeah yeah. Now, what hentai doujin should I read next?

Now, Shindo has a great talent, that's for sure. I will always remember Shindo because he's just that good. And, well, his skills while drawing porn are great too!

The character design is good too, there's not much to say about it because it is not outstanding, but throughout the manga, it clearly worked to demonstrate how Saki changed from being this shy, cute and naive girl to what she later becomes.

And with that said, Saki's character is just... poor. Going back to my take on how badly this manga did to show any type of instance of critical thinking, some of the thoughts that people may have had are "She did this to herself" and "She did some really bad decisions" but the thing is Saki did decide nothing. Like, literally she couldn't even take any decision by herself because she had been raped, drugged, and bullied by every single person she encountered. The only thing that comes to my mind as a sane decision was when she wanted to keep the baby. But that's it.

Keeping the same thought process, if this was meant to be a masterpiece regarding the social critique aspect, it did a bad job with the lack of depth in the perpetrators of those events, meaning that there's no real background in any of the characters to deliberately make us go "Wow, so that's why".

So...

I clearly did not enjoy reading this, and I'm sure this wasn't meant to be enjoyed anyways- if there's someone who truly enjoyed this manga... yikes. But you did not enjoy reading this because the story was sad, it was just because the sadistic events were horrifying enough to collect some tears that added absolutely nothing important to this topic.

So that's an overall 3 points for the art and yeah. If you are willing to read this manga, please read with caution since it has a lot of trigger warnings aside from the obvious porno characteristics!

It has a happy end.....

The story sets this up to give you a feeling of impending Doom, you think its going to get worse and worse but then it hits you with a happy end.

Now you could argue its a drug induced dream, but even in that case, what is the purpose of it. The Author tries to comfort the Reader after setting up a Story whose only interesting and special part is thats its uncomfortable to experience. You dont want the stuff that happens to happen to the Main Character and you are in awe at what horrible things might happen to her. ... And then the Author decides to scratch that and tell you that everything is fine in the end, just a bad phase she had to get through to be a healthy adult with a child.
Its feels like the author became a wimp at the last second and decided to not go for the actual ending.

Its sad to see something that could have had potential as a story be so utterly destroyed by its ending, the story wasnt really great even at the start but it was special, the ending decided to throw even that away.

The drawings are pretty high quality but if the depictions arent exaclty your fetish you will probably not be aroused by them.

Its not a good story
Its not a good porno
its not even brave enough to conclude itself in a manner fitting to its own promises

Im dissapointed by this.

The only value you might get out of this is the fact that people who end up ditching the story halfway through are probably more likely to be emotionally challenged by this then the people who finished it, an interesting proof to the concept that your own imagination will allways be worse then what any author could write or any artist could draw.

The One And Only. The Myth, The Legend. 177013, i think

The story is absolutely bad. bad stuff, lot of bad stuff, yeaaaaaaaa. 5 out of 10

The Art, its to bad, like bad bad, i was like "EWWWWW WHAT THE FUKC" and "AINT NO WAY" so 2/10

The Character, she got into a bad situation, so yea 3/10. Saki kinda fine doe not gonna lie,

My Enjoyment, I did not like it, so its a obviously its a 1/10. I never liked it. also, the tags are very based and mid so yea. naaaa jit trippin

My Overall Rank For This Manga. 2.