Jul 16, 2019
Have you ever been at the scene of a horrific car accident? You know you shouldn't look. Most likely, you're driving yourself and you need to keep your eyes on the road, anyway, but you just can't help it. The sights of miscellaneous debris, a twisted heap that's barely recognizable as a car anymore, and possibly even emergency responders on the scene, all draw your eyes in. It's too horrible not to look.
This is the rough manga equivalent of that phenomenon. Words cannot do it justice. It has to be seen. Even so, for me seeing was not
...
believing. I could not understand what I was seeing for most of an entire chapter. Finally, it dawned on me. This manga was rendered with some kind of computer-generated imagery software.
It had never occurred to me before now that this was a thing someone might try. Furthermore, that it would be printed in an ordinary manga periodical, and blithely reproduced on Crunchyroll's website. The result is horrifying. One might chance upon this manga on CR's site, or on an aggregate site such as this, if he is unlucky. It is deservedly obscure. Even if one does happen upon it, he is likely to shy away from it because of its terrible promotional image. As far as I can tell, it only has the one.
The promotional image is baffling in how it is both indicative and nonindicative at the same time. It is indicative of the general quality of the manga, but it doesn't seem to be made using the same model as it appears in the manga. The poor promotion seem to have extended even to the adaptation work. Some obvious mistakes were left in, some panels weren't cleaned appropriately, and there was even an image that wouldn't load.
Considering how slipshod the work itself is, I can hardly blame them for the lack of effort. There are backgrounds that are obviously just photographs. This isn't unheard of in manga, but it's just egregious here. There's even one that appears to be from a timelapse photograph, which is a really bizarre choice. Was it the first picture he found? The CG models are desperately lacking in detail. It really doesn't make a lot of sense in a situation like this where rendering is barely even a consideration, so the only reasonable explanation seems to be a simple lack of effort and/or skill.
I've barely talked about the story itself to this point, but to be blunt these visuals made the story sort of moot. Even putting them aside, it's like a bad version of Hell Girl. But even this comparison highlights the main failing of this manga. Hell Girl nailed the aesthetic qualities. Hell Girl had style. This is liable to make one bleed from the eyes. I hope I won't be spoiling anything by mentioning there are murders in this manga. Those are probably the most important scenes of all, but they look retarded. It looks like somebody's stabbing a goddamn mannequin. It's impossible to take them seriously, much less with the gravity they're supposed to possess.
So, in the end, what even is this manga? In the first place, is this actually manga? Even the aggregate sites don't seem to know what to do with this thing; there are almost no tags used. It's only a "psychological" manga in the sense it's likely to drive one insane. The only thing horrible about it is the way it looks. In the end, perhaps it is only a freak show.
P.S.: Do not read Crunchyroll comments for any reason. You are liable to lose some of whatever little faith in humanity you had left. Even MAL users have eyes.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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