Deathtopia

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An intriguing story that could have used more chapters.

The first half of Deathtopia is fantastic. It has a great atmosphere with some good mysteries sprinkled in as the main character is learning about the monsters known as "Cheaters" and trying to stop their murdering rampage. The book is very gory. Super detailed regarding the deaths. There's some nice fanservice, but it's mostly a horror manga that's not afraid to show boobs.

During the first half of the series, I noticed that it's very fast paced. Deathtopia is more plot-driven than character-driven, however, it does have good character work that other plot-driven manga skip over. However, it ... still falls into the bad habits of plot-driven stories and there aren't enough chapters or scenes where we can sit with the characters and explore who they are outside of their job. As it is, the plot of Deathtopia follows case after case of the cheaters and their victims. Once a cheater is captured or killed the team is immediately given a new cheater case. There's hardly any downtime.

The second half covers more of the backstories between each character and finally reveals who everyone is and the mysteries surrounding their whole predicament. I didn't think this was handled well. The villains could have been interesting multi-faceted characters, but in the end, they were reduced to the whole "MWAHAHA I'm EVIL!!" schtick with some eye-rolling twists. The series does pull off the type of "reveal" that really pisses me off in stories when either the author wants to continue a story past its endpoint or when an author is trying to make more of an impact with twists. It's really annoying, and most of the wrap up didn't feel satisfying.

In the end, the series did end okay, but I wished there was more finality to character arcs and what they did after everything that went down. It's really frustrating when it had such a solid foundation.

It was fun.

I would recommend.

The first 4 volumes are intense.

tl;dr: A manga with a plot that starts getting overtly messy once it starts coming together and lacks good character/relationship development, but looks really really good. 

This manga's plot has good concepts, though ones that aren't all that original, and was pretty solidly for most of it when it was focused more on smaller episodes in dealing with individual cheaters with only hints at what is going on in terms of the larger plot. However, as it got closer to the end and the overarching plot started coming more and more into focus, it started getting really convoluted with too much happening in too short a time with random twists and the introduction ... of a good amount of plot holes. The ending was still decent enough otherwise, it just felt really messy. A bigger problem was that while the characters had solid enough set ups and concepts, the character development was weak and the relationship development was even weaker. I was waiting and hoping the entire time for it to go somewhere, anywhere, but in the end nothing ever really materialized, which is a shame because it really felt like it needed something, wherein anything, even something weak, would be better than nothing.  What makes this worth reading though, is primarily the art. The combat isn't all that deep and rarely has much strategy to it, but it looks really cool. And the character designs were great, and how they were portrayed and just the general style and focus was really great, especially with the covers and color pages. That alone makes it well worth a read. 

Also, it was weird in that it took characters from Eden no Ouri, another work by the author, and just threw them in random positions, often as Easter eggs, but a couple of major roles as well. I didn't really like that or hate it, but did find it kind of strange. 

I must say that the story was one of the many that got me hooked in. It has a lot going on, but at the same time the structure of the story flows well, and its easy to follow through. With a great variety of main characters, as well as new cases that the group has to solve in every chapter, is really worth the time. Considering, that each individual character is so unique, you will certainly enjoy reading this. Also, I want to add that the art style of this manga is great, and it really captures each individual scene, especially during the times ... that Kou, helps out fighting the bad guys with the female group. I highly recommend it to anyone, who wants a great action, and horror filled manga, that will keep you hooked in until the very end.