Sep 27, 2022
Outer Zone excels in what it set out to do: it is Twilight Zone in manga form. Submitted for your approval are an anthology of short, suspense stories linked not necessarily by theme but by a common formula and the narrator: You start each story off with a mystery that keeps you guessing till the end, when you get presented with a twist ending and a moral lesson. The narrator herself can be seen narrating at the beginning and end of each story, closing off with the message. There is typically a kind of supernatural element to the story, or in a few cases, sci-fi.
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give a little idea of what the stories are like, my favourite story from the series is in volume 1, where a couple struggling with money problems find a shrunken head that can predict the result of any binary luck-based outcome. Armed with this item, will the couple be able to overcome their problems? What could go wrong?
This manga offers what most other Twilight Zone derivative media (TZ comics and fan films) have failed to do: weave an engaging story. It is hard to overstate how good a lot of these stories are, and how the entire package of the twist ending and moral message are present. However, the series does have its low points. With volumes 3 and 4, I found that most of the stories were extremely forgettable, but I believe that the rest of the stories make the whole series worthwhile.
A minor complaint is that the author seems to shy away from the anthology format and throw in some stories with multiple parts or continuations. That has never been this manga's strong point, in my opinion.
I wholeheartedly recommend this manga for fans of suspense, mystery, horror, and supernatural genres. If you are like me and have an hour of commute to occupy yourself with, but serial manga are less ideal because you struggle to remember what happened last chapter after a long day of work, Outer Zone would be perfect for you. Although I recommend it as a sort of "light" read, the stories themselves are anything but, and offer an engaging read that will keep you guessing till the end.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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