Sep 14, 2023
tl;dr: A pretty interesting world and some interesting story concepts, but not very well written.
Cagaster takes place in a world thrown into a post apocalyptic scenario due to the arrival of being known as Cagaster. Humans spontaneously turn into these giant bug monsters, becoming mindless beasts that go on to attack and consume other humans. This transition occurs over twenty minutes, however there is no cure or treatment. As such, the best way to deal with anyone for whom the transformation process begins is to kill them immediately. As such a profession known as exterminators has arisen, who deal with not only transformed Cagaster, but
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also quickly kill anyone that begins the transformation before they have a chance to fully become one. Though this minimizes the damage done, as this essentially amounts to killing sick people they are still generally seen in a negative light by the public.
This story follows Kidow, an exterminator that while serving as a guard for a merchant on a trade route, ends up finding the remnants of a Cagaster attack. However, there are two that have managed to survive the attack, a dying father and his young daughter. The father with his dying breath asks Kidow to protect the daughter, Ilie, and to take her to her mother. Despite Kidow not being the type to typically agree to such requests, he accepts. However, it turns out that Ilie doesn’t know where her mother is, or who she is for that matter. Kidow brings her back to the city he uses as a base, E-05, and makes some inquiries, but is unable to discover anything. As such, she simply begins living in the same boarding house as Kidow and starts working at the attached restaurant.
The first half of the manga is a series of episodes centered around Kidow and Ilie as they deal with various issues and in doing so the manga fleshes out the world and introduces a variety of characters. The world building itself is pretty interesting conceptually, but it felt like it wasn’t handled all that well. There are themes relating to guilt that arises from having to make difficult choices as well as the hate that those that made those difficult choices receive from others, but they weren’t conveyed very well. The way the story is structured, it relies too much on telling instead of showing when it comes to the difficult choices in that it just describes the horrific things exterminators have to do without showing them. It eventually does show as well, but it felt like too little too late and thus lacks impact.
There are various competing factions and such as one would expect of a post apocalyptic world, but that too is just kind of handled in passing without fleshing things out. The smaller plot lines too aren’t all that interesting, and the overarching plot line moves pretty slowly. The side characters and their stories are also only okay. As such, the highlight of this half of the manga is Kidow and Ilia. It has pretty solid relationship development for the two as they interact with each other, and also some decent character growth as they interact with various others around them.
The second half unfortunately screws that up. The plot shifts to being focused on a single conspiracy involving Ilia and her past. While most of the first half involved E-05, in the second half Ilia, Kidow, and the overarching plot in general shifts to another city. However, the manga seems to want to keep a focus on E-05 as well and thus it focuses on a second plot line involving all the side characters from E-05. This plot line is kind of pointless however, as it doesn’t really seem to do anything of value with the side characters, and plot wise at a grand scale it doesn’t really matter what happens in E-05 as long as Kidow and Ilia are able to resolve their side of the plot. Thus, the jumping back and forth just makes things messy and screws up the pacing, and combined with there also being flashbacks and side stories thrown in it can get pretty jarring.
The plot itself is a mess too. It’s heavily centered around the background and characters arcs of Ilia, Kidow, and another character named Acht. However, it doesn’t handle any of these well. Kidow and Ilia’s personalities change way too much way too quickly. With Ilia, it makes sense logically considering it involves memory and trauma related shenanigans, though at an emotional level I still felt it wasn’t written as well as it could be. With Kidow though it makes no sense whatsoever and is just really bizarre. Acht has an interesting background, but he isn’t fleshed out well enough so his motivations and his actions seem too fuzzy and dynamic to follow properly. The ending is also really abrupt, with it hard ending pretty much right after the climax with no epilogue at all, and thus feels pretty unsatisfying.
The manga also has action throughout, but it wasn’t all that great. There were some interesting aspects early on in terms of techniques exterminators had to use to kill Cagaster, but as the manga shifts to focusing more on human vs human battles it becomes mostly all generic gun and knife fights without any particularly memorable moments. The art has a grungy and rough style that works well for what it’s going for and thus the art is decent enough, even if the design work in general felt pretty dull. The translation also has a bunch of minor errors throughout and felt pretty stiff at times but is readable enough.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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