Alive

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In my opinion this manga is amazing. I've often wondered how good a one shot can be, and Alive! is my answer. The story starts off innocently enough, but then we are dragged into an allegorical story about evil. Two death row convicts are drawn into a peculiar attempt to transfer this evil from a body of a seemingly innocent girl who has been infected with it by her father. Is this infection really a disease? Or is it something that lingers within every human being, waiting to be awakened? What kind of person can win against the black within? A pure-hearted one, or a ... person with nothing to lose? How far are people willing to go just to keep breathing? These are the questions this one shot ventures to ask. And it manages to answer them as far as it is possible to.

Horror and manga. I never knew that combination excisted. And I have to say: I'm glad it does excists. I was looking aroudn for some manga and I found this. Only ten chapters, why not read it?

I finished it in about half an hour. The story kept me reading and guessing what would happen untill the very end. Why did I give the story a six then? It was fine, but there was no moral or whatever behind it. The maincharacter is a son of a bitch and I just wanted him to die. Perhaps not everyone agrees with me on that, but that's my ... opinion.

It is quite a typical horror story. Two fellows in a room, they can have something they want if they kill eachother. I was suprised when I found out there was a whole lot more behind it. Without spoiling: there is a form of evil wich can consume people. And it can jump onto whoever wants to kill. The one with the biggest intention of killing, will be consumed by it.

The graphics were fine. Although it pissed me off when I mentioned that almost everyone has drops of water on their faces. Always. Sometimes it is sweat, then it is rain water. But what the fuck? It was unnecessary and just fucked up. I mean, someone can sweat if he feels fear, but he doesn't get wet by just sweating.

Well, that was a minor thing I didn't like. The story wasn't very sadistic, I got that impression at first, it's quite good. Not fantasic, because there isn't any bonding with the main character. It's a bit short, but that's not a real issue for me. This story shouldn't be long. It was a typical horror. Not really good, not really scary, but worth your time!

Story:
Not that great. A real mess of forgotten character traits, weak character relationships, and just weak characters overall. A waste of time. I found the first chapter to be a real cheat. It lays the foundation for a neat protagonist as a writer who's on death row. Then it's never mentioned again that he's a writer despite a fairly important scene taking place in regards to it, and it really doesn't matter that he was on death row either. It's kinda just dumb.

And that's a lot of what's going on. It's just a buncha dumb stuff. I'll give credit where credit is due: there are ... bits and pieces of potential strewn throughout this manga, but the problem is that almost ALL stories have bits and pieces of things that work. The problem is how a writer capitalizes on it, and this particular mangaka doesn't do that at all.

I can't really talk too much else. I suppose that's fitting.


Art:
The artwork is where Alive shines. It's pretty great, although some proportions were a bit of a mess. That said, I couldn't tell what was going on with a few panels (and even pages) so I the mangaka improved on his motions and separating the setting from the actors in later manga.


Character:
Just crap. Again, there's some foundation, but then water comes in and shows how weak it was. I can't give a 1/10 because there was an attempt, so I'll keep this at 2/10.


Enjoyment:
Once I realize the mangaka was leaving a ton of stuff empty and wasted, I kinda checked out. There wasn't much this manga could offer me at the halfway point other than the small chapter count. I suggest avoiding this one. Just boring.



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