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The most terrifying zombies ever portrayed in manga.

From the slow, terrifying ghoulish zombies of the past, to Danny Boyle's, 28 Days Later runners, and the mutated Resident Evil ones. It all comes to an avalanche, an overwhelming impossibility that is going against the superhuman-like capabilities of EACH zombie on display here. It's the kind of apocalypse that can't be surpassed with simple cardio, with smarts, or plot-armor. You need an inhuman amount of luck to pull whatever the hell the characters of this manga did. It kept scary until the very end, even when it was about to end, I still hated every zombie in ... this story.

It's a triple-A kind of movie manga that starts with the typical protagonist in a prison. Convicted because caught in a bad place at a bad time, specifically after someone killed his family, which I've seen like four times now. To be honest, the story isn't the entire focus, it's okay. The only depth there is, are the characters. People with a humanity and a reason to be where they were, but the themes kinda stop there. It's mostly an excuse to give us a reason on why they're special. They even talk about indoctrination on war children, but again, it's just to give the character a reason to do what they do, which is nice. We get a consistent cast of people with consistent writing on what otherwise is the focus. The Zombies, man.

Relentless, avalanches of car-fast zombies. It gets so bad with their presence, that one of them can clean an entire room of convicts. If there's something which could realistically end the world, it's that, which is such a thing for the writer's stories. They love creating something which can very much wipe us out, and making a certain special someone stop it by sheer luck, and finding the right people for the job.

Great set pieces, great scenes, bombastic suspense, and a neat ribbon of consistent writing to tie it all up. It's solid, it's great, but I know I won't remember much about the characters in the future. The staying power of the manga is the horror, the creatures. Their vile depictions of veins, eyes. There's a great presence to every design, and every creature. All horror scenes are in daylight, too. The author doesn't even need to play with shadows, or to hide the monster; the knowledge that it can see the characters, scares me far more than being hidden from it.

7/10. I could not stop reading. Surprisingly, it isn't as edgy as I thought it'd be.

Yeah, it's a bafflingly terrible ending, but I don't think the rest was perfect either.

I'm glad the many manga I started following in my love-starved times are ending. It began with the normal guy, being coupled with somebody excessively opposite to them. The trope, of course. Awesome, wholesome, interesting, coming from the development of cosplay and what it entails. How our hobbies define us in front of the people around us. The crunch, balancing life with hobbies, and how jealousy comes from limelights you participated in, but can't prove you did without self-imposed selfishness. It started to become mature, true to life, and ... true to the things we wish to be recognized in.

The romance worked, as both had a human chemistry which doesn't feel natural in many other manga, or anime for that matter. Away from forced conventions, this one had two people growing together while achieving dreams for one another.

Gojou became more than just the normal guy, he had goals, just like Marin, our co-protagonist. Both became a unit due to their goals, but as they differed, and met new people, life shaped who they were, and what they should focus in. Things got murky, and differences arrive. As both misunderstand, not their positive feelings, but the negative ones, something which doesn't usually happen. Both go through hardships which they wish not share with each other, and damn, it was becoming GOOD. And right as it picked up, it couldn't muster the great story on the other side, but a consistent meandering.

The story takes a pause, it explores other characters, go other places. People we don't care for, people who don't advance the story. It wasn't a side-story, but part of the main one, and as the monthly schedule went on, of course the audience wants the story to advance. Why should we wait if it doesn't lead anywhere? I held onto hope, the story could only get better with the current ideas, and there was some good conflict. The cousin arc, the final cosplay arc, it set up incredible new ideas. The story felt like it opened itself to a new, boundless potential. It could finally be a competitive, cosplay manga, filled with new conflicts.

The story gets so much better after, since the manga does what all romance manga strive to achieve, with many open routes to keep taking. It couldn't end there, it can't. There's so much in there.

It did. It fast-forwarded to the future, pretending all which was opened didn't exist. Oh… right, okay. Awesome. The potential, lost, plot lines, lost, redeemable characters, lost. The lesson in understanding, and tolerance, hobbies, and uniqueness in people. Everything, into dust.

I won't try to hammer and say the author should've ended it better. They had health issues, and had to cancel it. I'm judging the manga based on the quality of it, not on whatever happened to the author. The beginning was good, it got pretty bad, then it got AMAZING, pretty bad again, AWESOME, then… terrible ending. As it is, can't give it more than a 6.

What was good, was incredible, what was bad, bored me to death. A bunch that I love, a bit which I hate. It all boils down to it being a good manga, with big waves which change its quality. At least the art was great, and the feelings conveyed in expression, and the reactions of the characters were awesome.

6/10. Solid. I recommend it, at least for those who appreciate the trip, instead of the destination. Binging this would be way better than my monthly times with it.

It's fun to see a show admit you have to be an egotistical bastard at times.

I'm tired of battle royale's, man. I've seen the tropes. How characters unite in the most unlikely ways. The empathetic main character, or the morality at play when put against people who could be good. Rarely done with nuance, and I'll admit, this one gets pretty close to being great, but I really couldn't take it seriously.

Battle Royale, but with soccer. You got monsters who can level the playfield, you've got the underdogs, the great prospects, and our protagonist who is very much a nobody in a sea ... of potential nobodies. He's gotta climb his way through, alright, sure, fine. I went along with it, and took what was essentially 24 episodes of what I can only describe as an author holding back.

Be it the slow progression, the character dialogue, and the constant weirdness in all of them. First, you can tell the big cast of characters merits diverse personalities. It allows them to stand out, to have their voice, but as a problem, they're too out there, exaggerated, stupid, incoherent. Their way of thinking makes sense for each character, but they get so repetitive.

They repeat their way of talking every time they're on-screen, just for those three seconds to remind us of their existence. It speaks poorly of the writer's ability to direct them without being edgy, or plain cringe. Stuff like “I have a demon in my heart”. These are highschoolers, close to 18-years-old. If they were middle schoolers, that's the limit, but please, STFU.

Second. This is an experiment from the author, and you can tell. I've read the author's biggest works before this one, and while still childishly dealing with adult themes, the writing stood out, the characters were given proper depth, since they couldn't cross the line of excess. There were always smaller casts, and thing is, the next season, or part of the story probably works way better since the story rids itself of unneeded characters. However, the most edgy ones stay, and weirder ones just got in, making my optimism utterly stupid.

I wish there was more to chew on, more of an interesting main character. Even if his dynamic is very fresh, being able to predict the playing field, and what not, his personality is as plain as you can imagine. Main character, underdog, nice guy, the least unusual, with a strange awakened state. I'm tired of it, and this simply perpetuates cliché's without being able to break away from them.

The animation works, the story works, and it moves, but I'll give it a chance to redeem itself. It's not bad, it's just on the verge of being bad. It can only get better if the author manages to truly use its cast, and lesson, to change the protagonist and the people around him. Other than that, it just doesn't stand out that much compared to the author's other works, which have a little more to say about its world than this.

6/10. If the author was trying to make a typical Shonen, you can feel the Victorian style skeleton whispering he should go back to his edgy roots.

Life is a never-ending paradox.

Having nothing, means nothing to fight for, but if fighting for happiness, brings unhappiness, is it all worth it at any point?

“Zankyou” is bleak. Our protagonist, an absolute nobody within nobodies. Not an underdog, not someone with an objective of his own. A nobody, walking the earth with no human connections, only an old man he visits from time to time. A yakuza who hands him a simple objective. “Take this money, and kill me”. Hesitation, fear, the strange allure of an objective makes him pull the trigger, but he doesn't keep the money, he wishes to donate it ... to the old man's victims families.

A man with a gun, and some money. Nothing to lose, no ambition, just something to do, something to make him a somebody. As he advances, he meets someone, the only soul that actually helped him, a trans woman / crossdresser (I don't think it's clarified), and a kid, her nephew.

In essence, the story is about how his crimes rack up. How the world starts to catch up to the man with the gun, but about how now he does have something to fight for. A love for somebody else, someone he's willing to lose his life over, to do things he's disgusted about for.

There's something special about this person who had nothing, fighting so hard, hiding and risking his life for somebody. Like a glimmer of hope within the hopelessness of life. He clings to the small time he's got before the inevitable. He thrives with lies, he schemes behind the powerful people, he uses his body all in the name of a kid's happiness. Like a desperate mother, becoming that, and a father to a son he had no relation to. A mission.

Does he do it out of the good of his heart, or because he's got nothing else? Maybe none of these, maybe both, and more. The ending isn't entirely conclusive. You don't know if he's lying because he knows, pragmatically, the effects of whatever he'll say at the very end. However, and just perhaps, he was completely honest.

8/10. I loved this manga, so short too. The ending had me thinking for a long, long while, and I won't forget it anytime soon.

I'll be honest, man, I don't think the manga earned its ending.

You have the incredible world, the fascinating characters, their context, their dynamics, and whatever surrounds them. You add in that precious mix, an enemy, as enigmatic as it is terrifying. Creatures which are truly impossible to understand at the beginning, but they have certain aspects that make them so… weird to deal with.

Gauna. They can mimic voices, human biology, even a strange attempt at communication. They, as well, could destroy all of humanity if deployed at the wrong time, and the wrong place.

As the story went on, the focus on the ... Gauna falters, as the colony gets so good at dispatching them, that it isn't all that threatening for the characters anymore. It feels like filler, like we need another action scene to interrupt whatever the characters are going through. Romance, love triangles, to a love square, it gets calm, it stops being exciting, but it equally gets pretty interesting from a romantic standpoint until a certain character enters the frame.

If the story leaves the action to make room for the romance, then, at least, don't make it as strange.

Tsumugi, a contentious character, is: *SPOILER*, the daughter, of the monster clone, of the main character's crush, and as the people in the story call it, “a sort of reincarnation”. Our main character, romances the idea of his crush, born from a clone of his crush. Right, okay.

I might be crazy to feel weirded out about that, but it does ruin the dynamic for me. The character's stop evolving, and the story feels more like a slice of life, with killing monsters as a job. Some jobs are more dangerous, some things are harder to do, but it's never impossible, even if the characters call it so.

Maybe that was the point all along. It isn't about the Gauna, and realizing how they work, or what they might do. This is just a war, one which will be fought until the end, and whatever sacrifices must be made, will be done to come back home, and the soldiers will enjoy their lives. I guess, the manga slightly failed at that. The antics were fun, and the use of the future as a backdrop on what might be a romance in those times is pretty good, but the story built a mystery from the beginning.

We realize how things work at one point, but at that stage, it doesn't truly matter. It feels like there are great characters here, with complete lives, and tough things in them, yet, nothing's done with it. They continue living with those times, with tough things in their pasts, and that's it.

A flawed use of a great foundation. If the intent was the mystery, it couldn't deliver, if it was the romance, it's pretty weird, and incomplete, if the slice of life was, the rest conflicts with that. It's got “good” elements all over, but not a glue to hold it together.

I'm disappointed, but not entirely angry. Could've been better, but I'm glad I read it, since it doesn't astronomically fail, it just didn't earn its ending all that well.

6.4/10.

The aesthetics of emptiness are immaculate.

The rainy town. Not many remaining, probably nobody if you look carefully. It's easier to pretend it is, at least. There are robots, maybe, at least one sits by the bench. Perhaps it was a flood, potentially a catastrophe. The world might've drastically changed, for humans are now by the hills. However, the robot sits there, waiting for the girl who couldn't do anything but leave him there.

The paint-like animation fills the space with melancholy, with an abandoned beauty which can't be replicated anywhere else. As a university project, this is incredible. Ultra short, with great world building, ... designs, environments.

I loved the world, and the story does come to an end, it isn't just a tech demo about a little world with no meaning, it's a small-scale story that heartwarmingly ends. Neat thing, lovely thing.

8/10. It was great, and a nice short film.

Finally, I can give this marvel another look.

Started it way before I had any media literacy. The fights were incomprehensible, the plot didn't make sense, I didn't understand some characters and their actions, and this is in Nihei's safer works. As of now, this is a gem of an anime.

Deep Sci-fi, something I've been craving for a while. Concepts of immortality being commonplace, the morality of space warfare, the pettiness STILL present in those times. How the context builds each person living in this world. Things like third genders, biological advancements. Even photosynthesizing, having a stigma around doing it with other people. It's ... in the details, and there are so many greats sparred around this story.

That's not the plot, though. Gaunas. Old Nihei concept. The same name has been passed around from manga to manga, and the concept changes each time it arrives in place, at least it's different for now. Beings that mainly target humans for reasons unknown. It could be the Evangelion thing, where the creatures are attempting a religious decomposition into one being. It could be the Attack on Titan, where there's something hidden away inside the Gaunas that challenges all notions previously set in stone. I wouldn't know.

The first season establishes the world, the robots, how it comes to dealing with these cosmic monstrosities, and the day to day in a space colony. The characters have so many great personalities, all likeable, with their own little romances, and chapters in their lives. The changes in their dynamics, and how they just hang out. It actually feels like a lived-in world, where even if everything might crumble after each battle, all they can do is try to live their lives the best they can.

The message on appreciating the little things is never stated by the story, but you can feel it in each conversation the pilots have. They go on little trips, outdoor activities, visit the ocean, as they slowly, and I MEAN SLOWLY, uncover the mysteries of the spacecraft. The reveals, whatever happened to Hoshijiro, the insane things about the protagonist, what his grandfather was. They don't change EVERYTHING, but it changes enough to truly make one question the surroundings.

All in all, 12 episodes for the beginning of a mystery leaves me excited. The season works really, really well, the characters are solid, I like the MC and his evolution. The romances actually work, and make me angry when something bad happens to them. The animation, even if choppy, works extremely well, even with new technology. I just want to see where it goes, even if everybody tells me the second season and final movie change everything. Will experience both for sure.

8/10. Extremely happy to want to see this through.

Taizan-5 really is the underrated master I'm happy is getting an adaptation of a previous work.

Kotaro and Subaru are two friends who by pushing each other's buttons try to reach for the stars as football players. Stepping away from his usual themes, Taizan-5 really touches into what makes a friendship thrive. What is it that drives us into stardom? Is it family, ourselves, objectives, simple things that make us human? Sometimes, no. It's a friend who pushes you.

It's someone you'd hate winning against you, that one goal they scored, the time they beat you on something you've done way more than them. We're ... driven by egotistical things, but then, by nothing short of being a good person, the selfish things we fought for, let us turn back and appreciate that which pushed us.

This story will remind you of that person some will think you hated. The person who didn't bully you, but truly knew how to anger you by sheer virtue of knowing so much about you. They know your faults, they know what you may be going through, and they will never give you a break for the things you can do better. It's a friendship you don't appreciate, until it's far from you.

The one-shot simply explores that kind of brutal friendship that will always push you to a greater tomorrow, with good and bad times. Will one take the shot, and become better than ever? Or wallow in the despair of being unable to catch-up?

It felt like the combo between “Hero Complex”, and a more shonen formula that could make for an INCREDIBLE manga.

I've felt the evolution of this author, and this is a great step in the right direction for a more cohesive, safer story that can still hold the greatness of his complex character writing.

The art is still great, the expressions on the characters are unmatched. There's something about Taizan-5, he can make a character seem utterly lost in their element. Defeat, the road to rise up, to make something of themselves. Loved this work.

8/10. Very solid. I love this author, and you should give them a chance too.

(I feel like I'm the official Taizan-5 glazer)

There's something special about this kind of uncomfortable story.

Yes, I got into it because the premise was disturbing. It seems like such an interesting plot description, and something not many could even DARE to touch upon. Not in the “this is a disturbing manga” category, I've read a fair share of those. This one feels much rawer.

It's a situation loads have thought about. “What if somebody was the cause of a family member's death?”, to which many would answer, “I'd kill them” without much of a second thought. What about afterward? What comes after the crime, after harming that which ruined your life? Well, the ... manga starts there. The MC decided to kill his sister's rapist in front of his little daughter. Twisted to no end, questioning everything about the event, and questioning if authorities should've put their hand there. It questions killing for vengeance, and the things that happen after are EVEN more interesting.

These people are linked forever, whether they like it or not. We go from such a tragic event, and such a challenge to the readers, to how both the MC and the little daughter develop something you can't just describe easily. Both need each other to live, to exist within the face of the earth. An objective, they cling to the idea that they can survive if they have each other, even if each of them believes they took everything from each other.

I loved this manga, not just for how it tackles its events, but how people unpredictably, but logically react to the surrounding situations. The feelings of guilt, suicidal tendencies, symbiosis, purpose, forgiveness, SELF forgiveness. It's a small manga, which could be made into an incredible animated film. While writing this, I felt the manga might've been a little overdramatic with some scenes, but man… you can't just assume these people can be that rational. This event marked their lives, and they're willing to die at any point if something changes in a single day. Living day to day, wishing for an answer to live or die in that day. How could I even begin to comprehend the implications of that? Well, I remembered well-lost memories. Memories I thought were gone.

Every character was perfect, and each event they lived through makes sense at every point. It got a little too shocking at times, reminding me that even after I've read so much disturbing stuff, there's still whiplash for an implication that goes far from what I expected.

Little mention on the art. Reminded me of Chainsaw-Man in its kind of… sketchiness? With so much beauty at the rawest points of emotion. The portraits of people suffering from the aftermath of an action. Their face, the perspective around them warping as they realize, it's always about realizing. There's so much meat in this small story.

This manga truly brings out emotions I couldn't describe. As I was seeing the characters evolutions, I felt something beyond the scope of the manga. Something I felt with “A Silent Voice”, and “Three Days of Happiness”. The willingness to change, and the power to look at yourself and agree, for once, that you wish to see the sun rise tomorrow, even if you didn't feel that a day before.

Watching characters bounce around their will to live was very upsetting, and a reminder to allow ourselves to be happy, even if we blame ourselves for other's unhappiness.

9.4/10. What a ride, and so quick too.

It's so beautiful to see my beloved weird manga come to animation as an acclaimed gem.

We all know its fame. The bombastic, strange, the first episode filter story, unusual, but at the same time, romantic, fun, brutal, disturbing, saddening, epic, awe-inspiring. One moment, a fun fight scene against an incredibly designed ghost, minutes later, one of the most soul-crushing, and artistic depiction of a mother's love, and tragedy akin to One Piece's backstories with NO DIALOGUE. It's all those things, it's all of what the people say, and its creation is as interesting as is the series itself.

An author, wishing to tell a ... tragic story, is given shoujo manga by the bulk, and as a changed man, and after doing work for Fujimoto himself, he comes up with this banger of a shonen. Conventional? Only in structure. Innovative? Not particularly. It does what it wants well, and it does it with power, character designs, dialogue, slice-of-life scenes that ground each scene. Teenagers being awkward without it being annoying. It's a lovey-dovey show that can make its craziness all the more meaningful because you care so much about the characters.

The lack of normalcy makes the fight scenes an actual danger, and the normal life segments so much more desirable. We enjoy both due to the incredible animation, and whenever there isn't a banger scene that challenges people's lives, we get misunderstandings solved with communication.

Every character introduced is shown to have so many layers, and the walking clichés aren't just that. The bully isn't just that, they have a reason to put people down, they evolve once shown the value in other people. They can be great people, they can be hateful too. We're introduced to a flamboyant guy who could EASILY be the cliché of hidden bad intent, but NO, he's the bro-est bro out there, and he sticks with the attitude for what we've seen.

The show miraculously works in everything it tries to do. You trust the writer, the confidence, with each scene. There aren't many stories that can trust on the audience this much, not because it's complicated, but because with a slight mistake, everything goes off the rails and becomes incoherent. Not here.

Writing, characters, animation, scenes, dialogue, situations, comedy. It all just works. However, the ending of this season is such a terrible cliffhanger. It isn't even like a “the stakes are set, now we have to see what happens next”, no it's like they cancelled the season altogether.

9/10. We need more. Dandadan needs more.