This series is a horrific nightmare, one that alternates between being genuinely confusing and horrifying and absolutely hilarious in its absurdity. It has a narrative structure despite its insanity, but one that might not be immediately obvious due to the stories schizophrenic and rapidly alternating nature.
The artwork is sublime, with a bizarrely realistic style that resembles a mixture of Fletcher Hanks and Robert Crumb that only elevates the insanity further. Character poses are stiff and emotions look somewhat bizarre and forced, but this only assists in enhancing the utter insanity that this series revolves around. It features some of the most incomprehensible bullshit I've ever seen, images that made me stare in disbelief at the nonsense I was witnessing.
The characters aren't developed extensively, though Chicken George has an interesting arc and iconic design. It doesn't matter, because their insanity only assists in the story, such as Grand Master Rose, the closest thing to a villain, who is a centuries-old technocratic billionaire who controls the world finances and replenishes his youth with a steady diet of fetus organs, or Chicken Lucy, George's girlfriend that is a regular chicken but can talk, or America, who is the president's son and actually named America, and who has hair that is a plant and becomes a Christ-like figure by the end of the series.
If you can't tell, Fourteen is a thrill ride from beginning to end. The insanity only escalates and you must turn the page to figure out more of the fantastical nonsense present in the series. None of it makes any sense. It makes Neon Genesis Evangelion look like Sesame Street. It makes Texhnolyze look like Fairly Oddparents. It makes Junji Ito look like "See Spot Run". It never lets up, with increasingly absurd and escalating mass death and panic that reaches an increasingly fevered pitch until the equally nonsensical ending.
Fourteen is an absolute masterpiece, and one that every intellectual must read.
