Story moves rather quickly but even despite of that the atmosphere was pretty haunting. At least in the first chapter. After that I was being way too distracted by the ridicoulous portrayal of human nature and borderline hysterically comedic moments towards the end. I don't know whenever it was Junji's intention to make me laugh. I genuinely believe that he was doing it on purpose. What's funnier is that people actually taking the ending seriously. Like not even some of the craziest shounen out there would dare to get this ridicoulous.
The only character which I liked was Mr. homeless man. He was funny, charming and even a little bit sassy which I appreciate. His introduction towards the end just goes to show that the ending was not supposed to be taken seriously. As for the rest of the cast they were pretty basic with little to no room for any developments.
Frankly, I don't care whenever Junji Ito wanted to comment on celebrity worship or the way we treat our planet. At least that's what it seemed like to me. It almost feels like I'am just pointlessly using my brain juice trying to undestand what Junji was exactly trying to say through his convoluted ways. While talking about those things we must subconsciously accept some "truths" regarding human nature that this story is trying to push onto us.
It is the end of the world and civilization is falling apart. We revert back to our old ancient ways and start thinking and acting primitive. Someone propouses a crazy idea as how to save the world which involves murdering and burning people alive. We all of course believe that person because now that the civilization has fallen we have once more become ruthless. As long as we can guarantee our survival it does not matter whenever we will commit terrible atroctites. In a matter of hours new religion is formed and a witch hunt can begin. If you look closely you can actually see that most of us are smiling and seem to be quite enjoying all this death and torture. Well of course we are having a good time. We no longer have to pretend that we are civilized and instead can relieve our basic needs. What a truly deep and insightful look into human nature and our own psyche.
Also what a load of bullshit.
Does anyone actually believe that in a case of a catastrophe we would all become like this ? What a gross oversimplification of humanity and history itself. Religious cults and such massive murderous, one could even say backwards, movements take time to form. Atrocities in which we wipe out or attempt to wipe out an entire groups of people don't happen overnight. It takes years, decades if not centuries of manipulation and villainization. Material conditions which lead to medieval persecutions by religious people did not happen overnight. There wasn't one scared guy that proposed something sadistic in hopes of saving the world and accidentally created a massive movement. In reality religious movements were deliberately manipulated by people in power in hopes of controlling the masses. This story took place in a matter of hours. None of the studies from sociology or psychology has any proof that this is how humans would act in crisis. Many studies that tried to prove that underneath the blanket of civilization, slumbers some sort of warmongering cavemen were proven to be staged. Even so, those staged studies had disastrous concequences on real world. Laws are being made in believe that humans are irrational. Our very system is built around that idea. It is the greatest lie that was ever told. These types of stories perpetuate these lies and I can't exactly say that I'am a fan of that. In big catastrophical events humans actually help each other more than you think. It's beautiful how much more sensitive we become during those moments. Of course media won't talk about that. They will talk about rioting, looting, raping and murdering that they don't even know if it happened. The guy in this story that proposed that they murder Remina to save the world should have gotten ignored. Our rationality and humanity is not that fragile. If the world was actually ending most people would be with their loved ones or they would be partying and having wild orgies. Of course few building would burn so what ? If you believe that rapes would be happening on every corner than you are wrong. It would happen there and there but most of the time those rapists would probably be beaten to death. These types of stories are dangerous. They become self fulfilling prophecies. People in power may mistreat us and use excuses about dangerous human nature. We believe them and after some time we start acting accordingly.
