Reviews

I like to think of myself as a connoisseur of fictional violence, but this manga took the crown as being one of the most vicious things I've ever read. While other manga will have more gratuitous violence in it, the fact that this is a real event being retold by the man who did the murder makes it more horrifying than anything someone could create in a fictional environment. It is one of the first times a manga actually made me feel an anxious pit in my core, it is heavily jarring.
(side note: if you buy the translated book, be warned it has actual autopsy photos at the end and is extremely brutal)

I'm conflicted on it. While on one hand its very interesting to read into the psychology of a madman, it's also something I would not recommend to anybody, regardless of morbid curiosity.
The artwork is crude, very amateur, ugly even. It doesn't take away from the absolute carnage that's relayed to the reader though, it's truly chilling how nonchalantly these acts are talked about, as if it was something that was a simple mistake. It really is a violent display.

A positive (?) is that it really let's you see as close as possible the mindset of a lunatic like this without actually being one. It's unnerving how normal of an urge Sagawa-san sees cannibalism as. In fact, Sagawa-san constantly decides to wax poetic on these actions. It's possibly the most accurate retelling of this case one could possibly get.

I don't know how I'd tell someone about this or bring it up in a recommendation. It really is an anomaly of a manga.