July's manga / #Seinen(11)

Revenge villain isekai with a male lead. He's a true villain, and he kills lots of people in very dark, twisted ways. Although he previously died a horrible and tragic death, the violence of his new life is not really helping me sympathize with him. It's still a decent read, but not one of my favorites.

The art is super good, especially the backgrounds. The premise of the story is that two classmates end up being in a friends with benefits relationship with each other, but the boy only wants to think about suicide because of the death of his brother. The girl only realizes that she loves the boy much later, but it's too late, since the boy has fallen in love with someone else. It is a very realistic manga dealing with real life issues, but unfortunately I didn't like any of the characters here, and the plot didn't interest me. There's no real growth, and I feel like the manga is trying to be deep, but fails. It was a good first reading, but I wouldn't re-read this.

Very realistic perspective on everyday life. The art is really good, especially the backgrounds. It shows how unpredictable life is, and that you can't always accomplish what you dream of, which is a downer, but it is a harsh truth. I can only say that I didn't care for any of the characters, and the female lead is unlikeable. I can't really sympathize with her, since she just wanted to cruise through life and depend on her boyfriend, without trying hard with her own willpower in the first place. When he dies, she goes through some changes, but in my opinion, it's too little, too late.

The beginning of the manga was quite good, especially when the male lead and his blackmailer become more and more crazy, doing more heinous things to break away from the teenage angst of boredom. I think on some levels, that's relatable to everyone who has gone through teenage years. But it quickly goes downhill when the male lead is separated from his friends and classmates when he moved to another town. The ending falls flat and leaves readers wanting something more. The first half rode a huge wave of crazy and then went splat on the floor, that's the feeling I had when I read this. It also tries too hard to be deep and it lost me sometimes in its fake philosophical tones. Art is pretty good and matches the theme of the manga.

One of the best psychological mangas out there. Akiyama is seriously one of the smartest protagonists in the world of manga. The beginning portion had more interesting games, the end is a little meh, and leaves a lot of open questions, unfortunately. But worth several read-throughs for sure.

The art is fantastic, and the story is good until when L is killed. After that, it goes severely downhill. So many plot holes and there's no one to root for by the end of the manga. Seems like they ran out of ideas by the second half. All the so-called geniuses are pretty dumb in the end, what a let down.

The premise was interesting, but the subsequent chapters failed to deliver. I'm not sure what kind of story the author wanted to tell. I thought the ghost of the male lead who died was going to be the protagonist, but then it suddenly shifts to another female character that used to be his friend, then shifts to the female character that killed him. Very confusing. Also it seems that this manga was dropped, so we'll never know what will happen next.

The art is quite good for this seinen genre, gritty but still somewhat polished. I dislike both of the doctors who are presented here. One is dubbed the God of Death, because he convinces patients to choose death, while the associate director keeps pushing patients to fight their illness, no matter what happens. Both are just asking to be sued for medical malpractice. As someone who works in the medical profession, you must be optimistic but also realistic. You can't promise things that you can't obviously keep, because if the worst comes to worst, and the patient dies, their family will sue you to high heaven. You also can't just tell people to die. There's a lot of discussion involved in a patient's care, including ending treatment so that the patient feels more comfortable, etc. You cannot simply say to a patient to chose death, just because their life is painful as it is now, you need to keep in mind the patient's feelings and their family's feelings to find the most balanced approach with how to deal with a terminal patient. The two doctors are on the extreme opposites of the medical spectrum, and both of them should have lost their medical licenses. And while lots of medical jargon is thrown around, it feels like some of the medicine going on here is inaccurate or weirdly portrayed. The patient shouldn't have 3 potential bone marrow stem cell matches, it's really difficult to find a match in real life. I don't know why the doctors talk to the patients with such complicated medical jargon that patients would never understand. As a medical professional, you have to always keep things simple and easy to understand, because the patient is in pain and under lots of stress so they won't be listening to 100% of what you're saying. There is also no way a dermatologist will have any interaction with terminally ill leukemia patients like this, even in a hospital setting. Dermatology is highly specialized, and they wouldn't be dealing with hematology, which is also a specialty. Maybe if the God of Death was in oncology, I'd buy his interference. It's completely unrealistic that the associate director would be performing so many surgeries. Once you're high up in the medical profession ladder, you tend to see less patients and do less procedures, and it's more administrative work. He wouldn't be doing both cardiac and neural surgeries either, since those are completely different surgical specialities. You only get trained in one subspecialty for surgery, and then you do that kind of surgery for the rest of your life. So all in all, this is an unrealistic medical manga.

This manga has me on the edge of my seat every chapter. The art is great and I love all the colored panels, which is rare to see in manga. My only issue is with how nonsensical literally everyone in here behaves, which detracts from the overall realism of the game, in my opinion. Everyone goes from normal-looking to batshit crazy at the flip of a switch. There are supposed to be other players in this game, but I don't understand why they would know the progress of the protagonist. It's not like he knows their progress, too. Those other players don't even change their bodies each time like he does, which makes me question why it's different for him, and only him? The protagonist is not all that likeable, he's a total narcissist and obsessed with his own good looks, and doesn't care about other people. But you do want to see him clear the stage, because he's the least abnormal person in this world. The pacing is somewhat too fast, if looking from a logical standpoint, but it's likely that way to maintain the suspense. Also, the author has a really weird eye fetish. In the first chapter, he makes the main character wear an eye patch for no reason at all, when he was supposed to remain inconspicuous (eye patches totally don't draw attention), and his eye wasn't even injured in the first place. Now both of his eyes have popped out all of a sudden, and they're just rolling on the floor. What the hell.

Less gory compared to the original series, Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. It focuses more on the supernatural and follows how a famous Japanese writer solves mysteries and finds out the truth behind ghost stories. Pretty cool, it's a shame that the translators stopped translating this work.