MEIK0TO's manga / #psychological(10)

The Beautiful Ones

Complete | Tomita Douji | 2000 released
2022-02-02 22:26 marked

This is really interesting. Apparently, the black haired dude grew up super ‘ugly’ in a supposedly perfect town with beautiful people. And I agree, his appearance is unsettling but it’s really just his nose that is unappealing to me, he should get a nose job. And I find it weird how the boy with the telescope just died like that. I think he jumped off a building, it’s very weird and makes me wonder why he jumped off? His skin literally breaks into pieces like egg shells as he jumps off. Now the black haired dude wants to fix him, it was similar to fixing a doll. And now the telescope guy is now transforming into a girl. At the end, the black haired dude tries to steal the eyes of a statue so that he could give it to the telescope dude but unfortunately gets caught by police officers. He runs away and then decides to give the telescope dude his own eyes. They should’ve shown the black haired dude taking out his eyes, that would’ve freaked me out and I would’ve given it an instant 5 star. The black haired guy jumps into the ditch and dies as the telescope dude wakes up. I can see why this won an award, it’s really good.

Delivery Knight

Complete | Lee yungyun | 2000 released
2022-02-04 04:14 marked

Woah, the fight scenes are super sick. However, I have multiple questions. The black-haired delivery knight, why is he so overpowered? It doesn’t seem like he has any supernatural powers or anything. It looks as if the author just made up his character to help Sawol get through life? He has pure brute strength, it’s kinda strange, like where did he get it from? I hate that Sawol is just unrealistic strong. She’s all bones, literally. She went up against some guys 100x more powerful than her, her body should’ve snapped into pieces but it didn’t because of her plot armor. None of the side characters were particularly important, (besides for scar face) they only appeared in a fight scene for a chapter or two and then disappeared. A little boring. The ending was rushed and unsatisfying asf. Sawol went through all those battles to meet with Seulah again but they didn’t even show any side stories. Is it a happy ending or nah? I dislike stories that leave the ending for the reader’s interpretation.

It Was All You

Ongoing | 이재익, 이순기,오정호 | 2000 released
2022-02-13 02:54 marked

A good but oddly flawed story? Slight spoilers in this comment. Read this manwha on Webtoon. The plot seems so good but there is just so much going on at the same time, and at times that isn’t a good thing. There are plot twists and nerve-racking cliff hangers at every corner of this story. Somehow, it still doesn’t interest me that much. It’s not shocking like “Woah! What the heck was that?!” It’s more like “Wooow! Ok.” From the beginning, I knew that something was odd when I saw that everyone was out to get Yuri. During the arc where Yuri attempted to kill her ex, I thought it was a load of horseshit. And during Victor’s time with Yuri, he defied several “A.I laws” so that made me suspicious if he was a human or not. So if you really think hard about it, the plot twist was a little predictable. I LOVE Heo Yoojin’s character, finally a true villain whose evil without some sort of tragic backstory behind their actions! I hope she shocks me even more with her antics. Victor and Yuri’s relationship is quite.. meh. I know that they have been through a lot together, but due to the fact that he was introduced as an A.I, I can’t feel the deep connection between them. The art is quite bland and sometimes the characters seem expressionless. It also lacks details and depth but it’s passable.

On Why She Chose Death

Complete | Kotodera amane | 2019 released
2022-02-20 19:02 marked

Bleak ending. The plot twist was weak. However, this is an interesting concept that is hard to execute.

Jinmen

Ongoing | Katou Takahiro | 2000 released
2022-03-11 04:55 marked

Aha, absolutely mortifying. The artwork makes my skin crawl. Basically, resentful animals turn into monstrous killing machines that wreak havoc on humanity. The main character goes through a plethora of near-death situations but somehow miraculously survives. There is a load of gore in every nook and cranny of each chapter. Pretty good in terms of horror. Unfortunately, I think it was dropped by the translation team.

I Had A Nightmare

Complete | Lucia Asul | 2000 released
2022-03-12 08:22 marked

I don’t exactly understand the message behind this but I suppose that all dream messages are hard to interpret. The art is eerily monotone and looks like it was drawn on paper as I can see obvious pencil marks. Kind of weird and unsettling, I’m going to need the author to tell me exactly what heck this is.

Skip! Yamada-kun

Complete | OHBA Tsugumi,Robiko | 2000 released

A lazy high school student earns the power to warp time. However, the catch is that he cannot turn back time and that he will have no memories of the time period that he has skipped. He ends up getting stuck in a “time crevice” but the time guardian manages to pull him out. He wants to go back to that time crevice in order to watch suspense TV shows forever. He then proceeds to skip until the end of his lifetime in order to step into that time crevice again, he doesn’t succeed. It’s a pretty interesting concept but it could’ve been utilized better if the MC wasn’t a fool. The plot is a bit nonsensical. The way that a random “time guardian” jumped out of nowhere and gave Yamada powers is ridiculous, I’m not buying it. I am annoyed that we had to follow through it with such an unambitious main character. He got what he deserved and he even ended up watching less television than the average Japanese person. Lesson learned, don’t abuse your time warping powers so you can watch more suspense mystery shows like an idiot.

Goodbye Eri

Complete | Fujimoto tatsuki | 2019 released
2022-06-09 07:10 marked

Explanation + Summary for those who are confused: “Goodbye, Eri” follows the story of Yuta, a young boy who captures the last days of his mother with his phone. Yuta does this on request from his mother, who wishes to stay alive even after dying. As requested, Yuta spends several days witnessing his mother’s life with a camera. However, he couldn’t bring himself to record her final moments. So, instead of getting inside the hospital with his father, Yuta runs away from the hospital. Following those events, nothing stays normal for Yuta. After spending so much time behind the camera, Yuta starts looking at his own life as an outsider, and Fujimoto very beautifully tells the story from Yuta’s camera perspective through his art. It’s one of those rare stories that leaves the ending on readers’ perspective. The ending leaves you thinking if what happened with Yuta was real or it was just something that Yuta imagined for his movie. Even after his mother’s death, Yuta doesn’t give up on all the recorded footage. He spends several hours editing all the stuff he has recorded and makes a movie out of it. But surprisingly, Yuta adds a bit of fantasy at the movie’s ending by showing the exploding hospital as he runs away from the building. Following the humiliation after his movie’s failure, Yuta decides to end his life by jumping off the Hospital’s roof. However, before Yuta could end his life, he meets Eri, the only person in the school who liked Yuta’s movie. Eri thinks that Yuta’s movie was amazing, but at the same time, it lacked something. So, Eri decides to guide Yuta on making a better movie to prove his worth to everyone. However, before asking him to write a plot, Eri shows Yuta several good movies, so he could find the required knowledge to make his own movie. After several attempts, Yuta decides to continue the story that started it all. He writes a plot where a boy was attempting suicide after everyone hated his movie. However, he finds a girl on rooftop who is a vampire. This vampire is dying of a mysterious disease, so she asks this boy to shoot the rest of her days with a camera. So, basically, Yuta decides to make a movie about everything that has happened in his life, but with a touch of fantasy. It turns out that Eri was really dying of a disease, and she loved Yuta’s mother’s idea of getting captured on the camera before dying. Eri thinks that Yuta captured her mother beautifully, and Eri wanted to experience the same thing. So, by filming Eri in her final moments, Yuta finds perfect ending for his movie, “Having filmed a death, the thing he couldn’t do for his mother, the protagonist regains his will to live and make movies, the End.” Yuta continued his life after Eri’s death and becomes a family man, but he never stopped editing Eri’s 2,728 hours of footage. Years later, Yuta loses his wife and daughter in an accident. He couldn’t bear the burden of losing anyone else, so he decides to end his life at the place where he and Eri watched the movies. Surprisingly, Yuta finds Eri in that same spot, who tells Yuta that she is, in fact, a vampire. The Eri Yuta knew really died, but she came back to life after three days. However, this new person doesn’t remember previous Eri’s life. Apparently, the previous Eri had her death filmed so the new Eri could watch Yuta as many times she wants. So, no matter how many times Eri dies and forgets her life, she’ll always remember Yuta through the movie. This whole plan would save her from falling into despair. Yuta leaves the room, and says his goodbye to Eri. At this point, Yuta realizes why he wasn’t satisfied with Eri’s movie ending, “because it was missing a pinch of fantasy.” Finally, we see Yuta getting out of the building just when it explodes in the background. Explanation: ‘Goodbye, Eri’ very smartly plays with your mind, forcing you to wonder what’s real or not. Apparently, Yuta was inclined towards fantasy to deal with his childhood trauma. Yuta’s mother was abusive towards him and his father. But even after all that, he showed his mother beautifully in the movie. Yuta ended the movie with a touch of fantasy to deal with his mother’s death his own way. He tried to remember her through the lens, which presented her as a good mother. Now, on one side, there’s a possibility that Eri was indeed alive, and Yuta did in fact say goodbye to her. But personally, I think that Eri wasn’t a vampire in reality, and she really died in the hospital all those years ago. Everything about Eri being alive was part of Yuta’s perfect plot for his movie. Yuta ended his first movie with hospital’s explosion, and said goodbye to his mother like he wanted to. However, he didn’t find closure with Eri’s death, the woman he loved. So, he decides to add the “Vampire” part to make it easy for him to find closure. Fujimoto Tatsuki's work is excellent. It leaves you with a multitude of interpretations, almost cryptic-like. It leaves many unanswered questions for the readers to decode. Weird how a coming-of-age story about a boy would captivate me like this. I am not a picky reader, but stories that force me to think for this long deserve five stars. Support the author on official platforms. Happy reading, everyone.

The Horizon

Complete | Jeong ji-hoon | 2019 released
2022-11-27 00:38 marked

I don't know where to begin. I didn't know how difficult it would be to compose a review for this. War, it is a painful subject for me. I did not cry, yet this story twisted my heart. The Horizon, written by Jeong Ji-hoon, masterfully depicts the emotional toll of war and conflict. Each chapter took me by surprise, shattering me into a hundred pieces, only to rebuild me in a new shape. The story follows 2 children, a boy and a girl, who became friends in the midst of an almost apocalyptic warzone. The story building revolves around a collection of simple dialogue, yet I found meaningful discussion behind the minimalistic words. While it is short, I conclude that it is worth reading. I saw most of the author's message from the boy's thoughts in the last chapter. Life is unfair. Humans are always in conflict, not just in war but also in simpler arguments among friends and family. Humans all die in the end, they will cease to exist; so what is the point in being born at all? Why experience such hardship for nothing? The answer---or my interpretation to it, is simply "Love". The happiness that humans experience when they are with their loved ones. Despite all the bloodshed throughout humanity, some humans will always find a way to make peace with one another. These emotions, whether big or small, are the reasons why we continue to live despite the hardships. These emotions made life a bit more bearable, and somehow pushed us forward even if our lives are ultimately meaningless. Death will come, but for now it is simply better to live life with love and happiness. I noticed the Christian reference, the hand with a hole reaching out to the boy, symbolizing Jesus saving him. A common saying among Christians, "Jesus is Love." To live, is to love. So let it be just that, the answer, is Love.

Wings Manhua

Complete | xia da | 2007 released
2023-04-26 00:19 marked

“I have wings. I can touch the floating dreams that call me from afar. Through the wind, Take me.” The beauty of short pieces like these are that they’re meant to portray an emotion. You may wonder about this girl’s backstory, however you are still sympathetic for her. It’s profound.