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Oct 31, 2025
STORY: 2
Meet Akagi, a youth gambler that is not afraid of death! And.. nothing. We have a title purely centered on a single character and he gets zero development. So Akagi is just some mysterious, disinterested figure that appears when gambling stakes are high. He gambles on Mahjong, that tile game you must have seen if you celebrate Lunar new year, and you are going to see a lot of tiles along 36 volumes.
You would think that this title can be hard to read if you don't know the Japanese rule version of Mahjong. Well, actually, even if you knew the rules, the story is
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so boring, repetitive and predictable that you would still have a hard time. What is the point of having so many chapter if there no evolution, depth, or changes in the story?
Akagi has the record of the slowest progression in the history of manga: one single night of Mahjong took twenty years to draw! That’s more than twenty volumes for a single game! You would think that, to be that long, this battle was the most epic of all time but it’s far from being the case. You could have kept the intensity of the game within one volume and it would work out great. If you think Usogui’s games drag on for too long, Akagi is pure torture!
ART: 4
The typical cartoonish style from Fukumoto Nobuyuki: bodies are stiff, facial features are exaggerated, characters are easy to recognize. This art is usually pleasant in other works from the author, but here, with very few characters and everyone glued to chairs, you get quickly tired of seeing the same expressions and situations repeating non stop.
POLITICAL POTENTIAL: 4
The year is 1958 and what a waste, the period does not matter one bit in the story.
When Akagi is introduced, he is 13 and has some obvious mental issues (he drove off a cliff for a bet). Does anyone care? No, they are just fascinated by a death-defying, emotionally-empty kid. Here, we have another example of toxic masculinity traits that impress the author enough to make Akagi the hero of the story. Kurosawa was about violence, Ichijou was about narcissism, Akagi is about addiction and risky behavior.
FEMINISM: 3
Maybe we have another record here: except for one female passerby that may have said some words, there is not a single woman within the 306 chapters of Akagi!
Fukumoto was apparently quoted as saying “there is no need for women to appear in a gambling comic”, which confirms that he cannot see women as normal human beings. His works mostly essentialize them in the usual sexist categories: object of desire or motherly presence.
Oh wait! I found one woman that gets some page space! She is on the photo cover of the publishing magazine, Kindai Mahjong. Most photo covers of the magazine feature a man who's fully dressed, looks dark and focused on his Mahjong tiles. Once in a while, there's a girl on the cover, and they are all young, looking at the camera, and wearing bikinis.
CONCLUSION: 3
I cannot even recommend this for fans of Mahjong or the author.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Oct 29, 2025
STORY: 4
Meet Mitsuhiko, a 46-year-old dull salaryman on his way to divorce.. when suddenly he hits his head and wakes up in the past!
Bam! He is back 30 years before and gets to relive his teenage days. If you feel you have already read that story, it's normal because there's one thousand titles with exactly that same story line about reviving the spring of youth. So, does High Position has an approach that sets it apart from all the similar stories? No. There's just a triangle love story in the Orange Road style, and the worst is that the reactions of the character being
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16 again are too unrealistic to be interesting. Meh.
ART: 6
Lines are very old-school and sometimes reminiscent of Orange Road.
POLITICAL POTENTIAL: 4
If you were 46 and sent back to the past, what would you do with your unique knowledge of the future? Change the course of history? Save lives? Get rich? Fight corruption?
Duh, our hero is focused on going to school, eating the meals that his mum cooks, and getting an underage chick. With so many manga doing that, it makes one think how pathetic the life of grownups must be in Japan to have so much interest in being 16 again.
FEMINISM: 3
Mitsuhiko is sent back to class among kids the age of his daughter, do you think he reacts with compassion and tenderness for them like any dad? Of course not: his main goal is to be romantically involved with one of the kids. If the story was about someone who was 19 and was given the opportunity to be 16 again, why not, but here the manga is just a disgusting illustration of how widespread that figure of the teenage girl as an object of desire for adult men is in Japan.
Our hero has sex with a girl in her 20s and it's awesome. Later, he also has sex with someone his age (in her 40s), so they should be most likely to connect and have an interesting relationship but no, he's not interested. And why is that? Because there's a kid on his mind, yuk.
Besides, we have the classic 'zero shit given about sex workers' that you can bang without second thought, but oh god "that'd be horrible if my daughter did that kind of job". Manga are really showing their sexism with that kind of discourse, by saying that men find normal to exert power on one group (sex workers) but they would not accept that kind of power relation being applied on themselves or the people they care about. And this here is one of the definition of an oppression.
CONCLUSION: 4
A cliche story made weak by the fact that the dad does not keep the character of a dad and the school kids don't act like school kids. More realism could have made a better read, but the sexism would still make you skip this manga.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Oct 23, 2025
Warning for realistic family trauma and abuse.
STORY: 8
Meet Seiichi Osabe, a boy on the path to teenage-hood: new experiences, more freedom, new feelings, independence! Except that.. Seiichi has a mother, Seiko, who is taking a place that is too large in his life. Way too large.
The story deals with psychological horror in a family context, and, the delivery is very powerful. The mundane, slice-of-life setting brings some realism that is able to land its latent violence deep into the heart of the reader. Tension and pain are accumulating through simple dialogues and body attitudes. The author didn’t go for any spectacular or unrealistic twist that
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would have made the story easier and more straightforward. Instead, we are witnessing the build-up of horrible situations that are difficult to escape. And those scenes are all the more terrifying because they are plausible: they could or have happened around you.
ART: 8
Most of the manga consists of the faces of the son and his mother. While that sounds boring, the author is actually doing a very good job at conveying emotions, tension, and trauma.. Those faces are crucially supporting the story. It’s easy to imagine that such simple art could have failed in the hands of many other artists, but here, each panel is ready to inject its poison in your mind.
POLITICAL POTENTIAL: 6
Seventeen volumes of trauma and madness, and these subjects are treated with subtlety despite serving the purpose of delivering horror.
Still, we are within the trope where most manga show their ‘crazy’ characters as dangerous (whereas they would be victims in the absence of prejudice in society):
many media depict madness as something threatening, but in reality, statistics show that being ‘crazy’ is a threat from others to yourself. I invite you to check the numbers in your country, but just being neurodivergent (having a brain that’s ‘different’) means you are often much more likely to be victim of violence, bullying or sexual abuse than regular folks.
In manga, at best, mentally sick characters have a backstory to explain their madness (hello Gaara from Naruto, Tomura from My Hero Academia, Johan from Monster). At worst, they are just shown as crazy and evil, and too often, that seems to be enough reason for the hero to destroy them.
In Chi no Wadachi, we have indeed a mum who is crazy, and, because of that, is dangerous. But the story still hints (moderately) at the failings of the environment: the toxic upbringing, the weight of patriarchy, the husband who turns a blind eye to the suffering. That mother even gets (a bit) more sympathy and humanization than characters who would commit equivalent abuse in other manga.
There is one other crazy character in the story, a boy, and he gets more empathy as he is shown as both a victim and dangerous.
Let’s give this tittle a good point, the threat that is shown from the mental sickness is realistic (instead of having an outrageous villain), and the abuser is not punished in a Manichean way.
FEMINISM: 7
Welcome to the niche world of manga that have a female character that is not something to protect or desire! Here, we have a focus on the relation between a mum and son.
As I searched for other examples of such relations, I realized the vast majority of works having this feature as the central plot are.. pornographic. If you are lucky enough to not know, ‘Incest’ is a popular category of porno manga, with long and poetic titles that can translate, for example, as ‘I fucked my mum last night because I got tired of doing it relentlessly with my sister this whole spring’.
Besides porno, the mother and son relation is rarely the focus. Judging only from my readings, it’s even possible that, when it comes to depicting an intense and positive filial relationship, there’s more titles that use a grandmother and kid story.
Talking about occurrences, I also have a feeling that, if the parent-kid relation is toxic, there’s a different treatment depending on the gender of the parent.
It seems that, when the abuser is a dad, difficult bonds are something that can be overcome for the character to develop (see for example Berserk, Baki, or Evangelion). Meanwhile, difficult mom-kid bonds are more often something that traumatizes or is an obstacle to growth . Quite a few horror manga have a male murderer whose insanity is explained by a tyrannical mum. For example, Rouba Shoujo, reviewed here, has one story with a teacher who was raised by his mum inside a pet cage and ends up eating his students.
It’s easy to see the sexism when bad fathers are more likely forgiven than bad mothers. In the manga Baki, the dad is a serial killer who raped and murdered the hero’s mum. Baki, the hero, is upset but still doing ok, and the manga is simply fascinated by the dad because he is so strong. Titles with evil moms are less forgiving.
CONCLUSION: 8
Brutally efficient, ‘A Trail of Blood’ is a great read. Make sure you can handle the subject first because you will be shaken.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Apr 17, 2025
STORY: 6
Meet some people, going on with their own situations and trying to understand each others. Iguana Girl is a collection of five short stories with slices of life and a topping of surrealism. Nothing epic, just some adequate feelings.
ART: 6
A fine 90s style.
POLITICAL POTENTIAL: 6
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Characters are trying to overcome their problems within the short time of each story. They have some empathy and are not too self-centered, lovely.
FEMINISM: 7
One story focuses on a middle-aged woman with compassion. Another story depicts a painful mother-daughter relation, but the abuser is not just depicted as a villain. A third story has a boy who suffers, and, instead of turning to cynicism and desires of revenge, like so many characters, he learns to express his emotions in order to heal!
There's even the 'young boy and girl alone in the room', and, it's not turning into that manga trope where the boy looses control and assault the girl! 🥳
CONCLUSION: 6
A nice, heart-warming, short read that is deeper than you expect.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Apr 8, 2025
STORY: 3
Meet K, a hero who gets his power from rape. This is supposed to be funny. Oh, and suicide is funny too.
ART: 4
Average art from the 90s.
POLITICAL POTENTIAL: 4
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Void.
FEMINISM: 2
One more author drawing with one hand in his trousers. Not need to waste time analyzing rape culture for this one shot.
CONCLUSION: 3
If one man over ten were to be raped during his life (which is the actual statistic for women), would the author still draw that kind of story, and say "come on it's just silly, take it easy!"?
I don't think so.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Mar 5, 2025
STORY: 3
Meet Gordon Goliath, a man driving a food truck around a post-apocalyptic landscape. He encounters the mysterious Arisa, a character defined by constantly being hungry and flashing her naked body. There’s other characters that are, without exception, stereotypes from the most generic mangas that they are not even worthy talking about.
As for the story, it’s a mix from different genres but all the aspects feel so shallow, and sometimes lazy, that there’s also nothing to care about.
ART: 4
Maybe the weakest point of this tittle. All characters are so generic it feels they were designed by an amateur. There’s a few detailed backgrounds, but maybe
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having most of the story taking place in an empty desert is not a coincidence..
POLITICAL POTENTIAL: 4
Whoa, we are on grounds that are too superficial to talk about politics here. Let’s mention the many casual murders that occurs, and potentially the extinction of a species for the sake of cooking.
FEMINISM: 3
When you open a manga that draws breasts like soccer balls, you know you are in for a low feminist score. Besides cooking food, the other thing happening in the manga is the constant gaze on Arisa, who 'likes' to be naked. This is made worse by the fact that Arisa is behaving like a child and that Gordon looks like he could be her dad.
CONCLUSION: 4
Everything is so shallow in this title that I first thought it was an amateur work. It was actually serialized in Comic Bunch, a big editor, but apparently got axed, which makes sense considering the low quality.
If you are after a very light slice of life manga with young breasts and food, then you could try Crazy Food Truck. Otherwise, these 3 volumes are way too much of your time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jan 2, 2025
STORY: 6
Meet Youko Kojiri, a screenwriter on the run from the disaster that was her last broadcast show. As she rides a kitsch cruise boat crossing the lake that leads back to her parents home, her encounter with a gorgeous captain starts the beginning of a lot of boat rides around the lake.
Add a few colorful characters, some over-the-top twists (terrorism, natural disasters..) over the welcome length of just two volumes, and you have an entertaining little manga.
ART: 6
Nothing breathtaking here, but there is a nice variety in styles depending on the mood of the characters. Sometimes, faces give off an unexpected Rei Mikamoto (the
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author of titles involving gore and school girls, such as “Bloody Delinquent Girl Chainsaw”) vibes, which adds some quirkiness to the story.
POLITICAL POTENTIAL: 6
This light story, within its short run, manages to address the toxicity of social media, with the internet-lynching threatening Kojiri. Interestingly, as a counterpoint to that anonymous, hostile mass in the background, many local characters found around the lake are simply nice, generous or supportive. This is nice to notice since the majority of manga often depict strangers as hostile or selfish.
FEMINISM: 4
Meh. There’s mainly rivalry between Youko and another girl as they both yearn for the hot captain of the boat. They brag and deceive each other, even using the “I’m pregnant from him” trick.
At least there’s also Youko producer and friend: she is overweight but, amazingly, she appears through the manga as a producer and friend first. I am saying first because, too many times in manga, ‘fat’ characters are defined firstly by their appearance and stay limited to some stereotype of either the funny good-hearted (hi “Naruto”!), ridiculously glutton (hi “One Punch Man”!), bullied/shut-in/miserable (hi “Ressentiment”!) character.
CONCLUSION: 6
A light story that can distract you for two volumes.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 26, 2024
STORY: 4
Meet Jagasaki, an average manga hero, who gets to lead a fight against humans that turn into monsters because of their overwhelming desires. Here's a series that starts strong.. and then quite suddenly turns mediocre with a plot that becomes boring and predictable.
This is a seinen (for adults) title with horror and sex, but what spoils the manga is that the storyline follows a very cliched shonen progression: hero gets stronger along with the enemies, each battle to the death has the characters have a conversation like if they were sitting having some coffee, and of course power-ups appear when the fight seems over.
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Some enemies are even not far from telling you how their ability functions so that you can beat them, how nice.
Near the end, the story becomes especially bad and we get to the point of caricature with the hero having to go through a ‘dungeon’, and defeat sub-bosses like in a video game before reaching the final boss for a annoyingly long fight.
ART: 7
Very solid at times: backgrounds, objects, characters.. everything is well rendered and digital techniques are abundantly used without getting in the way. But the quality is also wildly fluctuating, it almost feels like the author is leaving assistants do everything in some chapters. Expect an edgy start with details and a cleaner, US-comic influenced, sometimes lazy art in the second half of the saga.
POLITICAL POTENTIAL: 4
Some questions here and there about desire, the use of violence and justice. And mostly the usual overconfident nihilist antagonists that cannot stop blabbering about their evil projects even in the middle of a fight.
FEMINISM: 2
Despite the story rapidly degrading to kids level with its shonen tropes, the level of sex is clearly for adults. Sadly, we get tons of softcore porn, abuse and rape, wrapped in a sleazy male gaze.
Male characters don’t have a lot of depth, but female characters are clearly being drawn as a body or stereotype first, and not much else. This is clearly evident with Jagasaki love interest, whose personality is totally inconsistent through the manga, just being whatever the scenario needs her to be.
The only female character that does get a bit of story time and development is actually.. a man that has entered the body of a girl. And she mostly has lots of sex. I think that says a lot about the author's interest in women.
CONCLUSION: 4
Many readers thought of titles like “Parasite” or “Gantz” when reading this manga and they are indeed better. You can skip Jagaaaaaan, no woooooorries.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Dec 3, 2024
STORY: 8
Meet Hyaku, an angry girl searching for her identity. Follow her crashing with a politically unstable world divided between Humans and Creechs.
Creechs are synthetic creatures whose place in society is uncertain, but no spoilers here. The story is actually Atsushi Kaneko’s modern take on the manga Dororo by Osamu Tezuka.
Swift and nervous with 3 volumes, there is zero feeling of the usual pressures or annoyances of weekly publication. Instead, we are completely taken for a movie-like experience that is perfectly executed. Did you know that the author Atsushi Kaneko actually does have directing experience?
ART: 9
Clean, bold, framed like cinema. The rock aesthetics and
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strong US-comics inspiration of Atsushi Kaneko are mixed here in a soviet futuristic dystopia and it’s gorgeous.
POLITICAL POTENTIAL: 7
The madness of man, the folly of science, the horror of war, the crimes of the wealthy, are subtly part of the story.
While individual fights at the forefront, we see interesting collaborations within different factions and even an uprising in the background!
FEMINISM: 7
Hyaku is a fantastic female character (while it was a male in the original story), she is powerful but not invulnerable, and she learns and grows along the manga. Bonus points for her being not sexualized even once!
CONCLUSION: 8
Great storytelling and art that shows manga does not need to always repeat the same cliches? Yes it’s here, thank you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Nov 3, 2024
STORY: 4
Meet Eita and Kaoki, a couple in their first relationship at 19 years old. Eita, the boyfriend, is an average bland university student. Kaoki, his girlfriend, has a frail body and she has to live in an hospital, potentially most of her life. She is sadly stuck in a room while people her age enjoy the “peak of youth”. Now, guess who is the story going to focus on and empathize with?
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Right! Eita!
And guess what is the main problem in that story?
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The right of Eita’s weewee to access a vagina! Oh my god you must be clairvoyant!
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ART: 4
The only thing noticeable here is that breasts are a bit more realistic than usual. Oh, the author is a woman, that might help. Besides, panels are quite generic and empty.
POLITICAL POTENTIAL: 3
Just the same masculinist protagonist as usual: feeling sorry about himself and far from being able to do anything collective.
FEMINISM: 3
Here we go: our male hero is a pathological liar, sleeps around, and is a selfish coward. He treats Kaoki terribly and the scenario is totally ok with that.
Have you noticed how many manga have that kind of characters as main protagonist?
As the story progresses, the author even uses some convoluted events to make us more understanding of Eita’s actions, while showing the two main female characters as more and more manipulative. Masculinist manga often use that kind of development, where the male hero starts off as a jerk, but, women characters then act even worse so that, in the end, the reader’s sympathy goes to the male hero.
I wonder how many manga are centered on a girl who sleeps around while her boyfriend is having a hard time at the hospital?
Eita has a lot of sex and, if you are expecting a bit of subversion because the author is female, you will be disappointed. For example, one scene has Eita come in the mouth of his coworker and she teases him “I’m going to kiss you before I wash my mouth”, which makes him look disgusted and saying “I’m not into that stuff”. We are supposed here to adhere to the virilist view that women tasting cum is totally ok (even ‘natural’) whereas real men should not be subjected to that (otherwise they would be gay).
The gold for unfair narration comes when Eita gets beat up by the boyfriend of the kind coworker he was banging for four days. When that happens, the girl already has bruises all over her body and face, which points to a very serious situation, but Eita does not care at all:
He is only feeling disappointed that she is looking away when he gets attacked.
Did Eita call the police after the attack, if not for himself, to protect the girl from further abuse? No, our hero simply erases her number and, in less than two days after the assault, has sex with another girl he had bonded with by pretending he was a virgin like her.
CONCLUSION: 3
Even if you can ignore the masculinism spoiling this average story, just skip it. There’s much better titles out there, and, if you are ok with that kind of story, just read Boys on the Run by Kengo Hanazawa.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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