Dragon Head

Description

The end of everyone was just the beginning… Returning home by train after a class trip, Teru Aoki takes a most frightening ride inside a mountain tunnel. When the train derails, nearly everyone aboard is killed. Amidst the bloody carnage, Teru discovers two survivors—but salvation is far from their grasp. As they try to dig out from the wreck in order to come up with a plan to stay alive, the lack of light and food, combined with the stench of death and decay, will lead one member of the group down a dark and demented path. And with sudden, violent earthquakes shaking the tunnel, escaping to the outside world may lead them to an even greater danger …

Won the 21st Kodansha Manga Award for general manga in 1997.

**English Translations: **INKR Comics

Type

Manga

Related Series

N/A

Associated Names

Doragan Heddo

DragonHead

ドラゴンヘッド

末日

Groups Scanlating

Latest Release(s)

v.10 c.89 (End) by Illuminati-Manga & Null & Blackout 17 years ago

v.10 c.88 by Illuminati-Manga & Null & Blackout 17 years ago

v.10 c.87 by Illuminati-Manga & Null & Blackout 17 years ago

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Status in Country of Origin

10 Volumes (Complete)

Completely Scanlated?

Yes

Anime Start/End Chapter

N/A

User Reviews

N/A

Forum

0 topics, 0 posts

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User Rating

Average: 7.4 / 10.0 (483 votes)

Bayesian Average: 7.33 / 10.0

19%

27%

22%

12%

Last Updated

June 16th, 2025 2:20am PDT - 5 months ago

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Genre

Action Adventure Horror Mature Mystery Psychological Seinen Tragedy
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Categories

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Category Recommendations

Restart (Rui Si & Yi Kai)

Horyo Eiyuu ~Sutegoma ni Sareta Kendo wa Tekikoku de Nariagaru~

Recommendations

Author(s)

Artist(s)

Year

Original Publisher

Kodansha

Serialized In (magazine)

Young Magazine (Kodansha)

Licensed (in English)

Yes

English Publisher

INKR

Kodansha USA (December 2025 | print; 10 vols - complete | digital)

Tokyopop (Expired / 10 Vols - Complete)

Activity Stats (vs. other series)

Weekly Pos #727

(+24)

Monthly Pos #1667

(-341)

3 Month Pos #3423

(-75)

6 Month Pos #4470

(+7)

Year Pos #5557

(+89)

List Stats

On 457 reading lists

On 806 wish lists

On 1171 completed lists

On 74 unfinished lists

On 265 custom lists

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User Comments [ Order by usefulness ]

Intensely boring

by Eve_Marou
3 years ago

Rating: 4.0 / 10.0

immediately becomes less interesting after it stops being about surviving in a caved in tunnel. Whenever the characters are at the end of their rope, they always bump into somebody who has what they need, and it never resolves in a costly way even when the person they meet is dangerous.
It also keeps abusing natural disasters to move the story past boring parts. The characters walk a mile with nothing happening and suddenly there's a mudslide. they stop to get gas and the road collapses. they get into a dumb altercation with some soldiers and then a fire tornado just manifests out of thin air.
Even the reason why they leave the tunnel is because of a freak accident.
Dropped when they meet the teacher.

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I wish I could experience this again for the first time

by sadd sapporo
4 years ago

Rating: 8.2 / 10.0

Terrific story. Eerily relatable. Incredibly ATMOSPHERIC (a word that is very important here, please DO NOT read this during the day, you will cheat yourself from having the ultimate reading experience, read ONLY late at night). It is so dark and full of suspense throughout that I couldn't stop reading. At the end you get to decide the fate of the world and the characters which sounds like a bad thing but considering how everything turns out makes it all the more interesting. I absolutely consider it to be one of the best manga I've ever read.

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Only good in the 1st 20 chapter or so

by kiriee
10 years ago

Rating: 4.0 / 10.0

The first part of the manga was quite good, because of the survival element, but after that it was just boring, its lose all the survival element. While the character looks like want to live, their action sometimes show otherwise, they literary go to the center of the disaster just because one guy said so, and for some reason the rest follow. Not only they remove the survival they also added philosophy crap or what not, which raise another point if they can talk good about philosophy why all the character is so stupid by 20-30 chapter it was clear what is the cause yet it need another 50 chapter before anyone realize, and if you think thing would go better you guess wrong, it was a chore to read it until the end not only that the author also fail to gives satisfying ending.

The story are not the only thing that is wrong, in manga usually author will only draw some part let the reader brain make their character move, in Dragon Head the author literary draw frame by frame, making it the slowest fighting scene ever it feel like the entire thing run on slow motion.

I still don't understand why there's so many high rating for this manga, reading it was a chore, and the worse off all is my chore was not rewarded with proper ending.

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Waste of time

by Ziggyro
12 years ago

Rating: N/A

The first few chapters after the train wreck are pretty damn good,Then the series takes a nose dive and tries to push philosophical bullshit onto the readers that usually doesn't make any sense.The whole manga is just nothing happening,There's no story or character arks,The main characters survive nigh IMPOSSIBLE situations numerous times and the whole manga builds up to an ending that doesn't explain anything and is just absolutely awful.This is one of the worst written mangas I have ever read and I would have dropped it 10 chapters in if it wasn't for me wanting to find out what the cause of the disaster was,Instead I was treated with a dick up my ass and a huge middle finger for the time I put into the manga

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+++

by LUEser
13 years ago

Rating: 6.0 / 10.0

[tab]I disagree with some of the comments made about this book, especially the comment where people thought the plots were given away too early; you can't attract readers if your point in the manga is dragged on. My point: I loved the beginning; I love the terror, the insanity, survival mode. I love how the darkness was portrayed in this manga.

[tab]Art-wise, I'm a little dissatisfied. But the background of every panel is beautiful, even when it was in disaster. All the characters are...bland. They seem boring; their personality is predictable. We know who was gonna be the bad person, the caring person, the reasonable person, so forth. While reading this manga, a lot of things came to my mind; what kind of disastrous event is this? It kept me questioning, and the only way to find out was to keep reading.

[tab]After awhile, it became apparent as to what was causing all this horrific event. I loved the moral of this story. The ending, however, is extremely painful for me to read; to accept the fact that after all the violence, the natural disasters, the anxious moments of being reunited...and the ending was kind of like, "WTF. You gotta be kidding. THIS IS IT 😕 " I gave it a blah rating because of the blah ending. And I would recommend it if it was better, but why recommend it when you're gonna be dissatisfied and unpleased at the end?

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I couldn't stop reading it.

by cecropiamoth
13 years ago

Rating: 9.0 / 10.0

This was one of the best manga I've ever read. Great story. People fighting on without having any super power, just the bravery they discover in themselves. The big danger that they struggle against could happen. The characters were all believable. The suspense is relentless. The ideas at the end made it a fuller experience for me.

I'm putting it at #3 after "Yokohama Kaidashi Kidou"

and "My Lovely Ghost Kana", http://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=7530

all three of which are fundamentally about fear the of death, and two of which (this and "Yokohama...") are believably apocalyptic.

... Last updated 12 years ago

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uhm..........

by dremondtanic
14 years ago

Rating: 8.0 / 10.0

this manga was not really bad, for some reason i read right though it(hehehe, couldnt stop). as people said, this manga was full with insanity, the ending doesnt really have a conclusion. and to make it worse, when i had finihs this manga, i was like "uhhhhh......., i need to go watch something happy and play some awsome soft techno." i.e yea i needed to remove his manga mandness.

Anyway if you like thing like the end of the world, Armageddon, insanity, humain true nature out of fear, chaos, madness, survivalist, all man for themself. well i definetly recomend this to you.

me i think i rather manga like zero no tsukaima, naruto, etc.... the insane stuff are once in while for me. so yeaaaaaaa

Oh i definitly recomend you watching the movie first before watching this manga, yes there is a movie on this so go watch it first (manga is alot better, but if you read the manga first u wont want to watch the movie after).

peace out -_o [---__---]

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Doesn't quite work

by Aikanaro
15 years ago

Rating: 7.0 / 10.0

I dunno. I feel kind of meh after reading it, but I feel like I should have liked it more than I did.

The ending really breaks down into 'wtf-I-don't-care' territory, where you have a whole bunch of nutters trying to expound on philosophy with wordswordswords and none of it has any relevance to anything. There's no conclusion.

Lots of it were too dark for its own good. There's just too much insanity. Yes, people in stressful situations can take some crazy actions, and yes, I suppose strange cults could spring up ... but seriously now. There's a limit to the number of wackoes that my suspension of disbelief can take.

It's worse in retrospect than it was to read. If you like apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic then I recommend it. I enjoyed reading large chunks of it, but as a whole package it doesn't really fit together.

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could have been good, but it's not good.

by asakaze
15 years ago

Rating: N/A

Which made this manga bad =

Plot twists were given away to early
The thing about only 4 peaople remainded sane and all the others went crazy (sure some will go crazy, but there should have been more sane people)
Long nagging dialogs about fear in the end of the manga
Open ending - whats the point to read 10 volumes about their struggle and not get a proper ending that has a resolution to the story.

Rating: 3 / 10.0

... Last updated 15 years ago

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Awesome

by yuri999
16 years ago

Rating: 9.5 / 10.0

Quite simply it is one of the best survival manga I have read in a long time. From the pacing, art tot the characters everything is just right. Even the emotions can be felt as the protags are trying to survive.
I'm don't entirely agree with what jooles has said because Fujisawa Yuki's bio-meat was more along the lines of monster horror. Sure, metro survive was more realistic but there is only so much that can be done in 2 volumes. Overall, this is much better than what jooles has said and it will grab you from the first page to the end. The only thing which annoyed me was the religious plot which didn't go anywhere. But I actually read the entire series in one day (ofc with a few gaps in between)!!! You won't regret reading this series. You should have read it atleast ONCE.

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