Entertaining. Gore aplenty with limbs flying, jaded characters, dark humor, restoration of severed limbs and occasional resurrection, a hint of romance, a couple sources of regular humongous bare boobage fanservice, wanton slaughter of intruders from another world... sound like Gantz or something? I thought it did... BUT THAT COULDN'T BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH.
Mostly because it doesn't much feel like manga. Seems to borrow a lot from some sort of western influence, maybe comic books (wouldn't know, don't read em). The whole everyone's masked like 3rd rate superheros or WWF/mexican staged "wrestling" stars - supposedly due to the world's social norms - idea wears thin real quick, and seems like a gimmick or a cheap trick to avoid drawing facial expressions and emotions. It wears so thin that even the author senses it and starts losing masks more and more around the halfway point.
When I say it doesn't feel like manga, it especially does not feel like seinen manga. Emotional bonds at times flare intensely, but few and far between. Despite plenty of nudity, romance is hinted at, but only developed to a middle-school blushing virgin kind of level.
Lots of effort is made to show an utterly surreal and brutal society (well, 2 different utterly surreal and brutal societies), but it somehow tries too hard to seem original... Lots of where'd I see that before style dejavu. It's like a quilt or a collage of borrowed elements. Alice in wonderland stuff, other people's familiar-looking and fairly popular illustration styles, other dystopia-genre stuff, tongue-in-cheek grotesque "stylized nightmarish" imagery, etc.
Violence is extra-graphic, but somehow gag-grade... Mostly laughed off, used to depict factional relations or balance of power, or just forgotten entirely 10 seconds later. By everyone except a single recurring character: a deeply shocked & traumatized loli-ish girl in her early teens used to provide contrast. Which doesn't really work quite as well as you'd expect, because her getting brutalized and maimed in a gazillion ways is one of the series' main running gags. .
Oh well... at least it's entirely 100% non-sexual.
...BUT that, combined with a surprised (and surprising) translator's note is what finally puts things into perspective: IT WAS, AT ITS START, WRITTEN AND DRAWN BY A 23 or 24YO GIRL.
Suddenly, everything clicks into place. It's a naive, sheltered, slightly antisocial, veeeery young and utterly virginal geeky girl's view of "dark and gritty". Despite her sadistic gag treatment of the character of Ebisu, mangaka shows time and again that she has zero understanding of the mechanics of cruelty. SHE TRIES, SHE REALLY DOES. But she's a sheltered, well-educated, middle or upper-class quiet nerdy girl from one of the cleanest, most prosperous societies in the world, and obviously not of the adventurous trouble-seeking variety ... IT SHOWS
Mangaka has clearly never experienced darkness or adversity, never met anyone with any experience with any sort of darkness, lacks the knowledge of psychology needed to "model" it believably, and was apparently unaware of or unwilling to read authors with strong authentic insight into the topic (too disturbing?). She also has precious little, if any, romantic experience. Probably very unsocial, too, or tends somewhat to the asperger's end of the autistic spectrum - despite an obsessive attention to background clothing etc. details, faces are very plain and unexpressive, drawn emotions are rare, and her inability to draw much expression is such that she works it into the core of the plot by covering for it with a multitude of devices - the lizard mug of the cursed protagonist / the masks for magic users / tattoos and crap for hole residents / immobile faces for demons... There are just too many things she has nooo clue about.
For those who HAVEN'T read this:
*it's a super-bloody SHOUNEN. A seinen wannabe cranking violence to 11, trying ever so hard to be dark and gritty, but only giving us a naive girl's best guess as to what dark and gritty might taste like, but lacking in adult-like relationship dynamics, adult emotions, and realistic character psychology. it tries to compensate for this naivete through lots of wanton murder slaughter and dismemberment, but that wears off fast... also, the gore fails anatomy forever, which dulls the impact a lot (ex: around the middle chapters, a few arms get cut off about every other chapter and limbs fly all over the place, but mangaka has NOOO idea that the forearm contains TWO large bones not one... and NOOO clue just how small, in proportion to muscle and flesh, a "large" bone really is)
this manga was DRAWN BY EBISU. literally. once you figure that out, everything falls into place.
PS despite its many shortfalls, it's fairly entertaining and interesting. VEEERY addictive, too. author has a good chance of becoming hella good once she matures.
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