Youkai Ningen review

animelancer12
Apr 12, 2021
Just personal scratch.
Advised, possible spoilers.
Opinion & Informal

Art: 4/10
Anatomy and proportions had multiple instances of being off or odd-looking. A few examples were chapter 1 when the first victim is kicking the door on page ~20, page ~29 where she looks like she just gained at least 15 pounds worth of upper-body muscle, chapter 8 page ~19 (80), or chapter 8 page ~43. There were some really odd design decisions too. Why were the padlocks on their neck-collars paper thin? Seriously look at them and how thin they were. Furthermore, the chains attached to those padlocks looked like they could be snapped with one wrong fall or a good twist. In chapter 8 with the dead soldier; that knife handle looks a bit thin to be useful as a combat knife - more so in the very next panel showing how small the handle is relative to the solider's head. Overall, I had a problem with the art as it had many inconsistencies with relative size of objects, object realism, and character's proportions. Why was Kitazawa's shirt buttoned up to hide her cleavage only for the one "heart-touching" moment of the narrative? Did she suddenly become more maidenly to make her final damsel-in-distress bit more believable? The prior 90% of the manga thus far had no qualms in showcasing it. I may just be being very picky, but I feel the examples I pointed out are reasonable. After all, I'm comparing the art here to everything else I've read. Anyways, there were impact shots and plenty of them. They just didn't leave any impact at all. Nature and environmental showcases looked weak and were often just a mess of black blotches and silhouettes. Interiors were under populated and didn't do much to build the atmosphere or establish what the settings looked like. Overall, I didn't really think much at all about the art for its failure to make many things look real or at least believable.

Panel Progression: 5/10
Supporting tones were lacking. Much of the supporting backgrounds and details were just shadowed over, meh-looking silhouettes, or just not there when they should have been. Panel design was about average. Pacing was not good. Over the whole thing, yeah, the pacing was way too fast. I'll talk about examples down below. Overall, I thought the pacing was way off because some developments such as pivotal character relationship or plot building scenes were introduced way too early without any lead up or justification.

Characters: 4/10
The character designs were normal, school uniforms pretty much. However, it irked me how the cleavage of the females of this manga would be showcased or not depending on the state they were in. For example, at the start Kitazawa's chest was on display and was unsurprisingly used to push a plot development 10 or so pages into the first chapter. However, her shirt is buttoned up when she later becomes more heroine-like I guess? Glasses-girl was subjected to the same treatment except when she was revealed to be the ring-leader her cup size goes up two cup sizes and her character's design is now her with her shirt unbuttoned. Character development wise, there was no character development. There was no past (don't even kid me with what was attempted for Kitazawa) or implications for the future for any of the characters. That's it and that's all I really need to say.

Plot & Development: 4/10
At first, this seems something along the lines of Jinrou Game minus the game and may just be another forced killing scenario, but the plot abruptly throws a curve-ball out of nowhere expecting us to buy that some super computer is brainwashing soldiers to do its bidding to save humanity in a hope to introduce a deeper "do the ends justify the means?" development; mind you, this was only after 2 murders in which both were done exactly the same. Don't worry, nothing regarding morality or even psychological-like was actually touched upon. The main characters begin spouting shounen-like lines like "I'll survive with you!" or "We are going to survive this together!" after only exchanging a few words. Overall, I just want to say that things felt off. The pacing was fast, things developed out of nowhere and with the weirdest reasons, the bigger plot that it tried to develop was lame, and character dynamics felt shallow.

Conclusion: 4/10
Similar to the manga 6000 or Liar Game, I felt that the ending sort of just hit a wall. It was like the manga just ended mid sentence. Oh wait, it did.

Overall: 4/10
Not worth reading in my opinion.
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Youkai Ningen
Youkai Ningen
Author Shinya, Nobutaka
Artist