Ressentiment (2003) is a black comedy manga written and drawn by Kengo Hanazawa, creator of Boys on the Run (2005) and I Am a Hero (2009) that opened his career with a powerful work on the topics of Otaku culture and in many ways, the voluntary ostracism of reality imposed by technology; social ineptitude, inferiority complexes and discrimination.

The title in French refers to a condition described in the psychology of authors such as Nietzsche, about the transfer of resentment originated in an inferiority complex, rejection and blame on a third party - the real world, in this case. It's also a term to describe the creation of moral systems, for example; the Nietzschean theme of Morality of Masters and Slaves.

Under a veiled comic tone and with a unique drawing style, Hanazawa tells us about the life of thirty-year-old Takuro Sakamoto, a depressed man, full of complexes and with a childlike sense of human relationships. The author makes a quasi-pictorial mixture of a social reality of those who don't fit in and flee from the real world that they find unfair and a virtual world where they can be the heroes, the popular ones.

Sakamoto is a character with whom we can all identify, not only those immediately described as ugly and living in a loft with virtual girlfriends and boyfriends, but all those who suffer from an inferiority complex due to bad things that have happened in our lives or simply because some traits could make us seem vulnerable out there.

"The Unreal", or virtual world is full of people who have given up on life or are looking for something to fill their existential emptiness, but instead of being a place to heal their wounds, it becomes a place to satisfy their vileness, exercise hatred and finally the only place where they are someone while being nobody. The ending will blow you away, but the maganka does nothing but be consistent with himself.

Impossible to adapt to anime, it's a powerful story that will make you reflect on your own goals in life and never be so low to be carried away by those deficiencies and defects that we all have, which are mostly mental.

Imprescindible.