Shounen no Abyss

I will spoil some beats of Shounen no Abyss here, as well as Aku no Hana. Be warned.

I must say, when I first found this title my interest was piqued. The art-style seemed pleasant, capturing atmosphere through paneling and shading akin to Shuzo Oshimi, as well as having a character design strikingly similar to Aku no Hana's post time-skip Kasuga. I must say I am a big fan of Aku no Hana, and upon writing this review, I have not read anything that quite captures atmospheric depression and loneliness in the same manner. So yes, I was excited to read something which could capture a similar feeling.
But as I continued to read Shounen no Abyss, the more it felt lacking, to the point where it would be frustrating. I suppose my expectations should've been lower...

The story follows Reiji, a seemingly normal high-schooler with normal problems who lives in the middle of nowhere. He gets lightly bullied by an old friend, has some family problems, and wants to leave town, but it's hard to tell if any of these issues really get to him at all, or if he's simply good at brushing them off. Instead, he choses to indulge in Idol culture and hang out with his friend. He seems happy. Then he meets his favorite idol who now works at a drug store and suddenly his everyday life is turned upside down... Does this sound familiar?

Already, I was inclined to make comparisons to Oshimi's Aku no Hana simply because of the artwork and Reiji being a Kasuga look-alike, yet so many story beats, atmospheric panels, and early moments feel so Oshimi it made me think that he was a main inspiration.
Boring town, check, normal but quiet boy with not many friends, check, girl who comes in and changes the way he sees his everyday life, check. But the difference between Shounen no Abyss and Aku no Hana become clear after these first few chapters end.

One main issue I see with Shounen no Abyss is that it fails to really capture WHY people become mentally ill. Reiji is fine one moment, then is trying to commit suicide the next. There is no flow, no development, no character beats that would lead up to this. There were some issues in his life, but there was no reaction to any of them. It makes Reiji seem shallow, a husk of a character that the author can manipulate into feeling any way he wants.
If I could bring up Aku no Hana one more time, the timeskip is a foil. We SEE Kasuga slowly becoming disillusioned with life for 6 volumes, then after the failed suicide, he has to crawl out of this mess himself. It's slow, and natural, and we can see how the events have shaped him post-timeskip. Reiji lacks any progression in his actions. We barely get to know how he thinks and reacts to things before he decides to end it all. Once again, this seems shallow.

The structure is the second big problem. Shounen no Abyss wants to have it's cake and eat it too. Have a cast of 'developed' depressed people, and have Reiji get laid by as many girls as possible. The idol he looked up to, his teacher, his best friend, his mother(?). These girls aren't characters, they are tropes that Reiji can use for sex and then move on to the next girl. It's almost structured like an arc, except there isn't any conclusion. Reiji goes from girl to girl without much of a reaction. And though we seem to be getting consequences from this, who cares? Why should we care when Reiji doesn't?

Pure and simple, I described it once as depression porn, and I stick to that claim. There is nothing that is being said here that hasn't been said better anywhere else, if it's saying anything at all. It seems like a pre-teen's idea of what depression would be like, adding in a bunch of cute girls to keep the attention of it's readers. It's begging to be called deep without putting the work in, begging to be labeled as a masterpiece without any actual progression. Overall, Shounen no Abyss is not worth your time. It wasn't worth mine. There's nothing of substance here, and I doubt there ever will be.

This is my first review, so bear with me.

I've only read a quite few mangas before, and this manga is actually one of the few mangas that struck me real hard. The story starts off quite gloomy— and that itself has got me hooked in quite easily.

A story about a boy finding himself in chains and having no control of his life, the manga itself takes in many dark themes; depression, suicide, hopelessness. Add a sexual touch to it and good lord does it bite my feelings hard. The characters, you feel solace for them, even though whatever they did may not be justifiable from every perspective offered. I can literally feel the stress of whatever the main character has gone through, while still feeling the disarray of the characters surrounding him.
I relate to some of them quite strongly.

The art is also charming and pleasant. It emits tragedy, the void that the main character feels throughout the story.

This manga makes me feel empty, and I love it. It's as if I had stepped in the main character's shoes, the hollowness I feel is very much similar to his.

Sorry for the jumble of words, I tried my best to put my thought into this. Anyways, I definitely recommend this as it's not a typical romantic manga (perhaps because I've been reading rom-com, haha), and is easily one of the most exquisite mangas I've found.

This manga is an uncomfortable read, in the best possible way. it's early on in serialization, so this review is pretty premature, but the characters are wonderfully debased and they feel free to express the darkest sides of themselves. They feel sympathetic, even though you know they're making the wrong choices. It's cathartic in a way to see these characters be so darkly sexual.

There are multiple ways to see every story, of course, and some may see it as a simple harem fantasy with emo elements. I see it as a scary mixture of sexuality with some of the darkest emotions humans can have. in addition, it captures a corruption of adolescent discovery that wallflowers may find relatable. possibly upsettingly so. it's a powerful read so far. and i'm looking forward to reading it week to week.

For anyone reading reviews to see if they should pick up this manga, please for the love of god let me spare you:

Also, since it's happened in the past; before anyone says 'lol why read the manga if u hate it', I clicked on this because it was the most recently updated manga on the website I used to read it, was interested in the description, and read every chapter in like an hour, since there's really not really a whole lot of thinking required.

- If you are looking for a 'deep' manga with some kind of underlying metaphor or overarching theme, read something else.
Before anyone tries to say that this manga is deep simply because it touches on themes like suicide, rape, depression, etc. please just know that even a middle schooler that is proficient in any language can write a story equal to this one, in terms of how deep those themes go. This manga is not deep, period. The story feels like the author just made a spider web of ideas that they wanted to write about, and pieced them into a book in no particular order, then spent a few hours coming up with some contrived, bullshit way for them to connect somehow. I have read 22 full chapters, and there has been maybe a chapter's worth of development on the main plot. It started off with some late-highschool aged kid living in a shit hole in the boonies, with a group of dudes who harass him, and a family life that's fucked up, and his goal is to leave the town to get away from all that. I don't want to go into explicit detail of what exactly happens, since this is a review, and I don't want to spoil anything on the off chance that someone will read it even after seeing this. With that being said, just go to the page for "Himegoto: Juukyuusai no Seifuku", which is by the same author, and read the description, then amplify the level of depravity that you would expect from it 10-fold, and that's what the actual story entails. This manga is about on that level, except rather than it being a story about sexually confused youth, it's about a bunch of random shit happening, and every character sexually taking advantage of one another (or trying to). The author uses these themes and soft-core hentai scenes to appeal to low-level curiosity, and, unfortunately, any other deeper meaning behind the things that happen can only be implicated by the reader. Good stories that touch on deep themes do not put the responsibility on the reader to fill in the gaps where there is no substance. It is the author's job to deliver on these implications that they intentionally put forth to begin with. (There are also implications of rape, blackmail, drug overdose, prostitution, and NTR, so if you're not into that shit, then definitely don't read.)

- If you are looking for a 'dark' manga that highlights some negative part of the world, or the people in it, read something else.
It's not to say that this manga doesn't touch on dark subjects, because it certainly does, but that's precisely the problem. So far it has only 'touched' on these subjects, alluding to or explicitly mentioning them as some kind of plot development that would be major in any well-written story, only to immediately move on to the next thing. These themes and subjects are used solely to evoke that 'butterfly'/'sinking' feeling in your stomach that you get when something really nightmarish happens to a character you like. And the subjects themselves are probably enough to elicit this type of feeling, but the author doesn't directly do anything for the reader to actually develop a large enough attachment to the characters for this to be possible. You might be thinking "but there's only 22 chapters! they'll go deeper!". If this was a valid point, I might agree, but I would argue back that it's the author's fault for writing these intended emotional kicks to the stomach in the first couple chapters. Even when you ignore the previously mentioned point, I would still disagree. There have been way too many instances in a 22 chapter sample size where the story just breaks from its path and starts a new one completely, only to randomly tie it in later. Also, based on this author's track record of cutting plot in favor of deplorable shit, don't be surprised when that same thing happens here. (also the pacing is just bad in general, everything moves really quickly, but lacks meaningful substance.)

- If you are looking for a romance manga that has hints of the previous two topics, read literally anything other than this.
There is nothing romantic about this story, whatsoever. Anybody who has read up to the latest chapter of this manga and can say with a straight face that this should be classified as romance has a really warped sense of what romance actually is.

- If you are looking for a manga with nice art, and don't give a shit about the story, read away.
The art is the only redeemable aspect of this manga, imo. A lot of the scenery is just filtered real-life pictures, which is common in most slice of life manga series, but there are actually a higher than average number of hand-drawn scenes that look pretty good.

- If you saw the 'smut' tag and wanna see the big sex, there's plenty of doujin authors that are more talented at both writing story, and drawing nipples for you to jack off to.

To sum up, I feel like this manga is really outrageously overrated by a lot of the people who have read it. This manga absolutely has the parts to potentially be something amazing, but honestly, knowing this author, I highly doubt they can piece them together into something amazing, given the erratic mess they've created thus far.

Side note: the last manga I read before this was GTO, and to go from that masterpiece to this was a hilarious contrast.

So I binged the whole manga in just a day and all I can say is that it is pretty good, at the 1st chapter I got hooked and decided to read more of it not knowing that I have already read the whole manga in just half a day.

The story I gave it a 7:
Some can write a similar story to this one with depression, suicide, dark, etc. themes, but I like dramas and dark stories even though they are cliche and you know what will happen if you are like me and like dramas and dark stories you will like this manga while reading this I also feel uncomfortable with some scenes I will not say what happens but it is what it is if you run into this manga try to read the 1st chapter and if you got hooked get ready for a ride.

For the art, I give it a 9;
for the art style, I really liked the art style and the character design really gives a serious vibe and is just suited for the aura of the scene

Characters I give a good 9;
I really like the personality of the characters, somewhat busted up to the point where they just want to disappear, not problems with the characters, I like them as they are. Pretty Fucked Up.

Enjoyment also a solid 9;
Really enjoyed it to my preference. Dark. and had me hooked on the 1st chapter, it got me good.

Overall 9;
Just because it got me hooked and made me want to read all of it with just one chapter already makes it a great manga for me, if you run into this manga give it a try to read

for now I am really enjoying this manga. one thing that I really enjoy about it are the characters. Each character is different for why they feel certain emotions. Each character feels real, their emotions feel real. In the story it conveys how no matter how much material objects you have or how many girls want to do it with you, you can still feel empty. it conveys how depression isn't just something that can be fixed by your possessions. Overall I feel like the story conveys how each person has different reasons for living, and different reasons for wanting death. The main character tries to push people out of his life so he doesn't hurt them when he dies. And Nagi Aoe doesn't particularly care about who dies with or without her. I think these two characters contrast each other really well. I think the some of the sex scenes were forced, unnecessary kind of icky but i am willing to overlook that because i am very invested in the characters.

After 34 chapters of setup, it finally looks like the story can actually go somewhere. At least, I hope that the mangaka figures out that only having depression as your focus doesn't really keep the readers attention for too long. Nevertheless I am very interested in how the story will go. Potential is the biggest factor as to why I give this manga above a 5. There are many potential plot threads to explore: The mass depression surrounding the town, the weird family dynamic, the inner conflict between giving up and throwing away the suffering or enduring it in hopes of a better future, the ideologies and idealisms of the main cast, the overobsessive behavior towards eachother and I could likely go on and on. The hope that it develops in a direction that's not utterly disappointing is only faint however, as the writer as of yet has not done much with the story. If you read the first chapter and skip to the last it's not as if you're completely confused as to what's going on. But for now I'm slightly excited to see where it goes and curious as too see if the author will cowardly base the ending on the hollow relationship with the mc and the idol in the end.

This will be my first manga review.

So imagine if one day you decided to mix the Sexual and depressing moments from PunPun with a Kaneki-head ass looking mc, what you will get is boy's abyss. This manga is kinda like highschool, not because I related to this during my highschool years, because it starts off with great potential but in the end, it makes you feel so stupid that you wanna off yourself.

The more you read, the more annoying it gets, not even joking, if it wasn't for the great art, I probably wouldn't have read 42 chapters of this. The characters are all retarded for some reason, the mc keeps going back to those who emotionally manipulated him, and the side characters are all there to serve the purpose of making the mc hate himself even more.

Personally, I'm completely fine with depressing stories and flawed characters, in fact, some of my favorite mangas and anime have both of these attributes. That's not to say that you can just mix them together, and except the work to be interesting or deep in any way, it just becomes a hot mess of depression and sex.

The main problem is the lack of build-up. I personally wasn't able to emotionally connect with any of the characters, because there was so little time for any build up to happen, before we jump into the main conflicts and stories. Emotional connections are an extremely vital part of these tragic and depressing stories, because without them, the story would just seem dull and hollow.

The themes aren't bad at all in my opinion. Dealing with abuse and emotional manipulation is a very serious issue for many people, but the characters are all used in a way that represent abuse instead of demonstrating it. For example, the teacher, represents obsession and emotional control. But she never got a meaningful background to her character that turned her into the type of person she is, she's just like that way. Of course, I'm sure it does get briefly explained when she was introduced, but again, it wasn't enough for me to connect and comprehend that.

The art is very good, and I think that's the main selling point of this manga.

as others have said this story doesn't deserve the hype. It is very fake deep and relies heavily on pure shock value. it also takes a lot from Dazai's No Longer Human but in the worse way. It even uses some plot points of No Longer Human and yeah just go read No longer Human if you want something dark with actual depth. I really don't understand the hype behind this, I guess if you are young you may think this has depth but it has none, it completely relies on shock to drive the story forward because I presume the author knows its the only way they can keep you reading it

Do not recommend

Depression is a horrific thing. One that many of the most prior and coming generations will experience in large. Always apart of the human condition, it's something that bites so fiercely with nary a way to really bite back. Shounen no Abyss is a manga that aims to summarise and encapture that darkness that so much of the youth struggles through these days. It is not alone in it's attempt, so much media comes from pain and so much media tries to understand it, despite how impossible it may be to capture a feeling shared by so many but unique in it's vices to everyone it affects. Much manga, anime and other media in the past have tried their hand at recreating it and only the most elite amongst them have ever belonged to that club of higher media. Our manga in question is by no means a member of that club, although it may just have a toe in the door.

Shounen no Abyss is a Coming of Age, Psychological Drama Manga by Minenami Ryou, most famous for Himegoto: Juukyuusai no Seifuku, a drama of similar genre but wildly different thematics. In Abyss, Ryou attempts his darkest story to date with our protagonist Reiji Kurose and his suicidal tendencies suffering from an overbearing life, dysfunctional family and uncertain future. If you have read other Manga of this genre then this tiny synopsis will probably familiarlize you due to an abundance in the medium that have also tackled the strife of youth indifference, most famously Oyasumi Punpun. Shounen no Abyss makes genuine waves to stand on the same wavelength of the classic by giving very legitimate structure and reason to the nature of the manga and Reiji Kurose's issues. There is legitimate thematic weight to not only Kurose but the abundance of supporting characters, each with their own unique pain and reasons to their own problems.

However, sadly this Manga seems to suffer from it's affiliation with Young Jump and thusly it's purpose as a Seinen. Now, my speculation here is not to be taken for verbatim. However, there is little else that could explain the bizarre sexualization and characterization inside the series. Minenami Ryou has dabbled in ecchi in the past but to place nudity within Shounen no Abyss to the point where it dabbles on the line of ecchi/fan-service is a bizarre choice to say the least. Now, sex and romance (or lack thereof) is most certainly apart of Coming of Age and a massive causation of depression worldwide and of course most importantly, within Japan. Though, in no good mind can I find the reason for the female characters to be one minute rendering their soul apart in double page spreads of pure outbursts of sorrow, anguish and rage to the next issue be throwing themselves on our main character as if he was lathered in aphrodisiac. In order to justify these rapid moodswings and sudden appearances of intense thirst, Minenami Ryou has to apply rather tired character archetypes in order to placate the Young Jump crowd and editorial staff. Particuarly of note is the disillussionment of the teacher character, one that as previously noted, has a legitimate reason to be involved with Reiji Kurose and has a genuine feeling of sadness about them but is then degraded to having a far too familiar trope seemingly forced onto them in order to remain prominent in the series and satisfy some weird neccessity that far too much Seinen seems determined to have.

As for the other aspects of the manga, the art retains the familiarlity of the rest of Minenami Ryou's work, not exceptional but acceptable, except for some occurrences where there are mild flexes that show impressive talent. It can also be said that the character designs are unique to the point of everyone being instantly identifiable whilst still maintaining utter believability. Not easy by any means. The pacing of the manga is generally quite good and leads to an overall easy read (darkly humorous considering the subject matter isn't meant to be digestable), this could be consumed in one afternoon quite comfortably and the little plot hooks laid towards the end of chapters are firm enough to drag "just one more issue" out of you.

Overall, Shounen no Abyss seems to definitely have the wherewithal to achieve more and be better than the sum of it's parts. However, it's holding back and falling into safe zones that means it will please the small crowd it gains and probably fall into obscurity in a few years or under the radar to be later discussed as a "hidden gem". Ironically a theme of the manga is causing yourself pain to endlessly please those who don't really care for you, settling for mediocrity as it's best for those that have expectations. Shounen no Abyss will never escape the abyss of other endless average to good Seinen Drama if it does not forget that it doesn't need to be like any of the rest. It just needs to be itself.