Sometimes there is just a manga series that needs to be read by everyone regardless of quality or more importantly, regardless whether you are into manga in the first place.

Like an essay written by a famous philosopher, Super Cruel and Terrible Tales of Mangaka is one of those that deserves to be in some form of Manga Hall of Fame must read category because from my knowledge it is the only completely translated in English manga that talks about the mangaka side of manga as of my writing this review. (At least based on the last few days of OneManga's manga listing)

The only two other manga I know of is the prequel to this series which the author reveals at the end but to my knowledge I can't find any scanlation of it and the other series is Bakuman which I'm currently reading but as far as I know it isn't completely translated yet plus there's more of a bishounen feel to the latter while Super Cruel is not afraid at all to include such subjects as ugly characters, perversion, unlikeable characters and all things related more to gag humor than stereotypical manga design.

...and yet it's able to couple this with the type of heart warming conclusions that I even dare say you could replace all the famous classical fairy tales (Disney or Grimm version it doesn't matter) and replace their prestige to each chapter of Super Cruel and the world would be a much better place for kids to grow up in. Truly, each moral tale of Super Cruel is way up there in life lessons and far outgrows the mangaka theme it claims to be about in it's premise.

If there is one downside is that in any type of works especially hyped up ones, it tends to feel like a fad you're parent is into and starts to become uncool. Super Cruel isn't that popular at least not on the level of a Bleach, Naruto or One Piece but I could imagine if it ever were more praised, most of the artwork criticisms and the over-focusness of certain names and directions in each episodes would start to decay it's quality. (Much in the same way the over-exposure of most fairy tales have degraded the morality of the lessons to the point that they become obvious "boring" tales.)

Since Super Cruel is enough of a niche series, the above worry is irrelevant except I kind of do want it to be more famous and I kind of hope more people review this and raise this series' popularity which is why I'm sharing this review even though there is already a reviewer who rated the series highly and the series isn't that obscure in Google searches and it's also included in one Amazon review of a different but similarly themed book which is how I discovered this series..

Link of the review:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R23ABSF3VDV1FK/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R23ABSF3VDV1FK

...but with sites like OneManga shutting down, it is going to be much harder searching for these jewels unless you're highly connected to an otaku community (which I wasn't) so this is one of those series where I'm very conscious of my review for fear that instead of making you want to check out this series, I end up overhyping the whole thing and in turn you become disappointed and no longer feel this is a series worth sharing at all.

I guess what I mean by all of the above is that there are some series on par with The Dark Knight for Hollywood movies that a lot of people would want to share with their buddies and then there are series that are just on par with Citizen Kane that it's one of those movies that "has" to be on top not because it's always going to be entertaining to all generations of movie watchers but because the substance, the subject matter, the presentation, the detail --- it's like a historical book that just shouldn't be covered up especially since a manga series tends to have less respect than a philosopher's book on Project Gutenberg. This is just the type of series that needs this exposure so if after checking the manga and you found my 10 review to be overrated, I hope you replace this with a 1 or a 2 or an 8...whatever number that will make you enjoy the seiries because I think this series is too important to be overshadowed by more "entertaining" series and I feel all people around the world deserves the chance to know about this series so that at least those who can be best inspired by this series may at least hopefully find the incentive to search for this once these "instant previewable easy to skim" Manga sites are taken down and the only way to preview a book is to buy it or download it via some other illegal manner because again, regardless of how redundant this point is, I really feel this series has to be exposed more especially in this juncture of time. The view in this series is too under-represented right now especially outside the non-otaku community that until this series is more exposed this is one of those important series (not just for manga but for all of literature) that this needs to keep getting a 10 until the lessons of these stories start to feel second nature to most of the world.