If you are new to the work of Suehiro Maruo, boy you have a big storm coming. 'Shoujo Tsubaki' is his most popular work, garnering attention as being known to many people as "The most disturbing anime/manga of all time." In my opinion, 'Brother's Conflict' and 'Papa to Kiss in the Dark' are FAR more disturbing than this, but I digress.

To be quite honest, this story is actually more streamline and almost makes sense is comparison to his other work. That being said, there is almost no actual storyline to follow and does not make too much sense at times. Things just happen and you have to roll with the punches. If you were hoping for actual plot and a resolved conflict, you will not be satisfied with this.

What makes this manga special is the art; The stark contrast between the black and white without excessive use of screentones to mellow out those harsh lines. Instead of screentones, much of the shading is hatching, which just makes the art feel that much grittier to me. The best usage of hatching I found was on page 115, I can literally feel the hand cramp just from looking at it.

I'd like to just reference some of my favorite pages, because I only really enjoyed this book for the artistic value. Page 84, the "Ant Scene.." go ahead and try to figure out what happens in the ant scene. Pages 106-107, which I would like to refer to as "An actual nightmare, OR a really good time!!" My favorite of all though was on page 111, where we see Midori standing in front of a cold night sky. It's not the most detailed or refined drawing, but it is just really nice to look at, when you see it you'll know what I mean.

I am not even going to bother talking about our "lovely" cast of characters. There's nothing to talk about, other than the fact every character other than Midori is an ACTUAL PREDATOR and will not hesitate to bust a nut at any given second. But I will give credit to Muchisute for eating with his feet though, what a king. He can't play rock paper scissors but MAN he do be dressing well!!

If you are a horror/guro fan and haven't given this a chance yet, literally what are you waiting for. Or if you're someone who simply wants to expand their horizons by reading something different or weird, I'd say give this a go! Keep in mind there are tons of explicit and disturbing scenes, such as r*pe, mutilation and murder. 'Shoujo Tusbaki' is a mere 1 volume, so a quick read that I would say is very much worth it :3c <3