Oh Ajin. I just wish you actually had something to say.

As far as plots go, I wouldn't exactly say this manga has the most original concepts ever. Some humans achieve the ability to never die outside of old age. When they are discovered by humanity, they are essentially taken from civilized society and used as seen fit. Usually tortured. No one really seems to care that people just vanish, and general society doesn't seem to think the people being essentially kidnapped are in any sort of danger. Sure. Whatever.

Where the story does shine are the conversations the characters have (usually), and the manga's antagonist.

That said, I'm not really sure what the point of this manga is outside of ultraviolence. The humans treat demi-humans like trash, kidnapping and torturing most of them for nothing more then financial gain. Yet the main opposing force to this behavior is a literal nutcase who finds glee out of making his life a waking video game CoD expansion.

So who are we supposed to root for here? No one? Well, our protagonist I guess, but he has no real stakes in this fight either outside of some vague "I want to live life in peace so let me help you I guess" sort of attitude. Yet somehow he never had the bright idea to dye his hair? Change his looks? He hardly tried anything to really lay low, and clearly his face isnt very distinct given the fact the manga says quite a few kids look like him and had been dealing with the consequences of that. Of course, by the time the protagonist does develop a real desire to win, its by the end of the story, but it all could have been avoided.

Speaking of protagonists... he's fine I guess. A mess of contrivances, and he somehow knows literally everything despite being a high schooler, but that's manga! At first he was still in the realm of possibility, as most of his actions were just cold rationalizations, but by the end his sheer amount of knowledge and planning reaches absurd dues ex machina levels.

And this is all without even mentioning the gung-ho jingoism in this story. Politicians are nothing but useless lumps on a log, but the military leaders? Well, clearly they should be the ones in charge. They step up when the others are useless, even somehow managing to assemble task forces of the most considerable fighters. Politicians continue to be dumb as logs and wont even authorize police officers to use /tranquillizer guns/? On what are essentially alien forces terrorizing and murdering thousands? Is this a joke? Of course the military has merit when the people "running" the country have no brain cells.

Oh, and somehow no other countries have gotten involved. Because obviously terrorism done by demi-humans, which is an existential threat to humanity, does not matter and whatever just let Japan deal with it. Uh. Sure. Ok. That's manga for you.

How am I supposed to take these adult, very smart characters seriously when there is just an endless mountain of contrivances that let the manga progress? I dunno.

Normally I could ignore all of this and just enjoy the manga as an action spectacle, but over and over the manga continues to bring up the sheer atrocities humans have committed against the Ajin, yet also tries to get us to think humans are deserving of redemption and something about idiot friends who will always be there to support you or something. Which somehow is supposed to make me root for the humans I guess.

This manga tries to act like it's saying something, and I just don't know why its pretending so hard. Either let us turn our brains off and enjoy this action cartoony violence much like a video game, or /say something/. And sadly, Ajin just has literally nothing at all to say.