30/06/2021: 5 manga we’re reading at the moment (thrilling manga)

Dear readers, we’re terribly sorry for the irregularity of our posts. We were busier with our internships and research than expected… (Also, the very lukewarm reception to our last two articles wasn’t very encouraging!) We’ll try to do better in the remaining month-and-a-bit of summer.

Well, it’s been a VERY long time since we even talked about manga. A bit part of it is the scarcity of updates ever since MangaDex went down. Even though it’s back, a lot of the series we were reading weren’t being updated. However, in the last month or so, things have been slowly approaching what used to be the normal regularity. Here are the titles that we’ve been reading so far:

1) Ijimeru Aitsu ga Waruinoka, Ijimerareta Boku ga Waruinoka?

A bullying victim grows up to be a teacher and has the daughter of his bully as a student. Ironically, she’s the one getting bullied by a vicious pack of classmates! It’s a thriller with some mind games – is the teacher someone she can trust or is he out for revenge? The depiction of bullying and the after-effects is not bad, in my opinion. The actual mind-games are quite good as well because it’s a bit like Death Note or a detective story.

Actually, another selling point is how, besides our two lead characters, everyone else is irredeemably evil! They're so deliciously mean and horrible so you just hope something bad will happen to them. Even the teacher is kind of an asshole although he's sympathetic!!!

The story has a lot of twists and turns and you really can't tell how the story will turn out.

2) My Dearest Self with Malice Aforethought

I can’t spoil the story but it’s a mystery thriller about a guy whose dad is a serial killer (arrested and all – this is a source of great shame and social ostracism for him) who wakes up next to a hot girl (an enviable predicament, I imagine) with no memory of how they met. Eventually, a super evil gang enters the picture and there’s a whole conspiracy revealed. Extremely thrilling!!!

Also, the art is exquisite! I like how their faces seem so realistic although they don't overdo it with the line art on their faces. There's some dirty stuff but it's not like porn but more like a HBO TV show.

3) Gajuu: The Beast

Dragon Head mixed with monsters! Our main character takes the train and meets his bullies and his childhood friend when the train suddenly stops and they come under attack from gigantic monsters! They meet other survivors and struggle to get out of the subway without getting eaten. The action is very exciting – easily among the best out there, even if everything’s probably been done before. It’s especially thrilling because nobody is safe and even characters who get a lot of attention can still die all of a sudden.

4) #DRCL midnight children

A mangaka’s take on Dracula. The art is exquisite – this makes the normal scenes beautiful and the scary scenes all the mor terrifying. The very first chapter shows this off extremely well, with a gore-iffic scene not out of place in a John Carpenter scarefest and gorgeous depictions of the countryside. I’m not sure how the story will go but it seems quite promising!

5) Gannibal

A policeman who arrives to work at a small rural village learns that the villagers are cannibals. Seems very promising, but updates are slow.