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[cactus]

The World is Mine

It's Clockwork Orange meets Natural Born Killers. The hero is Mon, a monster of free will. For no reason and with no emotion, he kills people. He doesn't talk much, so no one knows what's on his mind. His sidekick is Toshi, who's always expressing his hatred against humankind. Toshi and Mon start their killing spree in Hokkaido, the north end of Japan, and kill their way to Tokyo. Japanese police hunt desperately for them, but no one can stop them on their way to the capital. Meanwhile, as if following them, is Higumadon, a Godzilla-like gigantic red bear from Hokkaido. It stomps everything in its way. Finally Toshi-Mon blackmails the prime minister into doing a striptease broadcast on national television. This story sounds really stupid and meaningless, but The World is Mine is meticulously rendered in detailed super-realism. The art is elaborate, bullets tear off an innocent pedestrian's head, eyeballs pop out, brain splatters. Toshi mercilessly stabs a mother who tries to protect her baby and stomps the little one to death. To get through this comic is a challenge to your humanity.

The review fails to mention numerous accounts of rape. Straigt rape, gay rape, rape of old folks and there's bound to be animal rape sooner or later. It's not that exploitive, though, and the manga has won awards and has very high regards among other manga writers. Has a bit of a slow starts but it just keeps getting better and better as the story unfolds. Mon-chan is probably the most violent and evil anti-hero I've ever seen as well 

Read a longer review here. Very interesting shit

[threesided]

Gantz is fucking neat. I've been watching the episodes for the past few days.

[cactus]

Read the manga instead. Ten times better, seriously. The violence and sex is very toned down in the anime. The anime also changes the plotline for the worse, and ends a hell of a lot earlier than the manga.

[shinygerbil]

You know, I watched the first two episodes of Gantz a while back, and it had some promise, but... what the hell was with those "green onion aliens"? They just seemed like some kind of comic relief. It was weird. I'm told it gets better, but it didn't begin promisingly for me.

[Melly]

The World Is Mine. Well, after reading about it, I'm actually a bit fearful of reading it. o.o

[Advenith]

Finally started watching Kemonozume, and it's pretty damn impressive. The samurai who can't control his bowels isn't as funny as I was hoping, though.

Also, The World Is Mine just shot up to #1 on my "must-read" list.

[Average Higgins]

Where did you find The World is Mine to read, cactus? Because I kinda wanna read it now.

(Also, high-five for reading "robots never sleep". That dude's translations are some of my favorite comics right now, manga or otherwise.)

[cactus]

You can kinda get The World is Mine here. Not 100% legal, but there should be no danger nor moral issues with it, since it's unlikely it'll ever be translated to english commercially.

Oh, and the story gets so much better by volume two. Don't give up on it until then.

[Derek]

I you, cactus!

[Average Higgins]

And they have Ping Pong too!

thank you thank you thank you

[threesided]

Yeah, upon finishing Gantz I felt very deprived of a conclusion. So many unanswered things, and as stated by Cactus, ends far too soon. 4 missions? what kind of a series is that? That's probably the most annoying part. Not to mention the ending made no sense and didn't answer anything.

I don't have time for the manga right now though, I already kinda screwed myself by watching the anime.

Might check out Serial Experiments Lain next.

[Melly]

Lain is TOTALLY worth it.

Plus the girl is just plain adorable. :3

[Doncommie]

Gungrave might count, it's not fucked up but it's just a long depressing story where EVERYONE meets a sad ending. The plan must have been to see how depressing they could make an anime. It also has a totally bizzare mix of a straight mafia story with undead monsters 

I watched some of Lain but it starts sooooooooooooo slowly, I got about four episodes in and nothing had really gone anywhere so I gave up.

[Melly]

Lain is a very different anime. It is slow, incredibly so, and yet it still leaves your brain in a tizzy if you're trying to make complete sense of it before the ending. Which still leaves questions open. It uses quite a few techniques that make even everyday scenes look alien and mysterious, with some hidden meanings to it.

I've still fallen in love with Lain herself, though.

[Doncommie]

Have you seen Ergo Proxy? It might slightly compare to Lain in presentation. It's a slow moving heavily philosiphical dystiopian future with monsters. Almost a hybrid of Blade Runner and Ghost In The Shell. It might be the most intelligent anime ever too 

[shinygerbil]

I tried watching Ergo Proxy but failed. I don't mean to sound like an asshole but it was just a little too pretentious for me. I wasn't in a particularly receptive mood when I watched it, though, so I might try again sometime!

[Doncommie]

That's odd, I felt Ghost In The Shell was a lot more pretentious (Let alone something like Evangelion!). I thought it was genuinely clever for a change.

[Doncommie]

I ordered the first five Blam books, they are dead cheap. Of course book two arrives first

[Niwdz]

NGE: the end of Evangelion, I cant sleep or Rei will kill me

[shinygerbil]

That's odd, I felt Ghost In The Shell was a lot more pretentious (Let alone something like Evangelion!). I thought it was genuinely clever for a change.

Hmm, I don't know. They were both pretentious, yes - but I felt they had substance, likeable characters, a more cohesive plot, etc. Ergo Proxy just didn't seem to have that edge. It seemed more like "I'll sound clever if I use Latin, cogito ergo sum, lulz i am clever now", but like I say, I wasn't really in the right frame of mind when I watched it. I will definitely give it another try. Others have recommended it to me, as well!