Shounen no Abyss \ Boy's Abyss Review

****SPOILERS****

Shounen no Abyss\Boy's Abyss: Overall 7/10

Personal Reading Experience: 

To be honest as much as I'm about to trash on this manga I was actually thoroughly engaged in it from around chapter 50-75 and 80-100. The foundation for this manga was extremely weak but I felt like the later execution saves it (Everything after chapter 50 tbh). A lot of the reveals that happen in the series really caught me off guard and surprised me, a majority of them also make perfect sense in recontextualizing things outside of minor character consistency hiccups.

Criticism:

 

Major thing I'd like to mention is that I felt like the way suicide as a whole was handled was downright offensive to me. Firstly, if you keep throwing suicide here and there it loses impact in the story and honestly I felt really desensitised to that word once I caught up to the 110 chapters or so. I swear they say "commit suicide" at least 100 times in 10 chapters. Furthermore, the depiction of suicide in this manga does NOT line up with my own experiences, and while I don't want to make assumptions I really don't think the author understands what drives people to suicide, how they act/think. If I really want to feel bad for these characters you can't just tell me "they are sad", you need to put me through some experiences before I believe you. Even when the author does this I'm not exactly sold right away.

 

The second biggest problem is really character writing overall. There are some reveals later down the line that are supposed to justify character behaviour near the start but it REALLY feels like a stretch even when fully explained. Also we basically meet the characters broken from the start which kind of voids them of any personality whatsoever, the main character is just a living husk with no personality traits whatsoever.

Also the blue haired girl on the cover serves no purpose other than to fuck around and motivate the main character to do stuff so don't be fooled into thinking the story has anything to do with her from all the promo art online.

Without a doubt in my mind I can say the thing that pissed me off the most was the concept of "The Lovers Abyss" or double suicide. With how much this annoying concept shows up/ is brought up you might think it might something significant, but no, from what I can tell it just seems to exist as an attempt at an underlying abstract theme that encompasses the entire setting. I just simply don't understand how or why a majority of the characters are related to this whatsoever, it simply seems shoehorned in to keep some sort of narrative cohesion. While complaining about plot conveniences is kinda pointless I just find it offputting that every single mention or attempt at suicide just happens to be a double suicide.

In constrast an odd sense of enjoyment I got out of reading this work was laughing at how cringy and juvanile the paneling/writing got. Might sound really condescending of me to say but when you insert, "You are an abyss...." onto a full page spread of a dude staring off into the distance or straight at the reader with a dead eyed expression I really can't help but laugh.

The Good:

There is one character in particular who I felt almost deadlifted a massive majority of the manga by themselves, the teacher. She is probably one of the most interesting characters to follow as she does nothing but drive the plot forward in interesting and chaotic ways. She also is one of the only characters to have an actual personality. Some of the panels including this character were easily the best and most haunting/creepy ones in the entire read, incredible character, definitely going to read just to see more of her. Honestly if they just focused the entire story on the teacher and cut some of the fat this would easily be incredible. 

Surprisingly the art and paneling actually really improved over the course of the manga. Near the beginning I was really not that impressed, everything was kind of plain and average, the only thing providing to the themes of the story we're some hollow expressions every now and again. Later in the story the mangaka did an amazing job with the paneling, composition and use of pitch blackness in the background/characters. Some of the best panels were extremely unsettling because of a combination of the 3 aforementioned characteristics working really well together. Really made up for the lack of facial detail due to the artstyle.