Higanjima

A manga about a group of young adults trying to survive on a remote island ruled by vampires and hidieous monsters.

I personally love Higanjima but this series is not perfect by any means. First of all, the story doesn’t even start getting interesting until around volume 10. It’s asking a lot of a reader to trudge through a generic and mediocre for that long before you get to the good stuff.

Second, Koji Matsumoto is really terrible at drawing character faces. If you look closely, you can see that almost every character has the same face because he’s incapable of drawing them differently and it actually becomes worse the longer the series lasts.

Lastly, the grotesque designs of the monsters range from original to borderline stupid. There’s a lot of vile sexual violence thrown in there to boot and Matsumoto really seems like he’s leaning into trying to shock and awe the reader. Since the franchise has been serialized for so long and now entered it’s third run I feel like Matsumoto himself is struggling to up the ante now.

That said, there is something unique with the monsters and bad artwork in this book that continues to keeps my interest, along with it’s many fans.

~dakazu