The thing that impresses me the most is how completely underrated this manga is. Maybe the anime adaptation didnt do that much in its favor but oh well. It is what it is. The amount of stunning art intense character depth and stellar pacing are only some of the aspects that contribute to build the foundations of this manga making it better than many mainstream stories of the same genre. Its well structured to the point where I dont think I will ever read a slightly cartoonish military thriller as well constructed as this masterpiece. DISCLAIMER I will preface this review by saying a couple of things that I feel are worth noting. The first one is that this manga is considerably graphic and for the sake of theming I will be presenting some pictures. Nothing too heavy will be shown but I feel like a disclaimer is in order. Secondly there will be some minor spoilers for the plot as a whole so be on the lookout for that. And lastly this is my first review of any kind of story so Ill try my best to keep it concise and cohesive. Hopefully I dont fail miserably. 320https://i.ur.com/39geqQ8.jpeg But what makes this manga so great in my eyes? To answer that Ill sum out some of the plot points that sold it for me. So lets start from the beginning. THE STORY Well kind of. Its just a showcase of the first few chapters in order to not spoil anything major. Our protagonist is Kei Nagai a seemingly normal student who is working hard to become a doctor in his adult life. However his initial plans are disrupted when as he is crossing the street he is run over by a truck and dies. 320https://i.ur.com/zgtkCcw.jpeg Whoa what? The main character just dies in the first chapter? Well yeah. Yes and no really. Because when he wakes up unharmed after a seemingly fatal car accident he understands something very important information that will alter the entire course of his life from that point on. But to understand how that is possible and what all this means Im gonna have to go back a little bit. Earlier in the chapter some context is given to the reader where we learn about a new and rare species. Ajin were first discovered as super soldiers in Africa where they were labeled as divine warriors. And no matter what happens to them in any sort of combat they do not die. The government tried to hide their existance but something as important as the discovery of an immortal variant to humans could not be concealed from the public eye for long. Shortly thereafter a brief period of generalized panic ensued as the general public did not understand the causes or the consequences for this be it evolution a series of mutations or even the results of alien intervention. Since theyre highly dangerous beings because of their immortality the government has put up rewards for people to capture and turn in Ajin in exchange for status and money. What happens after theyre reported and captured is not widely known but the reader gets a glimpse of what it consists of in the mangas very first page. 320https://i.ur.com/qPLqEyo.jpeg The general consensus is that even if Ajin are humanlike they cannot be considered as humans and are not treated as such by society. And the only way to distinguish them from humans is by death. After all nobody should be able to do anything after they die. So if a fatal event happens to someone and they can walk away afterwards that only means one thing. And maybe you can connect the dots and understand where Im going with this one. Kei Nagai is an Ajin. 320https://i.ur.com/Ax5qlRo.jpeg After he wakes up from his death Nagai fears that he will be reported to the authorities and used for government dissection and experimentation. To avoid that he seeks refuge from society with the help of a friend Kaito. 320https://i.ur.com/uMYRkqO.jpeg As he stumbles to evade any type of external human contact as to avoid the danger of getting caught Nagai and Kaito run away with a motorcycle as helicopters police forces and even special organizations are on the run to find and capture him. They come close to getting caught a couple of times by different people but manage to escape due to Nagais recentlydiscovered abilities of an Ajin. And through that we get a glimpse as to what his special powers entail in actual lifethreatening situations well at least for the humans involved. 320https://i.ur.com/gHZrUDj.jpeg Soon after that we find out that there are a lot more Ajin and a lot more to them as well amidst mankind. Hopefully I managed to catch your eye with this free sample of what the actual story has to offer. Now for some personal commentary about the biggest strengths this work of art has in my opinion. Just a second disclaimer though: there will be a fair amount of SPOILERS from here on out so I definitely do not recommend reading beyond this point if you have not read the manga in its entirety. So consider this your spoiler warning. MY THOUGHTS MAJOR SPOILER WARNING AHEAD Pretty much me retelling some plot points and how they add to this mangas quality overall. Its incredibly fascinating to see Nagai and Satous long game of chess from start to finish. The first play is an especially notable move by Satou by kidnapping Nagais sister and immediately releasing her to a hospital after he inevitably shows up to their base to rescue her. After that Satou apologises profusely to him and states that it was the only way to get him to where they were. This is the start of Satous doublecross. After observing his behavior he decides that Nagai is still holding on to his humanity with too strong of a grip so Satou turns him in to the authorities to make him experience the government experimentation firsthand. He does that by pretending that their base was found out and using his IBM as a sniper to knock Kei out with a tranquilizer shot. After he was captured and severely tortured by the government laboratory that created a pretense for Satou to rescue Nagai and reinforce the concept that humanity will only destroy the Ajin. But that did not go as planned. Eventually their morals diverge while theyre escaping and Nagai kills Satou on instinct. This causes Satou to show his true colors in a demonstration of just how much of a psychopathic terrorist he is. From then on the protagonist/antagonist relationship is finally forged. The duality between Nagais team led by him a sociopath and Satous team led by him a psychopath plays in turns which is all the more fitting with Satous way of thinking about his revolution plan. Nagais plan is to prevent Satou from dominating Japans government through terrorist bombings and consequently causing a huge amount of casualties. Satous plan is... 320https://i.ur.com/IlAQRWQ.jpeg What is Satous plan? I mean his plan is to bring the downfall of the current status quo in order to favor his own idea of a government. But what does that entail for him? What does he gain from it? Its shown time and time again that he gets personal enjoyment out of fighting and killing humans sure. But in his mind doing that is a game just like any other. Theres even some comparisons between games like baseball or even retro games like PacMan. But you can only play the same game for so long before it starts to get boring. And that happens a few times in the story when he completely changes his course of action throughout the waves of his plan in order to seek his twisted idea of excitement. It fits inside what the character is supposed to be and it happens on the right moments to induce suspense to the reader. It all climaxes when he gets bored of the entire plan altogether and decides to emigrate to the rest of the world and figure out some new games to play. However Nagai finally reaches him right before he is able to do that and their final confrontation in this moment is the chess games checkmate. THE CONCLUSION MAJOR SPOILER WARNING AHEAD Hopefully this wasnt too convoluted thus far. Time to wrap it up then Overall Satou is an incredibly well written villain. Everything he does is so erratic in a shockingly cohesive way that you just cant predict what will happen at any given point. Every one of his individual moves in combat is impulsive and out of a wish to fight against the odds and beat the disadvantage even if he created the disadvantage himself in the first place. Its the perfect cartoonish psychopath to go against our slightly sociopathic protagonist. 320https://i.ur.com/EQAGwQ6.jpeg Nagai serves as the perfect counterpoint. He does not particularly care for humanity as a whole but even though his lack of emotional investment on others is frequently mentioned as one of the centers of his train of thought that is often overshadowed by the strength of his personal values. So much so that even after the conclusion of the main plot Nagai now under a special witness protection program provided by the government he helped defend still wishes to get back into his education and become a doctor in order to save people. 320https://i.ur.com/5SFMzil.jpeg Theyre a perfect fit for the metaphor of two sides of the same coin and it works very well to build some massive suspense in the storys progression. Its also worth noting that the side characters are so deeply explored that they all feel like they could be protagonists of their own spinoffs its that good. The only reason I wont go indepth into them one by one is that this review would become unfathomably big if I did. So this remark is in honor of everyone that stood on the sidelines to help Nagai or even Satou in their respective plans. Overall this manga is absolutely fantastic and suceeded to overcome any expectations that I had going in. 320https://i.ur.com/UpzZHT6.jpeg 100.