Shokuryou Jinrui

Well, this was a thing.

Starving Anonymous, as far as I could see, was a whacky, schlocky super-science series focusing on the idea of the meat industry, with some rather... indistinct themes about global warming thrown in, I guess? Honestly, it feels like this manga was at its best in its inception, where the facility the protagonist wakes up in is largely unknown, and there's horrible stuff happening all around him. It's a decent analogue to what we do to battery farmed animals, what with the hormone treatments we give them and the like, and while it felt overly preoccupied with shock value, it was a niche.

Then it devolves into this messy plot involving the aliens, mad science, and some INCREDIBLY contrived plot twists that left me completely cold. Like, it's not... bad. It's not good either. It felt like a paragon of mediocrity, like 'I am 14 and this is deep' levels of What A Shocking Twist. The protagonist is a blank slate who, 43 chapters into the manga, has not been developed at all beyond the opening chapter. He has a photographic memory, which was actually useful for all of maybe ten chapters, then unceremoniously forgotten about. He's basically a human hunk of cardboard for all the usefulness he displays. There's also an edgy boi who can regenerate, a bisexual guy who also can regenerate, but less so, and an old employee of the factory who's gone native in the ductwork and now looks like an old-school hippy. None of them are amazingly well fleshed out, but they at least have a couple of personality traits apiece, which is more than can be said of Protagonist-kun. Even if one of those traits is 'Is a depraved bisexual'.

Gay male contact is used for shock value at times, which I didn't really appreciate as LGBT myself, but that's Japan's weird ideas about gay people at work, I guess. Some characters get flashbacks, which become more interesting than the main plot past a certain point, particularly glasses guy, even if his whole 'twist' is a severe letdown tbh. Like... he could, and should, have been a cool transhuman at that point, but for the sake of appealing to the edgy teen demographic, he looks completely normal for no adequately explained reason.

Essentially, as someone who's a little over the target age for this manga, it feels pretty dull past a certain point. The whole thing of horrifying people with the power of stuff we do to animals on the daily... good. Everything else felt bland, and schlocky, and way too juvenile for the subject matter. It felt... safe, if that's a word that can be applied to gore. It used up all its good horror ideas (the goop/hormones that permanently damage your mind/body, the breeding pens in general) in the opening chapters, and then completely lost momentum, preferring to spend time on generic mad scientist body horror hijinks and flashbacks. There's something intensely juvenile about the way people are characterized, long term, and it really bugged me.

At least the art is very good. It's realistic for the most part, with intense shading and emotion that feels utterly wasted on the shallow characterization on display. It's a true shame this mangaka isn't an artist, working with someone who can actually write, rather than doing both roles at the same time.

Or maybe I'm just jaded as hell, and this is really deep or something.

After reading the first few chapters, this manga didn't seem particularly different or inspiring. I’m not very fond of horror or gore, and I definitely don’t like science fiction, but I continued reading, just because I was in the mood to explore another genre. I was very surprised to find that I was REALLY enjoying the story as it progressed. Like, a lot.

The plotline is definitely unique, and very interesting. The pacing of the story is great. One of the charms of this manga is the way the plot is gradually revealed to you, instead of giving you a massive info dump like you see in many science fiction stories.

My favorite part of this manga are the characters. Finding original backstories in any type of media can be difficult; everything seems to be reused over and over again. I was blown away by how well the backstories are depicted, and how much depth they add to each character. The main characters are interesting, and lovable (despite being so sick in the head and deplorable).

The art is odd, but overall gorgeous. Character design is unique, and notably detailed. The same can be said for the, ahem, creatures featured in this manga.

I highly recommend you give this a read! I would also add, if you’re a fan of gore, this manga is perfect for you.

Do you like gore and monsters? Then this manga might be right up your alley.

*A spoiler free review*

Shokuryou Jinrui can only be described as "repulsive made beautiful". The first thing to draw your attention is the top-notch art with great character designs. The touch is realistic and the gross stuff comes off as sickening as it can get - just like it should.

The story is pretty standard survival horror which brings close the ugliness of human nature but there are also some more imaginative twists. If you have read the authors' previous work Apocalypse no Toride the pattern seems familiar: an isolated place, a naive main character who gets thrown into a mysterious situation, a diverse cast of more or less messed up characters, a narrative leaning heavily on flashbacks and of course, the awesome monsters.

The characters are nothing special but some of them have interesting motives and backstories which made me feel for them. When I say there are a lot of flashbacks - I mean a lot. It almost feels like the story progressed more through the flashbacks than with the present story line and all the possible character development happened in the past. Fortunately the pacing is pretty good and every chapter has some twist that makes you want to know what happens next - or what has happened before. While the story ended up being shorter than I expected, I still like the way it was concluded.

Overall this is a solid horror story which had potential to grow even better. The scenario portrayed is interesting and on top of the gory stuff the story presents us matters which can make one question the line between a human being and a monster, both figuratively and literally.

Recommended for fans of monster and body horror and readers of sci-fi, survival and psychological stories who have stomach for visually and mentally disturbing content.

Shokuryou Jinrui is entertaining. It's grotesque and certainly what you would want from a body horror manga. I can't say I saw a huge amount that really shocked me though. It reminded me a lot of Gantz but stupider. If you know anything about biology and evolution then a lot of the backstory is going to seem dumb as a rock

Autistic gripes with the backstory (spoilers):
The aliens require food CONSTANTLY, breed like insects BUT also are incredibly intelligent?? There is no organism that even approximates this in reality and E. O. Wilson demonstrates with the concept of convergence, that if you don't see it on earth it probably wouldn't occur elsewhere (in fact we see the complete opposite on earth, with Life History Theory demonstrating that higher species intelligence is generally associated with slower periods of gestation and reproduction). Organisms are also overwhelmingly dependent on their niche and I can't imagine an organism would ever be able to develop such a voracious appetite that it's whole species wipes out everything else on their planet. Is it meant to be allegory for humanity (would make sense given the continual references to global warming, which has also been greatly sped up by the aliens)? If so it's distinctly poor as humans are already aiming to curtail consumption and aim towards sustainability. Even if you believe the most insane and jabbering of all environmental activists, this would be a questionable piece of allegory.

The aliens are D U M B. Smart enough to invent space travel, but unable to solve their own deep seated biological issues at home?? They are manipulated their bodies specifically so they could get to earth, why didn't they try to solve their reliance of constant consumption and make their own world sustainable??

Prion disease as the solution is... alright? In humans prion disease doesn't manifest in a few years (but maybe if the clones with prion disease are being constantly consumed it would speed this up massively) and it doesn't kill people outright. A few of the regenerators clones developed prion disease due to the high replication rate of their cells(??I honestly have no idea if this is how prion disease naturally develops, but I don't think it is. It's also very rare and is really own seen in instances of cannibalism [the clones would not be eating each other] and very rare disorders.) but would that really be enough to wipe out all those aliens in a few years??

Also... How base and decadent are these aliens? Higher life forms that are about as enlightened as insects. In Gantz the big alien behind the scenes seems genuinely incomprehensible and deeply mechanical/logical in their thinking, to the point where they conjure horror surrounding the technological apocalypse and logic run amok. The big mother alien here is a ball of fleshy nonsense that apparently didn't see any problems with a human that can just endlessly regenerate it's entire body, apart from the head. Prion disease is sort of random, but what about mutations and mutational load more generally? The alien colony would basically be stuck in a situation equivalent to the mouse utopia experiments, which we know don't last forever.

Alright then.

THis is one of the works with high amounts of shock content, dismemberments, people acting in horrible way, and horrible, horrible, horrible thigns happening to people very often.

The difference is, in this case we have very high quality art and the story is not completely horrible.

The strong point of this manga is the artist, which produced very high quality visuals for pretty much every page. The characters are realistically drawn, environments are detailed.

The weak part of this story is... technobabble and scienc-o-babble aspect of it. Basically, when the manga tries to explain few things from scientific points of view, if you know anything about medicine, genetics and the like, believability will fly out of the window, and illusion of any sort of plausibility will shatter. Basically, anything related to science is complete nonsense and is pretty much explained in a "magical" way.

Another thing worth mentioning is that in some works japanese have a tradition: when somebody is doing something evil, they draw crazy face on them. To demonstrate loss of humanity, i guess? This happens here. Quite often, but there are mangas that have it worse.

And the final detail is... this work would've worked better as a collection of short stories. Currently it is a frankenstein, where there are multiple characters, it spends several chapters explaining each character in detail. The problem here is that while individual character stories are believable and aren't that bad, those characters are afterwards shoehorned into the main plot, and that doesn't look very convincing.

And that's rough idea of it.

Basically, it might be worth watching, if you want gore that is not completely brainless and has a good artist. Then this work is for you.

I've just started reading this manga and I absolutely love it. Lets go through an overview ( I'll try my best not to give spoilers)

So the story starts with Kazu and I'e, who are both high schoolers. They go on a bus and I'e finds that everyone on the bus are gassed(kind of like in battle royale). He wakes up in a strange facility surrounded by corpses. Then he meets other people stuck in this place, Natsune and Yamabiki. Natsune seems to be very violent and Yamabiki very...gay? Well the four of them band together to try and escape the facility and discover weird things along the way.

First off, the art is AMAZING. The character designs and creatures are grotesque and so creatively morbid its refreshing. I haven't read a good horror manga in some time. The strongest point here is definitely the art for sure. The alien creatures look a bit like E.T though.

It gets into the weird from the start. There is no breaks, it just jumps right in. Each time I'm a little surprised with what new starnge gross things the author comes up with, its nice being surprised for a change.

But one thing I would say is that the characters are not too well rounded. I'e just seems a little stupid and Kazu....well lets just say that there's not much left for him. Natsune, for me is the best character because he has a lot of mystery surrounding him. Yamabiki is ok.

Overall, the manga is pretty good. The story has much to go for it and it makes me want to know more about what the organisation's plan really is. Also, it makes me wonder, would we really react in the way the leaders did in this manga if this was the situation?

I would recommend this manga to anyone who likes really strange and gross stuff. People who read uzumaki perhaps? Or anyone who reads psychological horrors. Its good give it a try.

Ok bye

I don't ever write reviews, but I feel like this title deserves it since it's so underrated. Starving Anonymous is one of the most underrated manga I've ever come across. It's not quite a masterpiece, but it's worth the read.

(spoiler-free review)

story: 8/10

If you're a big fan of cosmic horror, then you should definitely check this out ASAP. On the other hand, if you don't like graphic gore and sex stuff then you might want to reconsider. I personally didn't have a problem with it after the first chapter or so.

The story really gets you hooked from the start. Some foreshadowing is done in the very beginning, but the situation turns out to be a lot more complicated than we assumed. One thing I found clever was establishing that Ie was a painter and then having him use that skill to show Yamabiki and Natsune the layout of the room that he saw. There are a few clever moments like that in here, and they're sprinkled through the story.

Later on the characters ask questions about the building they're trapped in and don't get the answers right away. And if they do, they're vague and hard to understand. That kind of suspense is what kept me turning the pages. There's frequent twists, too, and the stakes constantly rise throughout the story.

As for the horror, this manga is full of it. I haven't been this scared by a horror manga in a long while. In the beginning it's mostly the fear of the unknown, but even after that's subsided and you think you know what's going on, the creep factor is still prevalent.

characters: 7/10

The characters aren't very unique or anything, but their backstories are above average. After reading one of the supporting characters' backstories, I liked them so much I thought they would have been a better choice as a main character. After reading for a few more chapters, though, I was deeply disappointed that a character with so much potential was just wiped out so quickly. Not long after, something terrible happens to another character, but we don't get to see a whole lot. What I mean here, is, toward the end this story gets intensely frustrating. Some of the character deaths and plot twists leave a lot to be desired.

(Volume 6 isn't available in english as of me writing this review, so things could turn around for all I know. But volume 5 was by far the weakest, even with the decent flashbacks it includes.)

Ultimately, I noticed that all the characters besides Ie and Kazu were infinitely more interesting than them. I would have liked to learn even more about them.

art: 10/10

This manga' art is grotesque and detailed, and it suits this story perfectly. Some characters look more realistic while others look like normal manga characters, and that makes for some good contrast.

The body horror in this manga is drawn really well, and all of the creatures' designs are creative. The Masters do look kind of funny, but they're still terrifying. And character's facial expressions range from normal to downright uncanny.

overall rating: 7/10

Starvation Anonymous is definitely a must-read for fans of cosmic horror, grotesque sci-fi, and body horror. It's not something that can be read in one sitting, though. I had to take a few breaks from reading it so I could process what in the world I just witnessed. Anyway, the beginning and middle of this manga had the potential to be a masterpiece, but there were a couple of bad twists that kinda killed it for me.

[Major spoilers down here!]

My review will not be really long because i don't think i have a lot of things to say but there's time when you gotta differ bullshit than real story

I don't dislike gore, it's pretty interesting but i don't like gore for gore. Take berserk's eclipse, it's probably the most horrifying things you could ever watch and it's well-placed gore, Gatts is like living a fucking nightmare, it's just great and the art is stunning! But in Shokuryou, it's bullshit, half of the gore is useless and put here for gore, there's time where it's nice but you can't just fill 90% of your manga with gore and say it's a good manga. The problem that i have with this manga is not the gore in hitself but more how he tries to hide some huge lack of quality in the story. I don't like the story, i just doesn't feel right and i don't think that a story should be based on some insane events, i mean, me too i could draw disgusting monsters and say it's aliens, in Danganronpa, the mystery is interesting and all of it is well done and doesn't feel too much like bullshit but when, in Shokuryou, you learn that humans were created by aliens so that they could eat all the humans 10000 years later and survive, i don't know, i just don't like it, some persons might think of it as cool but i just can't like it. And i think this impression is renforced by useless characters with no personallity or boring characters, no one ever impress you, no one feels like a shame to lost, no one feels funny, it just don't work.

Shokuryou is some garbage mangas who tries to hide is bad story by putting gore in 90% of his manga. If you want some gore drawings, go for it but don't expect a good story and interesting charachter