ALIVE! By Tsutomu Takahashi

Running out of time for spook days! I tried for some gore on this post so here's the first seinen genre manga I've posted! Halloween Spectacular will continue the next two days.

ALIVE! By Tsutomu Takahashi

           Genre: Seinen

           Length: One Volume - 10 Chapters

           The art of this manga is good, well detailed and pleasing in volume, there are whole pages of art and no absence of backgrounds. It is messy, though, and that works for it half the time but subtracts the appeal the other half of the time. Body proportions were decent, a couple of times the women 's bodies were not quite right and I don't know if the artist was trying to hide the fact with shadows or what but the dark coloring made it more obvious. Truthfully, I picked Alive because it had an interesting cover, and I wasn't disappointed by the art.

Art and story (c) Tsutomu Takahashi

           A man on death row for a killing spree is taken in for his execution, he is given a choice: Live? Or die? Finding the choice obvious he chooses to live and is taken to a room with another man supposed to have been killed, too. The two are told they can ask for anything they desire now but they have to stay in the room forever. It makes the two wonder if choosing to live could be so easy after their crimes.

           When I started this 'mature content' manga I expected a lot of gore and boobs but, the nudity is generally covered up except for some butt shots and three panels of non-specific sex. Even the gore is slow going until the end and then it's kind of also non-specific being mostly blood. Even the motivations of the characters in this manga felt distanced from any kind of emotion. The 'evil' people in this manga are regular people and disturbing imagery you can get from any horror book or movie. In the beginning when the main character has such a bizarre and tearful good bye with his jailers you get the feeling that he isn't such a bad guy (or a least that’s what I thought the author was trying to convey to me) but then later this man who regrets becomes a cold blooded killer type in an instant. Truly a character I could not comprehend, for example: Our main character when told he can have anything he wants gets a haircut and takes his shirt off...and that's it. It is intriguing at first, I even wanted to see what was going to happen, but after the mysteries of why are explained it gets real boring and there is another three long chapters after that point. I just found the whole thing disappointing.

1/5 The art is good. 

sorry for the scanner credits