Himizu

Himizu is a psychological seinen manga about a dude who's determined to live a normal and average life, an objective which quickly falls apart right at the start as his life takes a downturned trajectory. This is another one of those "everyone is a piece of shit" type of media that tends to end in a bittersweet/depressing way.

The author of this manga is Minoru Furuya, who, according to the scanlator group that translated the manga, is well known for drawing extremely exaggarated facial expressions. I have to be honest, I didn't really like those. They always remind me of those cheesy korean stickers for whatsapp/facebook or something, but I know it's an east-asian funny haha thing present everywhere. Luckily though, the manga was only overflowing with these at the start, but as the story started moving the comic-relief characters fell off. The rest of the art is totally fine, except for one thing, all of the characters look extremely adult, and they're only finishing middle school so they're 13/14. At moments it was hard to suspend my disbelief that they were kids, or I kept thinking a sudden timeskip happened without me paying attention. In every interaction with adults, the characters don't look smaller/younger at all, which kind of made the whole thing a lot easier to digest lol. I do enjoy the way in which the female characters are drawn, they all come across as really tall and kind of big boned, which I don't think applies to Japanese women in the slightest but hey, it's a welcome change of pace in the sea of tiny and petite characters.

From this point on I'll spoil some minor plot points, but I'll still hide the ending behind spoiler tags.

As far as the "everyone is a piece of shit" genre, I think Himizu is pretty decent. It's not too long, and the moments that get hard to look at like when things just keep getting worse and worse and worse aren't dragged out for too long and sometimes even end in a lighthearted manner. I did feel like the first 15? chapters or so are pretty different from the rest of the manga and I don't just mean it in a "that's the point when all hell breaks loose" way, just that the focus is barely on the mc and there's a few short chapters showcasing the rest of the cast that we barely see at all after those chapters. The mc, Sumida, has a pretty unfortunate life situation. His father is a good-for-nothing loser who abandoned him but still keeps coming back to beg for money, his mother is dating some douchebag, and she abandons him too. When the situation gets much worse than that, he drops out of school and starts his downward spiral. Frankly, some of his thoughts make a lot of sense when you take his background into account. He wants to prove to people that someone with "shitty genes" can still have a decent life, but ultimately he self-destructs. Of course, there has to be a woman (well, girl) that would greet him with open arms no matter what, and her name is Keiko. Keiko takes a sudden interest in him at the start of the manga and doesn't let go after that. No matter how shitty his life gets, she'll show up to his trailer house despite his indifference. I do like her stoicness, and in the end, the determination to actually do things right unlike Sumida. Her "I'll never abandon you and will always love you" type of love is actually such a good portrayal of these types of teenage girls that fall for an absolute shithead idiot, although I'm not sure the author meant to portray it that way, but I definitely knew a few girls like that. And kind of felt like that type of girl myself at some point. It's usually the most pathetic time in a young girls life lmao. You know, you think you're soooo smart in liking this misunderstood misanthropic doomer and you can totally see through him... That's exactly what she strikes me as, but like I said, I don't think the author even slightly hinted at her youthful ignorance and arrogance combined with a lack of experience. The manga ended with Sumida's suicide and the first thought that popped into my mind was, Keiko is free! I liked the ending though, it made the most sense.

I'd recommend this if you're a depressed teen and you just finished Oyasumi Punpun and you want to read something that invokes similar themes, I think Himizu comes pretty close. It's not really groundbreaking or anything. Oh and there's like 3 instances of rape so do keep that in mind.