Soil

No spoilers in this review!

Soil is a manga made by Kaneko Atsushi and this seems to be his most well-known work. Most of his manga is intended for adult audiences, and all of them feature a very distinctive, western looking artstyle. I picked it up upon hearing it falls into a "messed up, weird" manga genre and I'm always up for reading those.

I could compare this manga to quite a few others when it comes to its themes. I was mostly reminded of Ito's Uzumaki, but the way the characters act kind of reminded me of Asano Inio's manga. Some of the story beats, and the way the story progresses also reminds me of Naoki Urasawa and his works. This story has it all, cults, uncanny valley people, alien conspiracies, otherworldly mysteries, crude detectives, the dregs of society... all the boxes are ticked.

I enjoyed the story - for the most part, however the grand mystery and the explanation for why things are the way they are might be a bit lacking if we nitpick it but I don't find that to be a total dealbreaker, I still really enjoyed the supernatural stuff. There are a few plot points which were kind of set aside or forgotten about, and it's a shame because it would've helped flesh out the main cast more. The story starts as a typical detective mystery but very early on it takes a turn into the supernatural. Now - this is where I found some conflicted opinions online. Most people that enjoy more down to earth stories said that the start was amazing, and then it got too weird. People that like mystery, abstract type horror however, enjoyed the second part of the story as well. Personally I found myself a bit exhausted by the beginning of the manga, mostly because of all the crude jokes which got a bit too repetitive, but also because sometimes I just have a hard time getting into something and memorizing all the characters. After I passed the 20 chapter mark I quickly finished the manga, so I can't say the latter half got too confusing or hard to follow - it didn't for me!

Lastly, I found myself liking the art quite a lot at some points, especially in the latter half. You know how usually in manga - east asians always look like beautiful flawless beings while westerners look extremely realistic to the point of looking like caricatures? Well, there's none of that here, since everyone is ugly! Joking, but everyone does look very realistic, and when translated into this artstyle with thick lines, it's hard to look aesthetically pleasing. Human anatomy is also respected so there's no tiny, petite, kawaii girls, instead everyone looks very real-life proportioned. That reminded me of Minoru Furuya's art. Why have I referenced so many things in this review?