Ultra Heaven

I usually hate reading unfinished manga because

I forget to keep up with it and reading chapter by chapter is too annoying You never know when a hiatus might come

                            And yet.. AND YET... I knew this is a manga that's been on hiatus for 14 years now but the premise really gripped me! I love a good story about the pharma industry deciding to monetize on mind altering drugs! And actually, the fact that it's been on hiatus for so long might as well mean it's completed in my eyes.

                               After finishing this wild journey of a manga, I went to read a bit about the author, and he really stands out. All of his work is done by himself and him only, no assistants. He's very interested in drugs (very obvious in his work lmao) which is pretty out of place for a Japanese individual, and he recognises this as the reason why his work doesn't really hit as hard in Japan. After all, in his own words, Japan didn't have a hippie revolution in the 60's and the cultural and mindset changes that followed with it. Drugs never really took off in the same way as they did elsewhere. His inspiration lies in foreign artists like Moebius or other fellow Japanese artists inspired by Western art and style, like Katsuhiro Otomo.

Anyway, onto the manga. It's such a shame it was never finished, but I think it's a worthwhile read anyway, and with the way it ended - you could interpret it as a true ending. The art and the panelling is insane. The way the story flows through it is amazing, and I loved it all. The story is basically one big trip, and whether the storytelling is linear or non-linear is up to how you interpret it. I loved the part with the spaghetti and the flowing water merging into one event, the manga is FULL of fun stuff like that, and I mean, just look at it.

While I usually like trippy art and creative storytelling through it, I'm pretty picky with what I like. For example, while I enjoyed Soils trippy sequences, I found myself kind of getting tired of them at some point near the end, but I never got this feeling in Ultra Heaven. So if you're into this kind of stuff as well, you'll definitely enjoy it, I think.