Starving Anonymous

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 onearth 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.

The plot is a mess and the characters are uninspired, half of the cast geniuenly only exists to serve as a constant source of Deus-Ex-Machina's. It speaks volumes that the only somewhat likeable character in the story with actual screentime is an (implied) gay rapist. The author has several characters, across who can pretty much canonically achieve anything at any moment (and at several points do, with no foreshadowing), yet somehow still manages to make plotholes, somehow. I liked the suprise twist somewhere around the middle of the manga, too bad that it didn't amount to anything other than setting the stage for the finalclimax of the main story (again, with absolutely no foreshadowing, though it was at least accompanied by a relatively good flashback sequence this time). The art is really good, too gore-y for my taste, but that's what i signed up for so it would be stupid to complain. Despite this it still fails spectacularly at being a horror manga, after the first few volumes all tension was out of the window due to the afformentioned asspulling anyway. The epilogue was pretty fun in isolation, but by that point i was sick of the series unfortunately TL:DR : Read anything else really.

Personally I’m a big fan of horror and body gore; originally that is how this manga was peddled to me via TikTok. (surprise, surprise. Who else remembers that?) Even though it does seem pretty “ordinary” to the genre for the first few chapters, I wasn’t in it for the story at the beginning anyway, buuuut that’s what I ended up staying for. **NO PLOT SPOILERS** In everyday life I’m a forensic scientist and there were a couple things that made me rise my eyebrow a little bit, since they would not really be biologically sustainable. I’m aware it’s all fiction, but it was enough to break immersionfor me a little bit. I still enjoyed it, and it shows creativity on the authors part, but it made me laugh a bit. If this doesn’t bother you, or you’re not into science or medicine, this shouldn’t ruin your experience. Story TLDR; it’s fun, kinda different, definitely interesting and keeps you reading.

I think it's a solid story of balls to the walls action and madness, I think the ending is quite tragic and sad, and I was honestly surprised that there would be a sequel, . I would definitely not recommend if you are uncomfortable with gore and guts, I read this after reading Gantz and while I found that 400ish chapter ride quite hellish and gory and edgy, this is below that level, not quite as intense in its visuals and storytelling but still a nice ride. At first, I was drawn in by this human mystery and then it turned into an alien farmingsituation quite quickly. I love a good human versus overpowered alien story, no matter the ending.