Gannibal

Well this was disappointing. The premise of Gannibal is, no doubt, attractive. Kinda reminds of those j/corean thriller movies all set in a village where there's a big mystery to solve and, of course, a policeman trying to solve it. Movies like Goksung or Memories of a Murder, good stuff. In this specific case the "twist" is spoiled by the title, but that would be fine as well if it wasn't for almost everything else. Gannibal starts off strong: we get introduced to several characters (maybe a bit too many, considering the length of the story) and we clearly perceive that something's wrong from the verybeginning. As i stated before, the premise is catchy, so the reader wiill probably be curious to know what happens and continue reading. The setting is interesting, the cannibalistic mystery is sort of interesting, and the art looks pretty good. The mangaka's style pushes towards the pulp, so you accept the exaggerations here and there. And here's where Gannibal's positives end, in my opinion. That tremendous amount of characters we get introduced to, very fast reduce themselves to being stereotypes we've already seen in a bunch of other products, even out of the manga/anime zone. We got the policeman who's trying to protect his family but wants to uncover the truth, we got his family, that's exactly the kind of family you would expect from this kind of product, we got the village members who are clearly hiding something but individually they have absolutely no depth in their personalities, and then we got the Gotos, the weirdest family in this god forbidden village, who, of course, are themselves living stereotypes. There's a couple characters who happen to have interesting backstories, then again nothing too revolutionary or even original, but at least they happen to be interesting. Everything else is stuff you've already seen a bunch of times and I almost found myself offended to read shonen-like dialogues every 3 chapters. I'll explain myself better: I believe Ninomiya had no idea on how to write certain characters. The main character's wife for example, whose main purpose is praying at home while his husband risks his life. We get glimpses of character development here and there but only a slight minority actually gets it. I will also admit that after the first few chapters, the plot also goes downhill quite fast. The mysteries are clear as daylight so we are left to hope for characters and situations to make it interesting. Characters don't manage to fulfill that role and here's Gannibal's biggest problem: nothing really interesting happens. Gannibal seems fast paced, as we have lots of confrontations and plot twist who usually kinda betray the reader, but none of these really manage to surprise, put in interesting themes, give depth to the plot or even make the read particularly invested in the characters, because writing is weak. I can't speak too much because of spoilers but I believe anyone who's read or watched a lot of stuff will end up finding the same problems I did. What we are left with is the art, then. Gannibal looks pretty nice, till we get to see the fights. They reminded me of Batman Begins: half of the time i had no idea what the hell was happening. And just like the Nolan's movie, I "guessed" what was happening most of the times (fights are surely not Gannibal's strongest points, even writing wise). And since it's never original, my guesses were always correct. The big amount of characters also made it quite troubling to recognize them sometimes, as some of them end up looking kinda similar, but at least the main characters are quite recognizable. I also believe Gannibal is way too lengthy for what it tells, and the ending doesn't manage to make it better, at all. Overall, Gannibal's strongest point is being cool. Or at least trying to be. Everyone looks and acts cool, overly dramatic to the point of being almost funny at times. If you've interacted with horrors throughtout your life, you'll find nothing new in Gannibal. If you're not used to it, you might enjoy it, but there's better stuff to be honest. My take is: only read it if you're not expecting much and really into the genre. Otherwise, this is honestly avoidable.