Seto Utsumi

TL;DR: it's a shorter Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei aka it's a comedy until it blows your fucking mind. The comedy is unique and well executed. The author utilizes multiperspectivity pretty well considering the genre, and that the setting is, for the most part, the same place by a river. Think Durarara or Baccano, or the recent Odd Taxi (Which is written by the same author as this manga) but as a slice of life comedy. Could a situation that gets told twice, or even thrice sometimes, still hold up comically just because it's from the perspective of another character? That's obviously a rhetorical question, because the answer isyes, and this manga proves it. At face value seeing the same thing from the perspective of another character that's sitting inches away from a character whose perspective we have already seen might seem like a cheap excuse to recycle previous panels or even entire pages, which it might actually be, but the execution is masterful and the payoff is worth it. It's episodic in nature, so there is no overarching plot, although callbacks to stories told in previous chapters often occur. Which in the end culminate in the author pointing out every single piece of foreshadowing he had put in the earlier chapters to create a remarkable ending. While mostly comedic, some chapters are more serious in tone than others, but it doesn't feel out of place, largely because it comes off as natural with how realistic the characters are. There aren't many characters, but the author does a good job of making the ones that do appear memorable. If anything, this is probably the only manga where you'd take the words of a Belarusian character dressed up as a clown seriously.

Do you know the band Boston? Imagine you knew only the song "More than a Feeling", and you heard "Peace of Mind" on the radio for the first time. If you heard that particular Tom Scholz Rockman amp sound playing some corny 70's arena melody behind some shrill mustachioed vocal line, wouldn't you place it on the same album right away in your mind? >99% of people who read SetoUtsumi after 2021 will be following Odd Taxi's writer Kazuya Konomoto into his limited catalog, hoping to find anything else that has any of the particular magic of that anime's screenplay. I'm happy to report that SetoUtsumihas it. You can read any one or two of the episodic chapters before volume 8 and immediately smell the same snappy dialogue (smart talk between dumb characters), a mishmashing of an eclectic cast, and the invisible undercurrent of a much heavier overarching plot than two bros chattin' with a clown after school. The art is meh. I would say it's passable (6ish); more experienced manga fetishists would probably say it's worse than that. Like all comedy, the humor is hit or miss depending on the reader, although I think Konomoto's character dialogue and situational irony are usually interesting enough to deliver most of the punchlines even if it isn't 100% your jam. A lot of the secondary characters have depth that is more hinted at than explored, so there are only 2 truly interesting minds to get to know. With those unimportant demerits out of the way, this whole manga reeks of Odd Taxi to me from start to finish. It's that same Rockman (Boston) sound. So much of what that show did well bleeds through here. Maybe the translation I read was just particularly skillful, but the fact that each episodic chapter found a way to slice home into something I identified with despite the language barrier and despite Konomoto presumably having very different life experience to me was rewarding and haunting. Konomoto's writing gets comped a lot to Tarantino, but to me, his writing feels different in ways that are personally important to me. Tarantino is probably the best at writing the punchy dialogue of cool characters. Konomoto is equally adept at writing the punchy dialogue of seriously uncool characters. I am still shocked by the gripping, heavy, funny and seriously lame nonsense that these characters get out on the routine every chapter, and I love it. The dumb-character/smart-writing trick that Konomoto pulls out of his sleeve every chapter is the best thing about his manga and his anime (because, to me, after reading this manga, Odd Taxi is now His show). All that said, this is a dark/grey comedy slice of life manga. Target audience for that is probably very small. Please give this a chance anyway, especially if you loved Odd Taxi. Odd Taxi is a better product, but lofi anthropomorphic animal mystery comedy thriller also probably had a miniscule target audience and blew that out of the water. Everything that made OT special is as-good or almost-as-good in SU. It also validates that the best part of OT was the writing, and that the writing is real and real good. Konomoto's hype train needs to be max capacity going forward. And if, God forbid, you're the <1% that didn't come here from OT, I can sell this manga a different way. Have you ever read a slice-of-life manga with a {built-up, closed, emotionally satisfying, thematically consistent, dumb-character/smart-writing, Capital 'G'} Great ending?

I've not much to say, but this is genuinely a manga I deeply relate to. I think my time in school matches this style of story. Everyone has their own struggles and perspective which can be revealed in mundane but interesting conversation. There is a sudden turn at the end of the manga with multiple reveals, which shows the characters hidden sides and gives it a bold thematic conclusion. I'll try to have this sort of attitude in my daily life. This is a guy centric story, so it's not for everyone but it's relatable. Most of the story takes place on some stairs at theside of the road, and all the characters appear more than once, so the story has some brewing elements even past the lighter jokes in the chapters. I value this for the characters and the way their worries and insecurities interact with each other in a casual way. The odd elements of life are brought up and considered in a bemused and bittersweet feeling.

prolly one of those works that truly justifies the tag hidden gem. finally finished a manga long after Insomniacs after school. A very unique manga. maybe make a special genre for it, Its like reading a stand up routine between 2 guys (the goofy and the straight guy) talking about the most random-est shit known to mankind, it might not be your cup of tea but its worth a try if you lovely watching stand ups but this time you'll be reading it, just 2 guys beings guys. just 2 friends being friends. whole manga is a lovely conversation. The art is clean and simple, perfectlysuits the requirement and the plot? there is no plot, its what you can say "episodic" but it all ties up in the end, wont spoil that now