Print Review: Alive volumes 1-3

Review Alive volumes 1-3Written by WarpshadowRating very good

Even though most of what I read of Alive makes it sound like a shonen adventure story it is nice to know that there are examples of the genre that don’t feel like a clone of every other story in the genre.

One day there were a rash of suicides like nothing that has been seen before which continued for a week. Taisuke Kannou was just a normal boy caught in the middle of it when he saw a girl jump off a building while smiling. Also one of his friends is considered to be a suspect in a murder case when he is found surrounded by the corpses of people that bullied him. What’s more both of these incidents overlap in the emergence of a new type of human and what could be a new (and possibly last) chapter in human history.

Alive is a very interesting sort of manga that is dark and psychological without trying to be a traditional horror story. In truth after the first volume the manga morphs into something like a shonen adventure story. However the tone of the story and the addition depth of the conflicts, both physical and emotional, makes this far more than your average monster of the week type manga. If you are looking for something that is not only a bit different but also has a bit of depth to it rather than a simple quirk or gimmick then you should probably pick up the manga Alive.