善悪の屑

ZENAKU NO KUZU

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
5
RELEASE
June 13, 2016
CHAPTERS
37

DESCRIPTION

The manga centers on Kamo and his partner Tora, who work in the underworld as "avengers for hire," taking on jobs from the victims of violent crimes and families seeking vengeance for wrongs done to them.

CAST

Takeshi Kamono
Toranobu Shimada
Yuu Tsurumaki
Yumeji Sonoda
Kayoko Enoki
Nanako Kaisei

CHAPTERS

RELATED TO ZENAKU NO KUZU

MANGA ActionGedou no Uta

REVIEWS

SentientCrab
18/100
Shallow characterization and weak payoffs resulting in a dull and laughable story.
Despite being based on true stories there’s something so calloused and uncaring about the events they depict. Things simply happen without any emotional connection to the story. Perhaps you’re supposed to be aware of all of the events the stories are based on so you too can feel a sense of relief when the criminals are “properly punished”. Not seeing people mention that nearly every story in this is based on a real event so going to list them off real quick.
- Ch 1-2: Takayuki Fukuda aka Hikari Parent-child Murder Incident
- Ch 3-4: Otsu City Bullying Suicide Case
- Ch 5-6: Murder of Junko Furuta aka Concrete-Encased High School Girl Murder Case There’s a couple manga based on this so you might’ve heard of it before
- Ch 8-10: Amagasaki Case
- Ch 11-12: Setagaya Family Murder
- Ch 13-15: Higashi-Ikebukuro runaway car accident
- Ch 17-18: Tsutomu Miyazaki aka The Otaku Murderer
- Ch 19-20: Not sure, would be interesting if this is actually an original case because then the mangaka would’ve used these previous real cases to understand a murder and victims just like the murder in these chapters.
- Ch 21-23: Super Free
- Ch 31-35: Osaka School Massacre
I'm not an expert at Japanese true crime, so it's very likely I'm missing some. I'd like to thank these two sites for pointing out the parallels.

Those 9 chapters unaccounted for are some of the most interesting ones. They show another avenger killer group that allows people to do whatever they want on the perpetrator raising the question of if this is the only way to end the family’s grief. Which might be part of the reason the Tokyo Government have designated this manga as “unhealthy”. These chapters also carry a lot more emotional weight, there’s a man who kills because he’s pressured into it. There’s a hot pot party chapter that gave me some chills. And it could do that because there was more time spent on humanizing the characters who were in the story. Most of the murders are simply a list of events, all drawn with this gross, static, and somewhat realistic art style. I’m assuming this is because the stories are real, therefore the art should be more realistic. Which can sometimes work I guess… but everything was so rigid and poorly executed that it felt even more fake. Not in an uncanny valley way, more like a third grader. This didn’t help the manga’s lack luster writing, in fact it made the characters feel even more flimsy and cardboard cut outs of things that happen in the real world. Like Chapters 3 and 4 there is a character who is bullied, no real reason given, the bullying isn’t very memorable, teacher covers it up for vague respect reasons. No one feels like a human being, just the character roles.
The most thought is put into the elaborate killing of the murderers, where the main characters come up with ways to enact poetic justice on the criminals. There’s usually a little dialogue between them, it’s all very repetitive “I’m sorry” “Well sorry isn’t good enough *staby* *staby*”. The gore in these scenes is pretty lackluster, seems like there’s pretty strong censorship in what they can show and, based on the rest of the art, I don’t think the mangaka is capable of drawing good gore. Which is a shame because these judgments are supposed to be the climax and they end up being nothing more than wet farts.

I love these kinds of stories, so I was very disappointed to see how poorly it was handled. I'd recommend you check out these instead.
https://anilist.co/anime/326/Petshop-of-Horrors/
https://anilist.co/manga/30133/Tokyo-Babylon/
https://anilist.co/manga/45313/Livingstone/
Continue on AniList