バニラスパイダー

VANILLA SPIDER

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
3
RELEASE
November 9, 2010
CHAPTERS
15

DESCRIPTION

Half a year ago, a giant spiderweb appeared across the sky. For a while, it got a lot of media attention. Eventually, when nothing seemed to be happening, people carried on with their normal lives, ignoring the spiderweb. Amedome Tsutsuji lives his daily life under the spiderweb. At school, people have nicknamed him "Ninja," since it's so easy not to notice he's there. Even automatic doors won't acknowledge his presence by opening for him. But he can see what others can't: aliens are coming down from the spiderweb, taking humans bodies as hosts, and eating people.

For that reason, he uses his ninja-like ability to carefully guard his crush, Mizuno, as she goes home from school. In other words, he stalks her, but with the best of intentions. He's determined to be there to protect her when the spider-aliens attack. To that end, he teams up with another, friendlier alien named Tsuda, who gives him a powerful weapon: a faucet. Will Tsutsuji be able to protect Mizuno from the parasitic spider-aliens with his trusty faucet?

(Source: MangaHelpers)

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

TheGruesomeGoblin
100/100
Youichi Abe's fun take on an action series. A boy brutally and gorily slaughters man-eating monsters with a faucet.
Youichi Abe's one of the few mangakas that I follow that I can concretely state that I've loved every single thing he's made.

He's one of a very few people if like I see there's a new work of his out, I will drop everything else I'm currently doing to read it.

There's just something about his artstyle I just absolutely adore. And then add on to the fact that he does horror, and it's just an immediate perfect storm of "yeah no of course this is one of TGG's favorite mangaka."

I unironically gave his series about penises a 99 out of 100 and looking back on it, I actually like that series more even now that time has passed since I first read it and was just flabbergasted at what I was reading.

Anyways, before that series, and the other Youichi Abe manga I've reviewed, there was Vanilla Spider. Which is Youichi Abe's oldest manga apart from Shoujo Kidan Makora which I believe never got concluded because of course the magazine it was published in died...

which seems to be an unfortunate trend for Youichi Abe as the same I guess happened for his fishbowl series but that at least got continued in another magazine. Plus Vanilla Spider itself has a rushed albeit not terrible ending. In my opinion, at least.

Vanilla Spider is an action horror manga about aliens. One day a giant spider web covers the sky above the city, and parasitic creatures called Elevators start coming from the web and taking humans as hosts so they can eat other humans.

A high school boy named Tsujitsuji Amedome meets another alien being that calls himself Tsuda who wears human suits. Tsuda decides to recruit Tsujitsuji for not only can he see these monsters that are coming from the spider web, but he has no presence meaning he can effectively sneak up on them.

So Tsuda gives him a metal rod with a faucet attached to it for Tsujitsuji to slaughter Elevators with. And before I'm even able to ask why a faucet, ~~Youichi Abe~~ Tusda just basically bluntly says "because it's so weird that it's cool."

And I really have no comeback against that but then like seven to eight years later in Youichi Abe's penis manga's afterword he's like...

Wait, the facuets are... wait... wha…

I really, really like Tsujitsuji.

I like early on how he thinks he's become like this action hero after being an invisible presence all his life and this newfound confidence is basically immediately brought right back down.

I like how eventually he realizes that being this action hero that Tsuda has pushed him into being fucking sucks and isn't fun. The more he thinks about it, the worse the gig seems. Especially when it finally clicks in his head that these monsters WERE once human. So he finally just breaks down and can't stop seeing his hands drenched in blood.

If it’s done well, I really like when a protagonist becomes completely fucking disillusioned with everything they’ve been doing. It works for Tsujitsuji especially because his entire motive for getting into all of this was to just protect the girl he liked who everyday he would ~~stalk~~ make sure she would get home safe every day after school.

Instead, he’s used as a tool of slaughter. Which is fun!

Granted, another character, who I’m not sure I even talk much about for the sake of spoilers, kind of helps him get back on his feet.

I actually like the romance in Vanilla Spider. Even though it’s on the verge of being there only for there to be a romance which in my opinion is the absolute worst sort of romance, it helps a huge amount that I actually liked the relationship between the two characters. Even though in the grand scheme of things she doesn’t contribute a huge amount to the series, I liked Kaori.

As much as I like Tsujitsuji, I think I like Tsuda either as much or more.

Without a doubt, the one thing I do genuinely dislike about Vanilla Spider and this is most likely thanks to the rushed ending, is that there wasn't something more with Tsuda. Like with how extreme he was in getting Tsujtsuji to keep helping him, it really felt like he had the potential to pull out the twist of "actually I'm the true antagonist!" or something.

Though, generally, it's really hard to fully trust an alien that goes around collecting the skins of killed Elevator hosts which he then proceeds to use as outfits.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, there's not much more for me to say on Vanilla Spider.

Without crossing into spoilers, that is. Which I don’t want to. ~~It’s really weird and cool, read it.~~ It was really odd reading Vanilla Spider after Youichi Abe’s other manga. Because the other ones are just so much weirder. Vanilla Spider’s weird, but it’s still basically just Youichi Abe’s take on an action manga.

But given how much I absolutely love Youichi Abe’s artstyle and gore… this was perfect for me and thus is a 10 out of 10.

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