Dead End: Volume 4

Dead End #4

by Shōhei Manabe

The mind-blowing end is approaching... Before the Beginning Man divulges the full truth behind the Enemies, the Second Enemy strikes Shirou and the group with a psychic attack! Deeply wounded, Shirou struggles to come to grips with the confines of his suppressed memory--and the harsh reality of his hyperkinetic journey."Dead End is not something that can be experienced with words and comments in a review... [It's] a breath of fresh air that awoke my senses and ignited those flames once again of why I love manga. Highly recommended and a fantastic read." â€"AnimeonDVD.com

Genres: Manga

240 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 22, 2002

About the author

Shōhei Manabe (真鍋昌平) is a veteran manga-ka with numerous titles under his belt, including his worldwide best seller Ushijima the Loan Shark, which has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide and was the winner of the 56th Annual Shogakukan Manga Award. Two of Manabe's manga have been made into motion pictures, including the acclaimed manga Smuggler, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival 2011.

Reviews

[Xian Xian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Borrowed

I finally finished reading this odd serious. Honestly, I find it really hard to review graphic novels, so the next time I start a series, I will be reviewing them in bunches instead of individual volumes.

So the plot, yeah, it's a little confusing I hate to say it. Dead End is an acquired taste, it's an odd hybrid of mystery, horror, surrealism, sci-fi/post-apocalyptic, psychological, maybe even a bit absurd, that could be the sparse and rough artwork though. There's a big twist at the end, and the ending was a bit unexpected and sudden for me. I enjoyed the gross out gore and the depressing existential crisis stuff, this manga was quite, literary for me. I sound pretentious, but this is really how I feel about it. My feelings are kind of confused though, because I love this, but it ended on a note that was sort of "here you go, the end."

Dead End is a series about a dude who is a bum basically, disillusioned with life, feeling as if it is all pointless. The same old routine, the same old booze and dirt.Until a girl named Lucy falls from the sky. But then as he gathers his past friends, that he had forgotten about due to some sort of erasure, he regains all of the fragments and fills in the emptiness. That's when you discover that they live in a post-apocalyptic world and that they are some sort of engineered human beings, my memory is a bit foggy. I won't talk anymore plot, because spoilers.

The artwork has improved somewhat. Manabe's art is such a breathe of fresh air like I said before. Big lips, ugly tense facial expressions, blood spattering everywhere.The buildings and scenery, lined, minimally and scratched in. I will admit that sometimes the expressions and scenery was a bit hard on the eyes, I had to squint to see what was happening in the smaller panels.

But my feelings for this series is generally positive. Maybe, I will buy my own copies, however, new copies are hard to find. Apparently it's all out of print. Shohei Manabe doesn't seem to be too popular in the U.S. So I can say that Dead End is pretty darn underrated, meaningful, and touching.

General rating for the series: 3.5/5

Originally posted here: http://wordsnotesandfiction.blogspot....

[Leila Anani · Rating 3 out of 5]

This last volume of Dead End promises a blinding plot twist that will explain everything.... Which it does but not in the way I was expecting. Now From the hints littering this fragmented series - the constant images of needles, drugs, the mysterious 'Lucy' who fell from the sky, the fact that all the faces resemble each other (which is actually mentioned by one of the characters) and the nihilistic philosophies I was expecting something dark but vaguely understandable, you know like Life on Mars - Jacob's ladder or MPD Psycho. Perhaps the jumbled thoughts of someone who's taken an OD or something along those lines and that all the characters were facets of Shirou's psyche. Boy was I way off. This volume veers into the realms of SF and goes really.... weird.

I don't think that the ending justifies the rest of the story but maybe that's just me. I also wasn't too keen on the way the ending is revealed - it does a bit of a loop - the doors open and we see what happens and then we rewind 15 minutes and get a conversation between the characters ending in the doors opening. This almost feels hopeful except that you already know what's awaiting them. I don't get that - if you're going for a bleak nihilistic ending then to me it has more of an impact if is is the last thing you see. The way this one unfolds is weird.

What I do love about this volume however is the freaky artwork - there are scenes worthy of Clive Barker here. I also loved the story of the series as a whole for the most part - it's suspenseful and dark with lots of philosophy. Definitely worth checking out but its a strange one and not for everyone.