Don't think this manga is supposed to be like an author's warning, but more autobiographical/relatable as to what it feels like to be a loser or to be an embarrassing mess with nothing redeeming about yourself. It seems Hanazawa seriously intended for the story to be taken at face value (or was taking himself at face value when he wrote it) and intended to have a positive message, taking a spin on "never give up." I didn't find the manga so depressing as much as I only thought to myself "This guy has mental issues." but I was able to take it seriously and even be a little moved in the "hope for the hopeless" aspect. (Just a little though, mostly because of Shuu's character. Seeing Tanishi want to do something good for once not for the sake of sex but for a kid getting bullied was nice and reflected Tanishi's personal character and internal conflict with himself a little more than jumping off of roofs for "Justice(?)" ((Really probably more like sex and a feeling of personal need for accomplishment with nothing to lose.))) If anything the manga was a little overbearing like his other manga as Hanazawa's viewpoint on the world seems to be a vertical line of sex (or at least, his method of writing manga is.)
I ended up kind of confusing his manga with Shuzo Oshimi's writing when I was reading his short stories and this, while also missing Shuzo Oshimi at the same time because his viewpoint on gender and sex while vaugly similar in an extreme and hypersexual sense is vastly different and more spiritually circular (Inclusion of guilt, disgust, indentity, ect) while Hanazawa is straightforward with the MC constantly seeming to be thinking "What can I get out of this? What will I become of this?" So when I read Hanazawa's works its like a feverish intoxicating tunnel which gets straight to the point through the male MC's thinking being always with his dong and not his heart spirit or mind, and it's all clouded so that in some feasible way as you're reading you fall under the MC's delusion and begin to understand how he could possibly live and reason like this. I guess I can personally relate to the MC because I have also gotten thrown around but was already so low I could barely feel it either. "it doesn't hurt" were my exact thoughts too. (And it really didn't, if you've ever gotten low enough there's a feeling like everything is numb or the pain is tranquilizing so I'm thinking Tanishi is like that. Maybe also numb in his head.) So I can understand the feeling of tenderness Hanazawa intended when he gives Tanishi something to feel love over. I still think his worldview has to be warped though lol.
Under the circumstances Tanishi undergoes in this manga, he is definitely at least being painted in the viewpoint that he is a hero. Which is kind of confusing because the worldviews of the manga author obviously bleed into the writing, so from a reader's point of view Tanishi is totally delusional, but the author is there to catch him under a net in a fantasy of which Tanishi blends into the world in an explanatory way and I start to feel as if I were watching Hanazawa have an imaginary argument with himself in the shower. It sounds like this would be a bad thing but I can choose to kinda appreciate the manga in this aspect. It makes me appreciate the MC and writing of "I am a Hero" a little more because Hanazawa seemed to be more grounded while he was writing that compared to this and the MC can easily be acknowledged as a bad person and even suffers from things like paranoid delusions which is what this manga feels like lol.
I thought the zombie and horror genre fit Hanazawa nicely before, but now I'm thinking even more so because of being a genre where a MC like Tanishi doesn't have to have the world bend around him in order for the writing to work. I also enjoyed the shortstory he wrote about the teleporting dick for this reason (probably my favorite work from Hanazawa) and think he tried to embrace that in Underninja as well. (The feeling of something that could be a delusion because of strong imagination and could easily not be there depending on how you look at it. Separating the character from reality is fitting for Hanazawa's style of writing basically in my opinion.) I enjoyed Boys on the Run, I got a little less depressed while reading and became easily immersed.
