Drug It! - Oneshot
- Thread starter MangaDex
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Dex-chan lover
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Not my cup of tea
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Ok, so this dude is a streamer who slaughters addicts, but his primary audience is a bunch of addicts who cheers him on while he slaughters other addicts, and the streamer happily enables his own audience addiction.....
Hmm. Idk. Unless there's some mad creative world building to explain this contradiction I think this is pre dumb.
Hmm. Idk. Unless there's some mad creative world building to explain this contradiction I think this is pre dumb.
Dex-chan lover
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Ngl this was dumb and not "action-packed" at all.
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I am extremely disappointed with this one-shot.
For being so edgy, the violence is quite tame and the gore is extremely lacking, if not existent, you would expect some viscera with these kind of things, detailed cross sections showing muscle bone and guts being put on display as they fall to the ground and leave a sticky pool of blood, but nope.
This didn't excelled at anything, it doesn't even has gap moe since the drawings are rough and sketchy, so it's not cute let alone sexy, and of course it doesn't manages to be hyper dark, or disgusting so there's no shock factor either.
The world building could be the most interesting part, if it actually had world building, you have an underground city in a heavily industrialized society (except sometimes it doesn't looks heavily industrialized), but none of that is really being explored, the city never manages to come alive and become a character, and instead we waste time with a streaming V-tuber, which as of now is one of the most mundane things technology has given us, taking us away from the idea that the story takes place in the future.
Pages 2, 6 and 7 are the highlights of this manga, but sadly they are not the focus of it, even worse they stand in contradiction with the rest of the manga which takes places indoors, in normal bedrooms, normal corridors, and a lab with a tank, and even sadder is the contrast with pages 8 and 34 which look just like the Hong Kong of the 1980s rather than a city in the future.
And that's just half assed background design, because as a matter of fact the Hong Kong of the 1980s is a classic aesthetic of the cyberpunk genre, however it doesn't exist by itself it is always accompanied by narrative elements that help drive the setting, invasive ads and neon signs telling you how corporations have taken over the city; ever present and oppressive cameras reminiscing of a controlling government; drones, automated cars, and working robots cluing you about a society of automated labor; screens, speakers and projectors in every corner, wall and window showing you a society obsessed with entertainment; etc.
This manga doesn't does that, pages 8 and 34 are incomplete, they are normal looking Hon Kong of the 80s, it even has some chimneys, just some so is not even hyper-industrial, at best 2 or 3 commercial signs, and empty streets, windows and walls, it doesn't even feels oppressive because the homeless and drug addicts don't litter the street, and the main-character parkours her way from roof to roof running free, ignoring the architecture that surrounds her, and by doing so denying the place she finds herself in, leaving us with an empty city that feels artificial and fake. And that would have been fine, if it wasn't because Pages 2, 6 and 7 misguides you into thinking that there was something more to the setting, something to look forward.
If anything you could argue that drugging the main character allowed the author to draw a couple of nice panels by showing her distorted vision and hallucinations, but even then we never go full psychedelic, she never trips, and after a kick she is back to her senses, so you don't get anything surreal out of it, which is probably the biggest waste in this manga since it is called Drug It!, a better name with less compromises would have been Kill Streamers, but then again, the violence was sub par, Shonen Jump has more hardcore stuff on it in series with less edge somehow.
Visually speaking this manga is a flop in every sense of the word, down to the paneling even, if you are gonna have her be dizzy and hallucinate, have the panels themselves distort and contort, warp and swag, mangakas have been doing that since the 60s! is one of the oldest tricks in the book, so what is with all the straight panels?
As for the plot, it was as dumb as how @Nikosgarofola describes it.
We don't even get propper Sci-fi because the explanation for the wonder drug that grants immortality comes from the mouth of a crazy cultist who has no sense of privacy, one of the worst things any writer can do is have the character with the most exposition lines be an unreliable narrator and that is what we got here, the cultist leader is trying to revive his master using a drug that prolongs life span, but the creator of that drug ironically died of old age... so now his plan is to use the failed drug in order to restore the soul of his leader.
In best of cases that leads us out of the realm of sci-fi and into the realm of fantasy if we assume that the cultist knew what he was talking about. In the worst of cases we just wasted our time reading the ramblings of a drug addict cultist whose doctrine is full of contradictions.
@shut123 Well at least one person liked it, but why tho?
For being so edgy, the violence is quite tame and the gore is extremely lacking, if not existent, you would expect some viscera with these kind of things, detailed cross sections showing muscle bone and guts being put on display as they fall to the ground and leave a sticky pool of blood, but nope.
This didn't excelled at anything, it doesn't even has gap moe since the drawings are rough and sketchy, so it's not cute let alone sexy, and of course it doesn't manages to be hyper dark, or disgusting so there's no shock factor either.
The world building could be the most interesting part, if it actually had world building, you have an underground city in a heavily industrialized society (except sometimes it doesn't looks heavily industrialized), but none of that is really being explored, the city never manages to come alive and become a character, and instead we waste time with a streaming V-tuber, which as of now is one of the most mundane things technology has given us, taking us away from the idea that the story takes place in the future.
Pages 2, 6 and 7 are the highlights of this manga, but sadly they are not the focus of it, even worse they stand in contradiction with the rest of the manga which takes places indoors, in normal bedrooms, normal corridors, and a lab with a tank, and even sadder is the contrast with pages 8 and 34 which look just like the Hong Kong of the 1980s rather than a city in the future.
And that's just half assed background design, because as a matter of fact the Hong Kong of the 1980s is a classic aesthetic of the cyberpunk genre, however it doesn't exist by itself it is always accompanied by narrative elements that help drive the setting, invasive ads and neon signs telling you how corporations have taken over the city; ever present and oppressive cameras reminiscing of a controlling government; drones, automated cars, and working robots cluing you about a society of automated labor; screens, speakers and projectors in every corner, wall and window showing you a society obsessed with entertainment; etc.
This manga doesn't does that, pages 8 and 34 are incomplete, they are normal looking Hon Kong of the 80s, it even has some chimneys, just some so is not even hyper-industrial, at best 2 or 3 commercial signs, and empty streets, windows and walls, it doesn't even feels oppressive because the homeless and drug addicts don't litter the street, and the main-character parkours her way from roof to roof running free, ignoring the architecture that surrounds her, and by doing so denying the place she finds herself in, leaving us with an empty city that feels artificial and fake. And that would have been fine, if it wasn't because Pages 2, 6 and 7 misguides you into thinking that there was something more to the setting, something to look forward.
If anything you could argue that drugging the main character allowed the author to draw a couple of nice panels by showing her distorted vision and hallucinations, but even then we never go full psychedelic, she never trips, and after a kick she is back to her senses, so you don't get anything surreal out of it, which is probably the biggest waste in this manga since it is called Drug It!, a better name with less compromises would have been Kill Streamers, but then again, the violence was sub par, Shonen Jump has more hardcore stuff on it in series with less edge somehow.
Visually speaking this manga is a flop in every sense of the word, down to the paneling even, if you are gonna have her be dizzy and hallucinate, have the panels themselves distort and contort, warp and swag, mangakas have been doing that since the 60s! is one of the oldest tricks in the book, so what is with all the straight panels?
As for the plot, it was as dumb as how @Nikosgarofola describes it.
We don't even get propper Sci-fi because the explanation for the wonder drug that grants immortality comes from the mouth of a crazy cultist who has no sense of privacy, one of the worst things any writer can do is have the character with the most exposition lines be an unreliable narrator and that is what we got here, the cultist leader is trying to revive his master using a drug that prolongs life span, but the creator of that drug ironically died of old age... so now his plan is to use the failed drug in order to restore the soul of his leader.
In best of cases that leads us out of the realm of sci-fi and into the realm of fantasy if we assume that the cultist knew what he was talking about. In the worst of cases we just wasted our time reading the ramblings of a drug addict cultist whose doctrine is full of contradictions.
@shut123 Well at least one person liked it, but why tho?
Group Leader
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- Mar 19, 2019
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- 318
cool comic
Dex-chan lover
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- Mar 5, 2019
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bruh what
the cult had the key to immortality of the human race and this edgy fuck just destroys it
I want my 4 minutes back
the cult had the key to immortality of the human race and this edgy fuck just destroys it
I want my 4 minutes back
Aggregator gang
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- Jun 26, 2018
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Sad that fucking lowlife bitch ended such a great experiment there.
Guess being drug addict is now something people could approve...
Guess being drug addict is now something people could approve...
Dex-chan lover
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- Apr 6, 2023
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This wasn’t exactly great and it could use some refining but I kinda liked it. Wish the gore was a bit better though.
Banned
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- Mar 18, 2019
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hahaha lmao why would you post this cringe
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