“Jinmen” is a horror-mystery manga series written and illustrated by the mangaka Katou Takahiro. Katou Takahiro is a new face in the horror manga industry, and this manga series was his first project.
It started serialization in Japanese on 13 July 2016 and completed its serialization on 4 June 2019. It has not been serialized in English as of yet.
Jinmen is a very niche manga that does not have any accolades to itself as of now. Its only accolade is that it was nominated for the Shogakukan Awards in 2018, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth reading.
Jinmen and Jurassic Park
In Jurassic Park, humans are trapped on an island because they resurrected dinosaurs, and now they want to escape. In Jinmen, humans are trapped by animals because humans have mistreated animals their whole life.
The concept is the same as that humans shouldn’t play with nature, i.e. shouldn’t abuse animals or play with genetics to resurrect dinosaurs because when it comes to the survival of the fittest without weapons, animals will always be superior.
Both series also follow the concept of humans being terrorized by creepy creatures, i.e. in Jurassic Park, dinosaurs chase humans, while in Jinmen, humans are chased by human-faced animals.
Synopsis
Jinmen follows the story of Masato, a little boy with a deep affection for animals, specifically an elephant named Hanayo. Masato goes to the zoo every day to play with her. But unfortunately, he has to shift houses and leave Hanayo.
After seven years, he returns to the zoo to find that the authorities have allowed people to touch animals. Masato brings his childhood friend Hitomi to experience this new thing together.
But things have changed, and so have the animals, as all of them have human facial expressions, and they call themselves “Jinmen”. And these Jinmen want only one thing: to treat humans like they treated them and kill humans.
Jinmen Synopsis (MyAnimeList)
Jinmen’s Art Style | 9.5/10 |
The main selling point of Jinmen is its art style. The background art of this series is your traditional world-building style art.
The spotlight of the art style lies in the character designs of the animals in the series. Each animal has a distinctive face which sometimes resembles a human face.
This adds to the typical horror setting of the series, as we have already seen countless body horror series by Junji Ito, but this type of body horror is unique and somewhat creepy.
This manga series uses the horrifying concept of animals having creepy faces pretty well.
Jinmen’s Story | 8/10 |
“Horror” and “A Good Story” are two things you rarely see together in manga/anime nowadays. But Jinmen displayed a pretty good story with room for development.
Adding human faces to animals was not only limited to facial expressions but also allowed animals to read and learn from books.
The writer is trying to create a perfect organism that is not limited to what it can do just because of its body structure.
Jinmen’s Characters | 4.5/10 |
As roses come with thorns, Jinmen also had some flaws in it. The biggest flaw was the character development of the characters.
Aside from the leading trio (who at least had a little development), the side characters appearing throughout the series are predictable.
They are what they seem to be. Most characters introduced in the series are antagonistic, evident from the get-go. No room was left for development for any of these characters, which made the characters unappealing.
Final Thoughts | Final rating: 9/10 |
As Jinmen has not been officially translated into English yet, I have only read a few chapters with some help from a few online forums. It is unlike your average horror manga, where all it has to offer is jumpscares.
If I want to compare it with some other manga, I would say Terraformars would be the best example, excluding the theme and other things about Terraformars.
The art style of this manga is very vague, so most people will not like it from the start. But I urge you to keep reading and see what the future holds as the art style develops with every chapter!
What are your thoughts on this? Do you think Jinmen deserves an official English Serialization after reading this article? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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