Ningyou no Kuni
Aposimz

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Second Binge Read of the Year 2026. I binged Aposimz in 8 days.

It was an awesome read. This is the Third Major Tsutomu Nihei work that i read and my point of view of looking at Nihei's works has changed abit after this manga. I believe i made some presumptions in my mind and came to the conclution of Nihei's all works share the same universe way too early.

No, that is probably not the case. Nihei likes to use the same names of things in his previous works with sometimes new, sometimes, slightly new cocepts or sometimes, he even uses the same thing in his ... new work without changing anything about it. I must admit, i have never seen such a creative process before. A mangaka usually only creates one title and works on it for sometime, they can even work on it many decades anyway.

I wish Aposimz got more popular and Nihei was able to write and draw it as many chapters as he wanted, then i believe it would be another 10/10 favorite manga of mine. Such a shame. The Rushed ending because of the cancellation was the only thing that i could complain about the manga.

I really liked the coldness and calmness on the manga. It was action packed, but all the characters were stoic so it still kept that cold and calm atmosphere that i really liked. And the Attempts to make the Manga more popular got my attention as well. Like, after 2/3rd of the manga, Nihei tried to inject some comedy in the manga. The Addition of a Sexy Girl with Almost No Cloths on her (lol) and cute mascot creatures. Nihei tried to warm up the manga. Yeah, they were attempts to win the hearts of teenagers and they were all probably the results of advises that came from the Editor to make the manga more popular... (lol) Nihei pulled those things well as well, if you ask me.

I really liked Aposimz, even if it was cancelled, i confidantly recommend it to anyone who enjoys Tsutomu Nihei's mangas.

Small gun with a big bang, and cool expansive pipe-filled architecture, Nihei staples.

As others say though, the ending came on very abruptly, and the story lost all of the impact due to that. Very unfortunate.

Otherwise I'd still recommend this if you're a fan of his illustrations, or enjoy the works of Jean Giraud aka MÅ“bius. It seems like this manga has more natural looking plains which is what reminded me of Giraud, as opposed to Niehei's usual gargantuan industrial innards (which are still featured under the surface). Also the way that nomadic people adapt to technology, or fuse technology to their sandstony looking architecture fits ... that bill as well I feel.

The plot is pretty standard though; shoneny edgelord armor fights, got some fanservice in there. There isn't much inner conflict going on with characters, and any character development is unfortunately cut short by the abrupt end.

Its interesting and strange to me that people write reviews for unfinished or ongoing manga, but in the case for Aposimz - even its now "finished" status is actually forever unfinished due to a hasty cancellation. Nihei was forced to attempt to cliff note about 50 chapters worth of story into the last 4 because of that. I won't judge Aposmiz for the hilariously rushed ending, however I didn't find rest of the story or art to hold up regardless of that forced ending.

As per the Nihei Blame usual you have a rather stoic MC with a small gun that has the power ... to punch a hole through everything, travelling around a mechanical dystopia with a female sidekick (actually 2 this time), some Abara style transformations, and at times the lighthearted goofiness of Sidonia. The biggest change is probably how generic and "not-Nehei" the manga feels; things quickly devolve into shounen battles with tiered enemies, special superpowers, mascot animals, ass pull fights, explanation of said fight/abilities, etc. Technically Nihei always has moments almost like that, but not to the same degree and frequency that Aposmiz has. It is very much a watered down and shounen-y story overall. There are hints of the expert world building of Nihei, but it feels rehashed from his older works, except now straddled by this atmosphere killing shounen battle nonsense (along with some very obvious and clear "influence" from Nausicaa).

That being said nothing here is really new for him, besides his continuation/advancement of the Sidonia artstyle, which is something I personally think just looks rather boring and lifeless in comparison to his older heavy ink stuff. Its lacking in shading at times, being mostly empty white, a single grey tone, and then ink for hair and lines of objects. I appreciate trying a new artstyle; but it feels more simplified in its shading, more boring to look at, like less effort is being put in, and honestly sometimes hard to make out what things are exactly due to that lack of shading. A look at his coloured pages are obviously a huge step down from his previous efforts, not even in a different style, they are simply just flat out worse and look like he barely tried at all. Faces and people are also far more cutesy, utterly gone are the uncanny and strangely spaced faces from his older works which stood out from other artists.

The atmosphere too is very similar to Sidonia because of how much more playful characters are and how lighthearted things look. Silly jokes and even ecchi scenes coming up again and again through the story, but are mostly just generic and played out nonsense. Nothing like the ol naked girl walks into the bathroom and then hurts the MC for looking at her titddies, never seen enough of those epic gags, right guys....? Maybe I am no longer Nihei's target audience with things like this, but I never found these "jokes" very funny even when I was younger, and more importantly is that it's so overdone that I believe it's absolutely worthy of criticism.

Its a shame to say; but with this manga, Sidonia, and the Blame CGI movie - I think I have to say that modern day Nihei is completely washed up. He seems more interested in having cute girls, slapstick humor, shounen battles, and awful romance than creating the gritty, mysterious and dark worlds he was known for. Its fine to change your style, but if your new thing is just trying to make yourself more accessible and generic - then I'm not going to pretend its anything other than bad. I don't like having to say that, but I think its the truth at this point because he threw away his own unique style and then watered himself down to be more "accessible". Essentially he sold out, which was probably clear as day with Sidonia, but I was holding on hoping that maybe it was only a one time thing. That is not the case, and really I expect him to make an even more egregious attempt to commercialize himself in the next story he creates due to the failure of Aposmiz.