Watashi wa Shingo
My Name Is Shingo

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Everything in Watashi wa Shingo flows like in a dream -- or a nightmare. It's different from any other manga I've read, because there is a special onirical state here. Also, in order to appreciate it, you need a voluntary suspension of your "will" -- you need to hang onto the Author's train of thoughts and be carried along. Also you need to suspend your judgement, your disbelief. You have to play along. But if you do, I think you will not be disappointed. I think I will read other works of this Author because I want to be drawn again into his "crazy dimension".

Umezu's manga often remind me of Dario Argento movies. They both intertwine extreme slasher film horror with a child like story telling, the end result being a feverish fairy tale that is too dark for children yet too child like for adults.

This is definitely true for My Name Is Shingo. It is best to read this manga as a fairy tale instead of a grounded narrative, as the plot will frequently abandon any logic. Personally I think this makes the manga more scary as the world and characters have a certain uncanny valley about them. And Paring this with the weird art that is ... beautifully detailed yet stiff and awkward makes the manga extremely creepy

I would of rated this manga higher but the plot in My Name Is Shingo is not quite as tight as other Umezu mangas. This lead to certain parts of the story to feel way too drawn out.

If you want to dive in to Umezu's work I would recommend starting with Drifting class room in stead, but If you have read other Umezu manga this is a great read.

Nothing in this work makes any kind of sense.

Art: Some solid 2-page spreads. Looks quite good when it comes to drawing cables and data. Everything else is terrible. The anatomy in humans is sub par, and everything is inked way too much to the point of some scenes being unintelligible.
The ugly artstyle, a product of it's time for sure, fits the plot well, but it was hard for me to read with it being so ugly and all. I don't need some cutesy moe shit either, but damn is this artstyle hard to digest on (current year).
There's quite a lot of ... gruesome scenes, and straight up just gore, children dying and shit. I didn't mind it much, this actually worked as a positive for the story, made me feel uncomfortable at some points which is a feat on it's own.

Plot / characters: Every single chapter is beyond ridiculous and (if you dare read this work) you will have a VERY, VEEEEERY hard time suspending your disbelief.
Characters have a very small set of emotions they display through the story, making them quite one-dimensional.
None of the characters are very interesting at all and I found them all to be absolutely stupid. Every decision they make do NOT follow or even try to follow logic. I'm having a hard time putting into words my discontent with the way characters act.
They just don't feel like humans at all.
The only interesting character (Shingo) is also the weirdest one. His powers are hardly ever explained and things just happen because YES. And when I say things happen, I mean SHIT ABSOLUTELY GOES DOWN (with actual world ending events that end up not having any real consequence). NOTHING HERE MAKES SENSE AND THINGS HAPPEN JUST BECAUSE. One chapter you're shown a robot in the verge of death, walking by sheer evolutionary force and instinct, and the other chapter, with no explanation at all on how it got there, you see it taking over a military ship. What the actual fuck.

Dialogue: Why do they speak like that. I don't know if I read a bad translation, or if for some reason 80's japanese gets translated roughly to english, but boy does the dialogue not help an already dumb as fuck, squizo-rambling level of plot. This just made the characters even more annoying, and as I said before, makes them feel like something not quite human. I just can't get into the story when my suspension of disbelief is at my feet trying to reach the earths magma core due to how stupid the dialogue gets.

The only positive I can give it is that it's a fast read (for me atleast).
The only other work I've read from this author is also bizarre and doesn't make much sense at all, sharing the same annoying format for dialogue. For some reason his works get quite a bit of praise and I think it's absolutely undeserved, was it written in the 1970 or now, it doesn't matter.

I will be avoiding anything written by Kazuo Umezu.