Ciguatera

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Minoru Furuya's Ciguatera is a cynical slice of life story about an average boy in high school who gets bullied, but relies on his passion for motorcycles to get him through the day. The thing I liked best about this manga is that it's real while still being entertaining the story is slow moving but at the same time has rapid character development and some unexpected events. It's also a manga that sneaks up on you where you might read it and just like it but you keep thinking about it weeks later.

The characters are a bit hard to love. First you have the ... main character, a normal high school boy who is humiliated by getting bullied along with his best friend. They start out as kind of under dogs you could relate to and have sympathy for but they drastically change as the story goes on and although they both find different niches neither of them gain any confidence so they just seem a bit timid the whole story. Then you have the asshole bullies who make their life hell and the leader of the pack only continues to taunt the main character more personally as the story goes on. But at the end I think the author did a good job at kind of just putting them in their place as the kind of realistic people who actually exist in this world that we just have to accept.

I enjoyed this manga very much. It's very entertaining and even though it has my favorite aspect of slice of life being slow and realistic it still has some thrill. So I can see this being liked by all different kinds of people as long as they are old enough to understand and appreciate mature content.

Ciguatera is a very half-baked manga.

While reading the first "arc" I was pretty entertained. The aku no hana type weak main character that has niche interests gets himself tied up into some shit while also having a love interest. I thought from there on it would really just continue being an enjoyable slice of life type thing with the self-deprecating main character. Buttttttttt

The story began having these separate arcs with new characters and struggles. There is nothing wrong with this conceptually, but the writing was too mediocre to keep up with itself. The characters introduced would literally never be seen again most of the ... time after the arc finished in some mediocre way. One arc in particular has this random side character do something god awful to a main cast member, and afterward it is completely cast aside. You never see the guy again and the main characters to not touch on it remotely. Most characters will do some bat-shit idiotic stuff and literally never feel any repercussions for it.

It sucks because I think this manga had potential. I really liked the main character, his love interest, and the bully guy at first but the story dragged and just didn't use them well. If you want to read this manga because you thought sundome or aku no hana were amazing (because they are) you will be disappointed.

To give it a little bit of slack, it was kind of funny occasionally and the art was really good, reminded me of beck (except beck is really fucking good). Also the twist of the last chapter I actually kind of liked, but most of the comments on the manga disagreed.

I think this series is lost. At times it seems to be approaching a realistic look at fears and relationships of a growing teenager, but paired with every question posed is a mumbling answer that doesn't teach and really doesn't improve the story.

Ogino is undeniably weird and awkward, but his passion for motorcycles helped to redeem him. He had set goals and was willing to work hard to earn them. It convinced me that it would be worth watching him have a cathartic win over his bully because I felt like the author would have a commentary on ... his situation. I found his position in some ways to be relatable, which made me curious what his journey to escape it would be. But there weren't any. The author seems to have nothing to say. The bully was a far more complex and interesting character compared to Ogi because we see things move towards a logical progression for him. We see moments that develop him as a person.

Thematically it can't seem to figure out what it wants to do and so it stands still. I'm all for realistic outlooks in fiction. If you want to be satirical go for it. If escapism is your thing there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. This is what happens when you mix the 3 primary colors equally. It's listening to a stranger talk about how much they love their girlfriend and every so often mentioning that they were in a gang, or have a rich relative but moving on soon after to talk about their girlfriend more.

Were the author to remake the series, I'd suggest they say more with less. There were a lot of moments that felt like they were going places, and ended up being filler.