One must never expect much from a manga adaptation of a visual novel.
Seriously.
So we open up to the first chapter of Togainu no Chi, and there's blood and murder and junk, pretty atypical for a BL story (which I'll refer to it as, since it's based off a BL visual novel). Then there are some guys who are watching the carnage and loling about the smell of blood and puke and other such delicacies. Alright. Then there’s talk of some sick-ass tournament where people kill each other and the goal is to not die, kind of like what the gladiators did only a bit more cyberpunk. Then there's a lot of name-dropping and character introductions and some more violence. And THEN there are a few (read: three) two-page spreads that info-dump all the particulars of this post-apocalyptic Japan and How We Got Here and all that exposition-type stuff. After that, we're in a random bar with a ridiculous amount of characters who are all on the verge of being horribly suffocated by their own dialogue balloons (seriously). And the scene changes, and there are a bunch of gangbangers all congregating at the house of some obvious mafia-lord-dude-thing who keeps a human male as a pet dog. Which, you know, is a pretty horrific yet intriguing concept that will probably only ever be explored for fanservice reasons in this manga (it’s THAT kind of manga). Finally, at the very end of the first chapter, we are at last introduced to the protagonist guy... sorta.
If you're confused by that description, welcome to the club. I don't feel like being elaborate today, so to state bluntly everything that's wrong with this manga (in my, of course, very humble opinion): the art is lackluster and weird (and looks more seinen than shoujo), characters are introduced way too fast, world-building is crammed into three pages of dull description, there's waaaaay too much dialogue that attempts (awkwardly) to explain the story's world to the reader, atmosphere and tone aren't developed outside of random bloody shots of alleyways, the characters already feel insipid and uninspired, EVERYONE is gay and built off your typical BL tropes and clichés, the art is too dark to tell what's going on half the time, the dialogue is boring, there are too many characters to keep track of, the overall pacing feels rushed, the premise isn't exactly unique and comes across feeling pretty contrived, and to top it all off, there is very little emotion to be found anywhere, so it's not likely you're going to be rooting for any of these sociopathic bastards any time soon.
Also, it's just plain boring.
So, sure, maybe it gets better and some of my complaints are addressed and remedied, but honestly, it was just too boring for me to continue on past half of chapter two (and that was with me skipping a lot of the tedious dialogue). If you have nothing better to do or are just really into gruesome BL-esque stories, maybe you'll like it. As for me... Well, just do a search in the "yaoi" category on this site. I've got places to go and pages upon pages of crappy smut to read.
4/10 because it was kind of a jumbled mess.
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