I know it's somewhat bad manners to dunk on a cancelled story, especially one written for a hyper-competitive outlet like Jump. However, even by the standards of bad Jump manga, even though it was published simultaneously with other bad, cancelled series (Shadow Eliminators immediately comes to mind), Dear Anemone stands out as truly startling piece of bad storytelling. Conceptually borrowing from Jigokuraku and aesthetically overlapping with Wild Strawberry, it's clear this series was a part of a broader wave of darker manga coming out of Jump through late-2023/early-2024. Whether it was a trend chaser or just unlucky is hard to say, but it's timing certainly did not do it any favors.

This isn't to say the manga is wholly without merit, of course. Rin Matsui is a phenomenally talented artist, and the whole reason I even bothered reading this to its conclusion was to see their visually striking take on body horror. Despite publishing alongside Wild Strawberry, Dear Anemone's style of plant-focused body horror is extremely distinct, with a much greater emphasis on the uncanny and human elements of its monsters. The end result is something much visceral and horrifying than anything in Wild Strawberry. The detailing on any given panel is phenomenal, and aesthetically I think the series is incredibly striking. If you're an artist, it's likely these aesthetic merits will warrant at least some study, especially if you've a love of horror. However, I think the more important reason to study this series is the much more negative one- Dear Anemone is a master class in what not to do when writing a story.

Let's start where the story starts- on a ship entering the Galapagos Islands. Dear Anemone's first chapter contains a ton of red flags:

• Overly long, philosophical exposition dump about the nature of evolution and humanity's "fragility"? Check.
• Introducing nearly a dozen proper nouns all at once, without bothering to elaborate on them? Check.
• Telling and not showing everything that isn't exactly the action? Check.
• Name-checking characters with no regard for their relevance to the current scene? Check.
• Not bothering to characterize any of these characters, making it impossible to empathize with any of them? Check.

As an expectation setter, the writing here gives the impression that the author is going to spend a lot of time either talking down to or past the audience. Every written line is either condescending or so far up its own ass that it's seeing the small intestine. Our main character, the clearly intended audience surrogate, is no-small part of this. A huge part of the opening chapters is trying to contrive any reason why this meek loser would undertake such a clear suicide mission, and in doing so it introduces so many macguffins and extenuating circumstances that it both shatters suspension of disbelief, and takes away any room for the story to actually show anything. All we're left with is massive exposition dumps and the horror/fight scenes- the only two modes this story operates on. There is no room left for the characters to breathe and be themselves a little.

In fact, it's the character writing sins which are the most egregious, and the ones that take the series from boring but unremarkable to shockingly bad. Let's start with a deceptive but important one: names. While the names in Dear Anemone are fairly grounded, all things considered, their big problem comes from their memorability. While Hairo Minazuki or Ryuichi Yashiki would be perfectly fine names in a novel, where they'd be reiterated every time the character appears; in a visual medium (especially one where they're not given much screentime or characterization) it becomes very difficult to remember very quickly, especially when you introduce all of these characters at once and never introduce them again. Again, this seems like a small nitpick, until you realize that no less than 6 characters are named in the first chapter, alongside three framing devices, the setting, the premise, and that philosophical exposition dump. Aside from our protagonist, none of these characters are elaborated on enough to even discern their personality, and when combined with samey-looking haircuts and identical military uniforms, it becomes impossible to discern who is who at all after just 3 chapters. It took me 9 chapters (over half the story!) to finally internalize the protagonist's name, and this is with the story constantly saying his name every single chapter. Were it not for me going back to check for this review, I wouldn't have been able to tell you the names of any of the other characters, save Anemone (y'know, the one who is literally in the title).

To be a little more focused, let's talk about those personality issues. While you could technically say that the characters are given something to work with, we're talking about individual traits that are then immediately conflated to be the character's entire personality- even less than the average harem character or Isekai protag. In the most egregious case, Yashiki, that personality begins and ends with the one defining visual element of his character, and never goes beyond that. Hachiue is another particularly bad example, possibly the worst store-brand Deku-knockoff softboy protag ever written. This is an especially damning comparison, as Matsui's introduction to the industry was as an assistant on HeroAca. Where Deku is genuinely goodhearted and forgiving, we see no indication that Hachiue is anything of the sort, and instead are left with an implication that he holds a grudge against some of the people who bullied him as kid. His only reason to exist in the plot is because of his friend, and because of this his centralizing personality trait is a macguffin. We never see our protagonist act like our protagonist, we only see him act in pursuit of his macguffin. This is the worst kind of writing hell- cardboard cutouts of action figures whose only purpose in the plot is strict function, and nothing else. They have no relationship, no time is spent actually developing a rapport between any of them- they stick together because they have to in order for the plot to progress, and so they do. There is not a single character interaction in the series that moves from this, not a single interaction that makes sense with the characterization we're given in the time we have with them.

This is a problem as soon as Chapter 3, where Hachiue has a big-damn-hero moment to save his new compatriots. I imagine the intended point here is to be some big shonen hype moment, where we see our protag use their evil power for good, but the actual effect is nothing short of shock in the worst possible way. Hachiue knows nothing about the powers these characters secretly have, knows nothing about them aside from a few terse barbs exchanged in Chapter 1, just watched a guy get his head ripped off, and has a monster threatening to kill him if he doesn't follow its orders. For everything we know about Hachiue's character, his relationships with the other characters, and the current events of the plot, this scene makes no sense. It only happens because the author decided these characters were going to be used to introduce the obligatory power system, and because they wanted to elicit some cheap thrills from an audience they clearly think is stupid. This continues into the chapters following, where we're introduced to Anemone's "sister", and the different types of monsters that have arisen on the island. None of the fights that ensue happen because the characters would actually reasonably do these things, or even because they have to do these things (in fact in most cases they explicitly don't), they happen because the plot needs to move forward before the story gets canned, and fight scenes tend to boost readership. Thus, we're introduced to the power system and the fact that other characters can transform into monsters. Ironically, this is one of the only instances of showing over telling in the series, and it's only because it's there to enable a fight scene. This kind of retroactive justification of previous plot events happens constantly throughout Dear Anemone, and leads to the story more or less becoming a series of nonsensical decisions that are later justified by the author asspulling a new plot device, as if to go "See? It all makes sense now!"

The cancellation of the series only makes things worse, as the series now has to shortcut Hachiue finding his friend and the plot magically resolving right in the middle of another contrived fight scene. All the while, we've seen no actual character growth from our protagonist, and with the story on borrowed time, our side characters are almost written out of the plot. Instead of using the final few chapters to show our POV character growing in some way or actually resolving things in a satisfying way, the story ends in the easiest, laziest way possible. Fight scene; find friend; the end. It feels like there was no thought put into it at all. Where several better cancelled series have used their limited time to go for something weird or creative, Dear Anemone squanders it by rushing to introduce even more characters so they can have one more big fight scene with a bigger, badder guy. Even Shadow Eliminators' horrible off-screen final battle tried harder than this, spending time with its side characters and trying to build them up so you at least remember some of them. Dear Anemone's ending doesn't even try for memorability. Much like the rest of its story, it only ends because it has to.

I'm not going sit here and belabor every tiny issue the plot has, as I've already written 1500 words tearing it apart, so I'd like to on to my main point: how did this get published to begin with? I understand that Matsui is a very skilled illustrator, and the fight scenes do look pretty- but the art was too grotesque to appeal to Shonen Jump's core audience, and the story so poorly written that anyone over the age of 14 could see through its contrivances. Did they just assume it'd work out because Matsui worked on a big IP? Did they think the audience would be too stupid to see the cracks evident in chapter 1? Did nobody on the editorial team speak to Matsui about pacing or their general plan for the series? It's just so confusing to see a talented artist have all their effort wasted like this. Maybe that's why I'm writing this to begin with, I just don't get it, and that really annoys me.

TL;DR: Visually stunning, awful in every other way. Only read if you're an artist looking for body horror inspo.