#Yo! If you uh... if you don't like gore (aka look at this manga/review's banner)... well... I'd probably stop reading this review and also don't read this manga. Because the manga has way more gore than just what I'm including in this review. Oh, also spoilers for... the "ending."#
Killing Morph is a horror manga by Nokuto Koike (story) and Masaya Hokazono (art).
It's a one of a kind horror series in that... well, there's really no plot.
It's just gore.
...It's entirely gore. With barely any build up whatsoever, the titular Killing Morph shows up and just starts brutally killing people on a busy city street in the middle of the day. Over the top decapitations, putting machetes in people's faces, cutting people down, just stomping his feet down into viscera... this is probably one of the goriest manga I've ever completed. Or at the very least, it's certainly the quickest to just drop all pretense to get to the gore.
It's one after the other. It's just so goddamned unabashedly excessive. But just as the Killing Morph changes his focus to our protagonist girl, a mere two cops rush over and restrain him.
This of course only happens after he's already killed at least a dozen people. Also, he has two machetes, and I don't even think the cops had their guns drawn? They just rushed in. Are you kidding me? Did you see the pile of corpses in the street? Open fire, you idiots.
Most slasher characters or the ones that come to my mind... they usually never "just" kill people. What I mean by that is... they're characters. They're not just walking viscera generators. They have personality and histories, they might have their own set of rules of how they could be defeated... and so on.
But the Killing Morph... we never, ever, get anything from his character except he really likes killing people. We don't learn about who he was before he started killing people or anything. He's just a psychopath with a very odd ability. Or rather, several odd abilities.
And that brings me to the Killing Morph or M's set of rules. That of course being... there are no rules. It was when I accepted this fundamental truth that I found myself enjoying this manga way more.
Because it's so goddamned stupid. Say what you will about Jason Voorhees, but he's a character. Yes, he typically just kills people. But you have his history of being drowned in the lake, you have his crazy ass mom who still speaks to him in his head and urges him to commit more killings, and you know… he can actually be beaten.
But M just fucking kills people.
That's the only thing to his character except for his obsession with the protagonist girl because she's the protagonist of the manga. And unlike Jason Voorhees which let's just be honest here, that's the slasher character this is an obvious imitation of, M can't be defeated. Or rather, he shouldn't be able to but he's a complete fucking idiot.
- While confined in prison, he can appear basically anywhere outside in the presence of someone that has seen him before. He can also just as easily disappear again.
- But also he can appear to multiple people simultaneously.
- All of his wounds heal ridiculously fast. It is shown that a "Morph" can even regenerate if say, their hands were chopped off.
- He can also of course appear as multiple M's. AKA... for some reason, he can spawn copies of himself and control them all simultaneously?
Also, I may have entirely dismissed the actual plot of this manga because it's really laughable... like really? You're gonna take your daughter who's been obsessing over this weird enigmatic serial killer somewhere to try and calm her nerves? Okay, where are you gonna take her?
Oh, a hotel in the middle of a FUCKING FOREST? Oh, and you took her cell phone away. That's totally not gonna fucking backfire in any way shape or form.
...Anyways, I may have entirely dismissed the actual plot of this manga but it COULD have been something. Between Madoka's conflict with M and Madoka sometimes acting strange and M trying to get Madoka to kill someone... you could have done something with that character.
Like there's so many covers of her smiling and like covered in blood and honestly I was going with the most obvious interpretation. That M really didn't exist and/or he's just a part of Madoka which could make some sense but then there's all those times M shows up somewhere Madoka isn't anywhere near.
Additionally, you also have the fucked and abrupt as shit ending for this series which... Madoka unconsciously uses bilocation for the first time herself, and finds that she's warped into the very prison where M is. And the cop character is just... fine with handing her his loaded pistol right before she bilocates into the room where M is.
Meanwhile, back in the forest, there's still an army of M's battling this stupid biker gang that got brought in by one of the therapy group's members to combat M. It really feels like... if it wasn't already obvious throughout the whole thing, bilocation is used whenever the creator feels like it. So like a fucking magic wand gets waved in the middle of this climactic battle and bam, Madoka's poofed off to the prison to deal with M once and for all.
By shooting him to death.
All that shit about him being a monster and the enemy of mankind and M is killed by a couple of bullets. I mean you could argue that M might not have been fully dead or obviously that M wanted Madoka to kill him because he senses that she might eventually become an even worse Morph than M was but... ultimately, it doesn't matter.
End of part 1? So... there's going to be a part 2? So it's gonna be an entirely new manga with a new title? Maybe rather than the Killing Morph, it'll be the Killing Madoka?
...There IS gonna be a part 2, right?
...Right?
#Conclusion#
...I don't know if it's gonna get a part two or if it actually needs one because if M really is dead then who the fuck cares about a part 2? I mean yeah I said it'd be neat if Madoka just went off the deep end and started killing, but I can't see her matching the goofy antics of the charming M.
Like the idea of this slasher character is one of those ideas that pops up into your mind but then you immediately dismiss it because it'd be too stupid.
WHAT IF A KILLER COULD SHOW UP ANYWHERE? WHAT IF THERE COULD BE TWO OR MORE OF THEM?
So you know, an actual attempt to try and do a character like that? It's worth a chuckle, at the very least. Additionally, there's something to say about... if you're gonna do a horror manga, and you really want to do a series with just some fucking awful and over the top gore... then just do it. Don't fucking pretend that you're doing something else, though.
Beyond the very mild smattering of "Madoka maybe possesses the potential to become a serial killer" this series is nothing more than a crazy man armed with machetes killing people. And believe it or not, but that's okay.
I only came around to thinking like that however only after accepting this manga was just going to be dumb until the very end. There are clever and fun slashers, but there are also really, really, really dumb and simplistic ones.
Killing Morph is definitely one of the latter. It's good for a laugh and good if you're just in the mood for some blunt gore. I give it a 6 out of 10.
