Boys Abyss Volume 1, by Ryo Minenami, is a psychological drama, focusing on a boy named Reiji who has grown up in a dead-end town that has him mentally trapped. When a famous idol enters his life, he’s now faced with the choice to end it all.

The art in this manga is very good. Minenami is very good at facial expressions in this manga, we can feel the palpable sadness radiating off Reiji for most of this manga. I also would like to highlight that the use of double spreads here are rare but when present are used very impactfully. Example being at the end of the full chapter. I really like the vague underwater feeling that is present here, accentuated with some small bubbles in some panels. This works hand in hand with the depressing tone to convey the vague sense of drowning. Perfect for the topic and themes of this manga.

The story is simple, Reiji lives a depressing life where he’s being set up to stay in his town forever. Where other teens would be preparing to go out to college or would be happy to finish school and begin to enter the world of work, he’s saddled with the responsibility of helping his poor family and is being railroaded to work in construction despite his high grades. This manga conveys his constricting situation well, with his mother’s constant complaints and vague yet present suggestions that he works at the construction company, and his childhood friend corralling him to a construction career. We see him with no real voice against the constant cajoling and manipulation. Then enters Nagi, an almost inverse of a manic pixie dream girl, who seems like she’ll bring some positivity to his life, but in reality brightly suggests he kill himself with her.

She, just like the rest of the characters, acts to take advantage of him, manipulates him for sex despite her being married, and sets him off on the path to attempting to drown himself with her. The volume ends with no indicator of whether they jump in the river or not, but the image at the end is suggestive that they do.

If I did not know that there were more volumes, I would assume this is the end of a depressing story, but there is a lot of set up for future plot threads. I’m interested in seeing why Nagi’s husband was so casual with his wife sleeping with Reiji, and why Reiji’s mother has such a negative opinion of him. I’d like to also know why Nagi is so set on killing herself, and why she decides to bring Reiji down with her.

I see a lot of potential for Reiji’s character development, and I hope that the author moves him away from suicide. I can see a lot in terms of him potentially moving away to a non-toxic place. His mother, his childhood friend Gen and Nagi all feel like antagonists at this point, but I can see us gaining more insight into their characters in the future. The teacher and his friend Chako were the only characters to give some positivity in his life so I can see them also featuring more in the future.

There aren’t many manga that felt as depressing as this, but I’d say Dear Sa Chan, Flowers of Evil and Oyasumi Pun Pun had similar vibes so if you enjoy this you’d like those as well, with Oyasumi Pun Pun being a bit more depressing in tone to this.

This was a very interesting manga. The characters were all interesting and despite the heavy content matter I’m interested in seeing how this story develops.

I’d give this a 4.6/5.

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