Reviews and Comments

Review of the compendium itself in the bottom
This book was a ton of fun! Not every story here is great, and the first two volumes were very blunt on exposition, but it was overall a wonderful sprawling epic that is one of a kind and full of great moments.

The art is very hit or miss. Since it's a long running series, a lot of artists come and go and while most of them are not bad, some of the art is just really simple and uninspired. Some of them even had weird quirks, like one artist who draws Bigby with no mouth and another that can't really draw faces.

The writing is also hit or miss. Though it's usually great, some side stories felt like filler (the ww2 story...) while others felt really poorly handled (farm revolution felt like it's copying Animal Farm without understanding anything about it), but luckily all the poor stories are usually quite short and don't affect the overall experience.

This book is a solid 4 stars, and a must-have for anyone interested in fantasy and fairy tales.

Compendium Physical Review
The compendium itself has good binding and high quality paper, but it's underwhelming that there's no content other than the pages of the book themselves! No foreword, no afterword, no bonus art, NOT EVEN A TABLE OF CONTENTS! You open the book, see a nice cover and basic credits, then immediately start on page 1. It's disappointing. In-between every issue is also a weird page with purple mist on it. You see this page maybe 40 times, and it's disappointing as hell that they didn't use them in any way. The deluxe edition has quotes in-between every issue, why not put those in?

The compendium is a great option if you're short on money, but I'd otherwise get the deluxe edition or just the trade paperbacks.

It's like Lord of the Flies, except everyone is a psychopath from day 0.



Wow! I didn't know what to expect coming into this. I always heard about how popular this horror manga is but when I finally read it I was blown away that it's kind of... Funny?! Most of the manga will have you altering between "What the hell is going on?" to "How did we get here?".

Everything in this story is so over the top and chaotic that it's kind of similar to an '80s slasher movie. You're not necessarily here for the horror, but rather the crazy turn of events you watch unfold as everyone goes insane and everything falls apart.

Within the first 5 minutes of the classroom disappearing, kids start falling off the roof, a teacher starts slapping the crap out of every kid to calm them down, then a heroic teacher stabs his kid and threatens everyone that they're next in order to calm them down. This works. Soon after the teachers start a free for all and kill each other for no real reason.

My favorite thing about this though is that the story doesn't even try to make sense. It knows how absurd it is, and doesn't try to justify itself. Events happen for seemingly no reason out of nowhere and you're expected to just roll with it. I could say a lot of things about the story, but at least it doesn't slow down or get boring.

So yes, it's not exactly a realistic story or a very scary one, but it is interesting watching everything unfold and how quickly things get out of hand. Overall it's a good book with some moments of good horror like the very creepy giant insect, but I wouldn't classify this as a very scary book if that's what you're looking for.