So much of this space has been collapsed into homogenized entertainment. Nowadays, by the time a child is ten years old they have seen every form of the hero’s journey in the cartoons they watch, to the degree where there are tropes and nods to source material or even sometimes derivatives of source. Sci fi, fantasy and other genres are blended in as hooks because cartoons have to keep viewership and eye balls, so they throw everything they can find at it.
As a result, unfortunately, there is very little “new” material. The old material that took centuries to develop and longer has been flattened and duplicated, over and over again. I sound like a curmudgeon (I probably am), but I stopped watching movies entirely not too long ago because it became a farce of seeing cliche writing. Shows are even worse so as to not even warrant discussing.
Cyberpunk specifically has also been outdated fast by real world developments, and other genres emerging with similar topics, but different design(?)-language. The whole cyberspace-element for example kinda died (or evolved) with the rise of the real internet, the Matrix-Movies and recently with stuff like VRMMO-stories from asia.
The overall concepts and elements are still around in some way, but the specific combination and language that makes cyberpunk are gone. At the end I would say they were a result of their time, and time has changed, so not it's just nostalgia and retro.
I meant to write quite a long response to your comment, but let me just bring it down to a single question: How is your feeling different from melancholia?
There is and always will be mainstream, niche, the unknown and everything in between. There was always very little new material and a lot of works just gained recognition when their zeitgeist was long overdue, too. I think experimentation is hard, and it's even harder to justify experimentation in the evolving economic climate.
Genres are meant to be collapsed, or rather they should blend and dissolve into each other. The earlier (and good) seasons of The Simpsons are a poster child when it comes to "flattening and duplicating old material". Almost every episode cites a movie or work of literature, and there was nothing wrong with it! It's part of why I understand the 90s as a cultural era of citations, and I had to grow up with that sentiment. It took me quite some time to understand that we moved past it.
Nowadays, we are fortunate enough that a lot of things from the past 10 decades have been digitized and are readily available on demand. That's amazing! Nothing is stopping me from asking myself some naive questions, like "What makes a good drama?" or "If Die Hard is considered to be a Christmas movie, why isn't Falling Down considered to be a summer movie?". I think there is still stuff to explore.
I'll just leave this unfinished thought with a recommendation to a niche movie I discovered recently: Sleep Has Her House (2017)[0]
it’s been this way forever. the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00, etc… all had generic trash movies and music too.
stop getting recs from algorithms and the entire world will open back up to you. just like top40 music and generic movies from back in the day, you’re getting the lowest common denominator recs.
i read a book about the music industry in the 80s (it’s been a couple years and i can’t remember the name now) but people called the top40 music from back then formulaic. they were convinced record labels had formulas to make their pop music stars. what do you think algorithms are? they’re feeding you trash.
again, stop getting your recommendations from algorithms and the world will open back up. get your recs from actual film or music geeks. go to your local record store, look at their wall of employee recs, or *gasp* talk to them and ask them.
While there’s a lot of slop out there that just exist to extract dollars, there are still some great movies being made every now and then. Don’t expect them to be the most popular high budget movies, you have to dig a little. The idea that there’s nothing new that’s worth watching though is clearly wrong and a typical bias that basically every person has to fight against as they age. You might even say it’s a cliche to think all new media is junk.
And yet. The other day I saw Dune described as this generation's LotR, which was that generation's Star Wars. Dune (and LotR, and SW) are all Hero's Journey stories (what isn't?), yet they're each pretty unique.
Granted, LotR and Dune were written in the 50's and 60's, respectively, with Star Wars following a decade later.
All I'm saying is that what is new depends on what generation you grow up in. And I suppose how much media you're exposed to. Speaking for myself, LotR was the second film I ever saw in the cinema so it was a whole new experience.
For the younger generations, these are old films, much like how idk, Spartacus and co was an old film for me.
tl;dr, the kids will be alright. Actually the kids also appreciate older media, there's a whole generation of late teenagers now rediscovering 2000's music / culture.
When society is affluent enough, people say it will become corrupt and fall apart. But when society has truly deteriorated, stories of heroes come to mind. If you look back at the era when cyberpunk social critiques emerged, the world that led that movement was wealthy, with a thick middle class. But when society starts to become poorer, those kinds of stories become stressful for the public. When you have room to breathe, such macro-level critiques serve as a 'healthy amount of stress' for survival. But when survival itself is at stake, it becomes much harder to be tolerant of criticism.
That's why the countries where cyberpunk flourished were wealthy ones
Coincidentally, there is a new Ghost in the Shell anime that's premiering now on Amazon Prime Video. It's animation style and mood are closely aligned with the original 1989 manga, which is to say it's more cartoonish and light-hearted. I prefer the more adult oriented content the franchise was putting out up until about 2006, but the new anime series gives me hope that we might eventually see a follow-up animation of Shirow Masamune's Man/Machine Interface - what was once considered to be Ghost in the Shell 2 before Mamuro Oshii created Innocence.
Personally I think I'm done with GitS at this point. How many times has it been rebooted, like a dozen times?
The last one I enjoyed watching was Arise but I lost track after that. I think the series has been done to death and I would love to see some completely new IP from Masamune that is more reflective of the AI and economic upheavals we are experiencing in the 20s.
I see every version as a remix of the original material, each done with their own take and philosophy. They're not remakes or reboots.
The only version that didn't add anything new was the Hollywood movie, which was an entertaining but shallow derivative of Oshii's animes and not based on the manga at all.
I think the original material provides enough ideas to continue spinning off new remixes. It hasn't even been outdated by the recent advancements in AI. Quite the opposite.
I don't think it will be animated any time soon due to Major not having much screen time, but if you haven't seen it, I would definitely recommend Human Algorithm[1] manga. It's a bit different art style than the original, more gritty and sterile, in a good way. For me personally that makes it a bit more cyberpunk feel. The first arc is a bit drag at a time but when all plot lines converge, the payoff is awesome.
You're probably not going to get it. And he has decent reasons for not wanting to bother.
The nature (infamy?) of his activities over the past few years should also be noted. (And maybe chuckled at if you have a bit of a dark sense of humor.)
It's not corruption. He has stated that there were projects going on behind the scenes, but most of them got scrapped before reaching production.
The most recent manga he involved with was Ghost Urn, which explores the world of GitS from a different protagonist. He did not do the drawing, but did most of the worldbuilding and mecha design.
A lot of mangaka have done that sort of thing, calling something normal in the industry "infamous" and "corrupting" seems overblown when Tatsuya Matsuki and Nobuhiro Watsuki are grooming children and collecting CP and every other mangaka seems to be shitposting racism.
The article author sure likes Ghost in the Shell. Almost every variant is listed.
The article only covers comics, manga, and graphic novels, not anime. So Bubblegum Crisis, which is half cyberpunk and half music videos, isn't listed. Nor is Cowboy Bebop.
(The site is now intermittently down, with "429 Too many requests".)
I really like the art direction of the new GitS adaptation (I hope this retro style gets used more), but yeah it's completely different in tone from the '95 adaptation and most of what followed.
also go read my comic about a robot lady with reality issues, http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/, it's got cover quotes from three people with seven Hugos between them.
It might be skirting the edges of what is considered cyberpunk since it has Mecha elements but Patlabor is a fantastic manga/series that should have been included in this list [1]
It is especially strange not to see it in the list given GiTS is heavily featured (according to the comments, I can't access the page or web archive ATM).
Patlabor movie 2 was directed by the same director as the original 1995 GiTS animation movie. Both patlabor 1 / 2 have similar themes to GiTS, and are heavily cyber punk in themes and esthetics.
A recent (2023) finding: from Guillaume Singelin, Frontier [0]. Fitting it into "cyberpunk" may need a bit of a push, but since the limits are kind of blurry I don't really care. The narrative is not perfect perhaps falling into wanting to say a lot more than the page limit allows, but all in all it's a good enough read.
I'm vouching for Frontier as well, as well as "Carbon & Silicon" [0] from Mathieu Bablet. All of his work is gorgeous, I love his art.
If you liked Frontier's theme and are into video games I recommend you check out "Citizen Sleeper" [1] illustrated by Guillaume Singelin as well.
It's a 7 hour narrative text-based adventure that really hooked me one week-end. Your choices depend on how you "spend" your dice, dice that are cast at the beginning of every single day on the station so you get to pre-plan your actions somewhat.
Gameplay wise it's mostly reading, but I liked exploring the station they created.
In Italy (and sometimes abroad, I recall dark horse translated it in English at some point) Nathan Never has been publishing as a monthly comic for a few decades.
This is a bit of an idiosyncratic list. Two of my favorite additions from my own youth: Hard Boiled by Frank Miller and Geof Darrow and Batman: Digital Justice. The latter now reads like a bit of a corny cash grab for the early '90s cyber fad, but I still love the time capsule of some if its art.
It took me twice as long to read Hard Boiled as it should since I spent so much time looking at Geof Darrow’s intricately detailed art. Great story, but the illustrations are on another level.
It's not that idiosyncratic a list, those were the first two graphic novels that came to my mind when opening up the website. Geoff Darrow's art Hardboiled is incredible. I was a huge batman fan as a young teen and digital justice came out at peak Batman hype, and it was much hyped itself, but it wasn't very good.
Funny for some reason the submission title summoned this manga in my mind even though I've never read it only a free chapter in a magazine I was obsessed with.
as someone who loves Astro Boy (and everything else Tezuka made): Atom The Beginning was a disappointment. But I also believe that Pluto sucks too (some smaller stories, like the pianist, were great).
The Ghost In The Shell: Global Neural Network features one story by LRNZ. His work Geist Maschine (in italian only) is amazing.
Among the Cyberpunk 2077 comics, Big City Dreams is also very good.
Rich Veitch, he and Alan Moore. As Moore would later write:
"The One ... is a kind of landmark; a pulling together of obsessions and ingenious storytelling ideas into a coherent whole ... Its revisionist superheroics, while conceived at roughly the same time, predate Watchmen and Dark Knight in terms of publication, as does its packaging. Its political and humanist preoccupations were voiced before such sentiments became chic. Its deranged, culture-conscious humor offers an alternative and an antidote to today's rather gloomy trend of pessimistic, post-modern ultra-humans... Whatever it is that the comic books of the 1980s turn out to be remembered for, The One was right there in the thick of it, carving out a niche in the mainstream for dangerous ideas long before dangerous ideas became box-office certainties."
The one I'd highlight from the list is Hiroki Endo's Eden: It's an Endless World, it's my favorite manga. It's beautifully drawn and incredibly grounded in tone and oddly relevant.
The overarching story is about a pandemic that starts as a backdrop and becomes more important and metaphysical and religious as the story goes on but the core of it revolves around crime bosses in Latin America, the lives of prostitutes, a Uyghur rebellion in Xinjiang, political conflict and organized crime all done in a very real way. It's completely devoid of any (manga) tropes or genre aesthetics.
So much of this space has been collapsed into homogenized entertainment. Nowadays, by the time a child is ten years old they have seen every form of the hero’s journey in the cartoons they watch, to the degree where there are tropes and nods to source material or even sometimes derivatives of source. Sci fi, fantasy and other genres are blended in as hooks because cartoons have to keep viewership and eye balls, so they throw everything they can find at it.
As a result, unfortunately, there is very little “new” material. The old material that took centuries to develop and longer has been flattened and duplicated, over and over again. I sound like a curmudgeon (I probably am), but I stopped watching movies entirely not too long ago because it became a farce of seeing cliche writing. Shows are even worse so as to not even warrant discussing.
Cyberpunk specifically has also been outdated fast by real world developments, and other genres emerging with similar topics, but different design(?)-language. The whole cyberspace-element for example kinda died (or evolved) with the rise of the real internet, the Matrix-Movies and recently with stuff like VRMMO-stories from asia.
The overall concepts and elements are still around in some way, but the specific combination and language that makes cyberpunk are gone. At the end I would say they were a result of their time, and time has changed, so not it's just nostalgia and retro.
I meant to write quite a long response to your comment, but let me just bring it down to a single question: How is your feeling different from melancholia?
There is and always will be mainstream, niche, the unknown and everything in between. There was always very little new material and a lot of works just gained recognition when their zeitgeist was long overdue, too. I think experimentation is hard, and it's even harder to justify experimentation in the evolving economic climate.
Genres are meant to be collapsed, or rather they should blend and dissolve into each other. The earlier (and good) seasons of The Simpsons are a poster child when it comes to "flattening and duplicating old material". Almost every episode cites a movie or work of literature, and there was nothing wrong with it! It's part of why I understand the 90s as a cultural era of citations, and I had to grow up with that sentiment. It took me quite some time to understand that we moved past it.
Nowadays, we are fortunate enough that a lot of things from the past 10 decades have been digitized and are readily available on demand. That's amazing! Nothing is stopping me from asking myself some naive questions, like "What makes a good drama?" or "If Die Hard is considered to be a Christmas movie, why isn't Falling Down considered to be a summer movie?". I think there is still stuff to explore.
I'll just leave this unfinished thought with a recommendation to a niche movie I discovered recently: Sleep Has Her House (2017)[0]
[0]: https://scottbarley.com/Sleep-Has-Her-House
imo a good contradiction makes for a good stroy if you know what i mean
Unfortunately that's how the system is. New material is risky and hollywood is not performing well financially
At least we have houses like A24 which brings interesting content
a24 was great, they’ve definitely slipped though. as soon as they won their first oscar they’ve been chasing money rather than quality.
their old catalog though, incredible. i’d say like 80+ percent of the movies they released were fucking amazing. but that has fallen dramatically.
neon is still going strong though!
a24 style really hits
it’s been this way forever. the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00, etc… all had generic trash movies and music too.
stop getting recs from algorithms and the entire world will open back up to you. just like top40 music and generic movies from back in the day, you’re getting the lowest common denominator recs.
i read a book about the music industry in the 80s (it’s been a couple years and i can’t remember the name now) but people called the top40 music from back then formulaic. they were convinced record labels had formulas to make their pop music stars. what do you think algorithms are? they’re feeding you trash.
again, stop getting your recommendations from algorithms and the world will open back up. get your recs from actual film or music geeks. go to your local record store, look at their wall of employee recs, or *gasp* talk to them and ask them.
It's been never at this pace, nor in this quantity.
But it's always been at a faster pace and a higher quantity than whatever decade preceded it
While there’s a lot of slop out there that just exist to extract dollars, there are still some great movies being made every now and then. Don’t expect them to be the most popular high budget movies, you have to dig a little. The idea that there’s nothing new that’s worth watching though is clearly wrong and a typical bias that basically every person has to fight against as they age. You might even say it’s a cliche to think all new media is junk.
Might as well provide a method for good discoveries, as the current channels are extremely lifeless
And yet. The other day I saw Dune described as this generation's LotR, which was that generation's Star Wars. Dune (and LotR, and SW) are all Hero's Journey stories (what isn't?), yet they're each pretty unique.
Granted, LotR and Dune were written in the 50's and 60's, respectively, with Star Wars following a decade later.
All I'm saying is that what is new depends on what generation you grow up in. And I suppose how much media you're exposed to. Speaking for myself, LotR was the second film I ever saw in the cinema so it was a whole new experience.
For the younger generations, these are old films, much like how idk, Spartacus and co was an old film for me.
tl;dr, the kids will be alright. Actually the kids also appreciate older media, there's a whole generation of late teenagers now rediscovering 2000's music / culture.
When society is affluent enough, people say it will become corrupt and fall apart. But when society has truly deteriorated, stories of heroes come to mind. If you look back at the era when cyberpunk social critiques emerged, the world that led that movement was wealthy, with a thick middle class. But when society starts to become poorer, those kinds of stories become stressful for the public. When you have room to breathe, such macro-level critiques serve as a 'healthy amount of stress' for survival. But when survival itself is at stake, it becomes much harder to be tolerant of criticism.
That's why the countries where cyberpunk flourished were wealthy ones
Coincidentally, there is a new Ghost in the Shell anime that's premiering now on Amazon Prime Video. It's animation style and mood are closely aligned with the original 1989 manga, which is to say it's more cartoonish and light-hearted. I prefer the more adult oriented content the franchise was putting out up until about 2006, but the new anime series gives me hope that we might eventually see a follow-up animation of Shirow Masamune's Man/Machine Interface - what was once considered to be Ghost in the Shell 2 before Mamuro Oshii created Innocence.
Personally I think I'm done with GitS at this point. How many times has it been rebooted, like a dozen times?
The last one I enjoyed watching was Arise but I lost track after that. I think the series has been done to death and I would love to see some completely new IP from Masamune that is more reflective of the AI and economic upheavals we are experiencing in the 20s.
I see every version as a remix of the original material, each done with their own take and philosophy. They're not remakes or reboots.
The only version that didn't add anything new was the Hollywood movie, which was an entertaining but shallow derivative of Oshii's animes and not based on the manga at all.
I think the original material provides enough ideas to continue spinning off new remixes. It hasn't even been outdated by the recent advancements in AI. Quite the opposite.
I don't think it will be animated any time soon due to Major not having much screen time, but if you haven't seen it, I would definitely recommend Human Algorithm[1] manga. It's a bit different art style than the original, more gritty and sterile, in a good way. For me personally that makes it a bit more cyberpunk feel. The first arc is a bit drag at a time but when all plot lines converge, the payoff is awesome.
[1]: https://kodansha.us/series/the-ghost-in-the-shell-the-human-...
You're probably not going to get it. And he has decent reasons for not wanting to bother.
The nature (infamy?) of his activities over the past few years should also be noted. (And maybe chuckled at if you have a bit of a dark sense of humor.)
For those who don't know, like me: he moved into adult manga, hentai-ish poster book work.
His popularity may have corrupted him...
https://appleseed.fandom.com/wiki/Shirow_Masamune
It's not corruption. He has stated that there were projects going on behind the scenes, but most of them got scrapped before reaching production.
The most recent manga he involved with was Ghost Urn, which explores the world of GitS from a different protagonist. He did not do the drawing, but did most of the worldbuilding and mecha design.
A lot of mangaka have done that sort of thing, calling something normal in the industry "infamous" and "corrupting" seems overblown when Tatsuya Matsuki and Nobuhiro Watsuki are grooming children and collecting CP and every other mangaka seems to be shitposting racism.
The article author sure likes Ghost in the Shell. Almost every variant is listed. The article only covers comics, manga, and graphic novels, not anime. So Bubblegum Crisis, which is half cyberpunk and half music videos, isn't listed. Nor is Cowboy Bebop.
(The site is now intermittently down, with "429 Too many requests".)
good adaptations of GitS:
- the first Oshii movie
- the two seasons of SAC + SSS
- this new one*
*so far
I really like the art direction of the new GitS adaptation (I hope this retro style gets used more), but yeah it's completely different in tone from the '95 adaptation and most of what followed.
I've enjoyed it so far.
The website for the new series;
https://www.theghostintheshell-anime.jp/
> style and mood are closely aligned with the original 1989 manga, which is to say it's more cartoonish and light-hearted
Did you get your manga the same place they sell the 15 minute long Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction?
https://web.archive.org/web/20260712230824/https://shellzine...
also go read my comic about a robot lady with reality issues, http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/, it's got cover quotes from three people with seven Hugos between them.
Wow, that looks amazing, well done, and thanks for sharing!
It might be skirting the edges of what is considered cyberpunk since it has Mecha elements but Patlabor is a fantastic manga/series that should have been included in this list [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patlabor:_The_Movie
It is especially strange not to see it in the list given GiTS is heavily featured (according to the comments, I can't access the page or web archive ATM).
Patlabor movie 2 was directed by the same director as the original 1995 GiTS animation movie. Both patlabor 1 / 2 have similar themes to GiTS, and are heavily cyber punk in themes and esthetics.
if for some reason you, random reader of this comment, decide to start watching Patlabor, be aware that there are two continuities:
1. Patlabor The Early Days (88-89, 7 OVA) -> Patlabor (89, Movie) -> Patlabor 2 (93, movie)
2. Patlabor The TV Series (89-90, 47 eps) -> Patlabor The New Files (90-92, 16 eps) -> Patlabor EZY (26-27, 3 movies)
Patlabor is left out of most lists.
The new one (EZY) is amazing if you haven't seen it.
A recent (2023) finding: from Guillaume Singelin, Frontier [0]. Fitting it into "cyberpunk" may need a bit of a push, but since the limits are kind of blurry I don't really care. The narrative is not perfect perhaps falling into wanting to say a lot more than the page limit allows, but all in all it's a good enough read.
[0] https://www.magnetic-press.com/frontier/
I'm vouching for Frontier as well, as well as "Carbon & Silicon" [0] from Mathieu Bablet. All of his work is gorgeous, I love his art.
If you liked Frontier's theme and are into video games I recommend you check out "Citizen Sleeper" [1] illustrated by Guillaume Singelin as well.
It's a 7 hour narrative text-based adventure that really hooked me one week-end. Your choices depend on how you "spend" your dice, dice that are cast at the beginning of every single day on the station so you get to pre-plan your actions somewhat.
Gameplay wise it's mostly reading, but I liked exploring the station they created.
[0] https://www.magnetic-press.com/carbon-and-silicon/
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1578650/Citizen_Sleeper/
In Italy (and sometimes abroad, I recall dark horse translated it in English at some point) Nathan Never has been publishing as a monthly comic for a few decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Never
Not all stories are cyberpunk, but many are.
Some are great.
Parlare di Nathan Never su Hacker News, siamo davvero al top.
Anche Lazarus Ledd (uno dei bonellidi più famosi) ha un certo numero di storie cyberpunk, alcune delle quali molto carine.
I wasn't even aware there were Blade Runner comics, that's awesome.
Anime counterpart to this article: https://shellzine.net/cyberpunk-anime/
This is a bit of an idiosyncratic list. Two of my favorite additions from my own youth: Hard Boiled by Frank Miller and Geof Darrow and Batman: Digital Justice. The latter now reads like a bit of a corny cash grab for the early '90s cyber fad, but I still love the time capsule of some if its art.
Also Frank Miller's Ronin has some amazing detailed full page artwork panels.
It took me twice as long to read Hard Boiled as it should since I spent so much time looking at Geof Darrow’s intricately detailed art. Great story, but the illustrations are on another level.
Batman Beyond is also technically cyberpunk although it has more of a Y2K vibe rather than the retro 80s / early 90s aesthetic.
It's not that idiosyncratic a list, those were the first two graphic novels that came to my mind when opening up the website. Geoff Darrow's art Hardboiled is incredible. I was a huge batman fan as a young teen and digital justice came out at peak Batman hype, and it was much hyped itself, but it wasn't very good.
What's the current status of color e readers?
In particular: is anyone personally using a color eink device that's as practical for .cbr files as kindle is for regular ebooks?
I wonder if Pluto by Naoki Urasawa would be considered Cyberpunk? Even if it isn't, it's a must read.
There is also Pluto anime on Netflix
Appleseed missing! But maybe it's more solarpunk?
Funny for some reason the submission title summoned this manga in my mind even though I've never read it only a free chapter in a magazine I was obsessed with.
It's interesting to me that most cyberpunk manga isn't Japanese cyberpunk.
Worth noting that Cyberpunk as a genre was at least intended to be a dystopia.
The thing about dystopia is that it's never a dystopia for everyone.
No Judge Dredd (which dates back to 1977) or anything else from 2000 AD?
Is Dredd considered cyberpunk? I know the definition is fluid but I wouldn't think so.
OTOH, robocop is ok on the list, so probably it should be there too.
as someone who loves Astro Boy (and everything else Tezuka made): Atom The Beginning was a disappointment. But I also believe that Pluto sucks too (some smaller stories, like the pianist, were great).
The Ghost In The Shell: Global Neural Network features one story by LRNZ. His work Geist Maschine (in italian only) is amazing.
Among the Cyberpunk 2077 comics, Big City Dreams is also very good.
Rich Veitch, he and Alan Moore. As Moore would later write:
I gotta resume GANTZ
GANTZ more like scifi in a city setting
Everything is a clown. There is no more serious deep content out there. If there is, it's incredibly difficult to find.
I think the list could include Transmetropolitan.
It is an excellent comic. It’s a pity bowel disrupters aren’t real, they would certainly keep scrum from running over time.
... it does?
Oops, yes it does. Scanned too quickly.
You’re missing the Incal and Metabarons
I thought battle angle alita could be cyberpunk
It is on the list, as Gunnm.
The series is still ongoing as well.
Blame!'s manga style is the most unique and it created unforgettable atmosphere not replicated from what I know.
The one I'd highlight from the list is Hiroki Endo's Eden: It's an Endless World, it's my favorite manga. It's beautifully drawn and incredibly grounded in tone and oddly relevant.
The overarching story is about a pandemic that starts as a backdrop and becomes more important and metaphysical and religious as the story goes on but the core of it revolves around crime bosses in Latin America, the lives of prostitutes, a Uyghur rebellion in Xinjiang, political conflict and organized crime all done in a very real way. It's completely devoid of any (manga) tropes or genre aesthetics.