Fourteen

Fourteen is a... truly bizarre experience. No, I don't think you understand what extend of uncontrolled madness I'm talking about. Fourteen goes from humanoid KFC byproduct equipped with genius mind and militant approach towards humanity, through world-wide conspiracy covering up apocalypse with the power of soap-opera to a loli with a laser gun taking over a giant mechanical t-rex in space.

Fourteen is a saga that jumps from one absurdly bizzare idea to another, and manages to connect them in well-flowing story. It is really impressive to pack 20 volumes with unique and creative concepts that just keep getting more and more entertaining. The most bizarre part is, in fact, how the story actually makes sense. Especially after you realize what kinds of horrors and surreal situations took place. And it still makes sense in the grand scheme of the story. I wouldn't hesitate to call this Umezu Kazuo's Opus Magnum.

Now of course, to truly enjoy this manga, you need to balance not taking it too seriously and taking it too seriously. The wackiness does cross into the comedy zone sometimes, especially if your sense of humor aligns with weird shit, but Fourteen still takes on some serious themes (of course, in it's own signature way) and especially the last arc and the finale itself is a poetical, philosophical take that might leave you in thoughts.

As the story, the art itself too treads between wacky weirdness and horrifying horror. The art seems almost... warped at times, and I mean this in a good way. It surely helps to build up the atmosphere. The illustration are often in the uncanny valley teritorry. The art might seem bad at the start, especially if you're unfamiliar to Umezu's style, but you'll get used to it fast. Well, within the extent one is able to get used to an uncanny valley.

Overall, this manga is not for everyone and will certainly shake their heads in disbelief that people actually like it, but if you're looking for something that is both unique and entertaining, if you're looking for a one of a kind manga, you should definitely try Fourteen.

So from what I take from this, KFC meets the president who faces off against Michael Jackson in the apocalyptic future.

Story: Get ready to get your mind screwed left right up and DOWN. The plot twists are insane. They don't even make sense BUT ITS SO AWESOME. Consider Fourteen Umezu Kazuo's twisted vision of the future, where humans have exhausted Earth's resources and progress through life through artificial means.You know shts hardcore if chicken can be grown in a bathtub. He emphasizes the consequences of human interference with nature and concludes that if we don't stop killing trees now, we're dead.

The story explores various philosophical and (pseudo) scientific concepts such as love, immortality, individuality, evolution, aliens; the list just goes on. Add a bit of Umezu Kazuo in there and you get things blown out of proportion. Literally, you cannot help but stop and THINK about what this guy was sniffing and how you could get some of it. It's not necessarily bad per se, its just that its so over the top that whatever material you're presented with will hit you in the face multiple times and HARD.

Art: Quite frankly, it's decent at best. The artist does capture emotions of the characters well and does a good job of consistently maintaining a dark and heavy atmosphere but the art is just bad. Specifically, the style is outdated. Considering it was made in the 90's, I guess it was passable then but in today's standards, if one would flip to a random page of this manga to see its contents they would straight up close it and put it back on the shelf.

Character: Think of Chicken George as the representation of Umezu Kazuo's thoughts and feelings towards the people and businesses that contribute to environmental hazards; its a huge middle finger aiming for their tight butthole. He comes in the story saying "You guys are all going to die and theres nothing you can do about it." When the humans finally think they have a solution; "NOP." When they ask for his help "Come find me in my unfindable castle." He performs his role as a harbinger of doom well, until the author decides to incorporate love into the situation. You'll find that for the most part, Chicken George is probably the most relatable character in the story despite him being an antagonist to all humans.

Enjoyment/Overall: As crazy as the author's ideas were, they were all entertaining to say the least. It was nice to be exposed to someone else's apocalyptic vision of the future, and one as grand as this really broadened my perspective (for better or worse). The 260 chapter experience was worth it and I'd recommend this manga to anyone looking for alternatives on the world's end.

It starts of really interesting. Sketching a future, that could actually be pretty close to reality. We are introduced to Chicken George, a chicken man evolved from an artifical chicken breast who is a genius and has come to earth to eradicate human life, at least thats what he says. The message of the story is that humans are bad and destroying the earth, and that's why the plants take revenge.

All the enjoyment of this manga will be mostly from the plot around Chicken George, other main characters don't feel like real people, more like devices used in the story to make stuff happen. So when at the end of the story Chicken George is out of the picture, you see how bad it actually is without him. The only reason you may want to keep reading is for the ending, which doesn't really surprise.

The art is very interesting, it really fits the story with its creepiness and strong shading. Making it look like a real dystopia.

I started reading this mostly because it started of really interesting but it slowly goes downhill and becomes more of a drag. Only if you are interested in weird sci-fi future stuff I would recommend this.

“Fourteen” (or 14-sai in japanese) is a horror and Sci-Fi manga written by Kazou Umezu. A man famous for his contributions to the horror genre such as “Cat Eyed Boy”, and his huge hit “The Drifting Classroom”, which has often been called the Japanese version of “Lord of the Flies”. Kazou Umezu was active on the manga-scene from the beginning of the 60’s all the way until 1995, where his final series “Fourteen” ended.

Before I really start the review, I want to quickly say that there of course will be some spoilers, however I’ll do my best to present them in a way that’ll allow you to still enjoy the series despite having read this review.

So, let’s start with a quick summary of the plot. An eyeball is found inside of a factory that produces chicken meat. This eyeball quickly evolves into one our protagonist, a mutant named Chicken George, that looks like a human with a chicken head. The story takes place in a weird and twisted future set in 2200, and Chicken George discovers that the end of the world is nearing. In “Fourteen” we follow Chicken George, Arthur Young, who is the president of the united states and his son, very aptly named “America” as they attempt to deal with the nearing apocalypse.


As for the characters, most of them sadly aren’t that great. For most of the first half of the manga we primarily follow one of the protagonists Chicken George, the hyperintelligent, and surprisingly emotional mutant chicken. This first half is where the characters really shine, primarily because of Chicken George, and his sidekick Chicken Lucy (a literal chicken that can speak) being such fun characters to follow. They’re mysterious, weird, at times very emotional and somehow very charismatic because of their weird combination of character traits. Watching him struggle with ethical questions and dilemmas and interact with humanity while having a key say in their fate is extremely entertaining and without a doubt some of the best parts of this manga. And funnily enough, despite being freaks/mutants/chickens, Chicken George and Chicken Lucy ends up at times being extremely relatable characters.



Other than Chicken George, the two main protagonists are the president of the united states Arthur Young and his son America Young. Arthur Young is a freshly-baked father and most of his character plays on his obligation to both his country and his son. This does make for some fun and interesting scenes, however later in the series this part becomes less and less relevant, and Arthur Youngs character mostly ends up acting for the sake of moving the plot forward, and not getting much more development.

America Young, is the last of the 3 protagonists and the least interesting one. He’s a baby for most of the series, but during the last couple arcs he takes the role as protagonist, sadly his characters is quite shallow, with no other motivations than loving his father and wanting to save humanity, he turns into a pretty standard do-gooder, without much character development.

While having a couple really good and fun characters, the rest of the series cast is sadly extremely forgettable, and doesn’t serve much of a purpose other than existing for the sake of moving the story forward, except maybe 2 or 3 minor characters.



And now for the art. Overall I’d say the art is pretty average. Throughout the whole thing the art is very dark, and while this does well to show just what kind of a dark and gloomy world the story takes place in, after a while it isn’t great on the eyes. The big use of black is part of Umezo’s style, and is apparent in a lot of his other manga as well, however in Fourteen there is a lot of small panels, and the lack of space and “darkness” of the art can make it unappealing to look at.

I noticed two main issues with the art while reading, the first being the way he draws characters at times. A lot of the time its fine, but in panels with multiple characters standing near each other, or with characters in the background, the body proportions sometimes get quite weird and wonky. And secondly this is something that seems to just be part of Umezo’s style as well, but when he draws “action-shots” as I call them, which is essentially characters moving, it’ll often look weird and at times as if they’re standing still. He does use lines to imply movement, not always though, and even at times with movement lines, characters can still look weirdly still.



Drawing humans isn’t his strong suit, but when it comes to drawing animals, weird creatures, complicated machinery and the like, the art gets very nice to look at. It’s unfortunate that humans are such a huge part of this story, because a lot of the panels without them are vastly better than the ones with them.

One of my biggest critiques with this manga lies at the paneling. There’s only used rectangular panels in varying sizes throughout this entire manga, which makes the reading experience quite dull at times. It works when it comes to getting the story across, however at times it gets annoying having extremely similar pages over and over again and over again.

Now to say some more good about the art, when it comes to drawing page spreads (a page-spread is when two normal pages are used to usually draw just one big panel) Umezo does so excellently, sadly we aren’t treated to many of these in the first half of the manga, however suddenly he boldly gives chapters with 3, 4 some even around 5 spreads, and it is excellent



Pretty much all my critique of the art is null and void when he does these. The pages aren’t cramped with dull panels, the dark art style really works on the bigger drawings in my opinion, and the movement in them is often very limited, which works in its favor. When you suddenly reach a chapter filled with page spreads, it simply becomes a joy to read.



Overall, I’d say I enjoyed this series. The story takes many weird twists and turns, and while most of these twists are great, and very fun to experience, the parts in-between making up a lot of the story can at times be a slog to read, especially during some of the middle and latter arcs where the story slows down a bit. The art is serviceable for the most part, kind of bad at some parts, but when its good, it’s really good, and just great fun to look at. Chicken George carries the first half of the manga and him and Lucy are some are very fun and memorable characters that makes you keep reading despite the not-so-amazing art during the first half. The second half dips in quality on the character side, and while the story has its ups and downs the art, and most notably the page spreads are what carries the second half.

I’d definitely recommend trying out this series, mostly just to experience the dynamic duo that is Chicken George and Chicken Lucy, but also to see the weird apocalyptic sci-fi world that Kazou Umezu has created.

Overall im going to give this a 6/10