Beloved and extremely popular YouTuber Cory x Kenshin is known for his comedic, gaming-focused, skit-style, and overall charismatic content. He has been on the platform for over a decade and has had multiple year-long breaks.
This rest was not taken in vain, as seen on his most recent hiatus, where he was actually working on a huge passion project of his, one that shook both the manga (Japanese-style comics) and social media worlds.
Cory released a video on December 16, 2024, explaining his absence from the platform. It came as a shock to all of his fans when he revealed he had been working on a new manga for the past year or so.
The manga, “Monsters We Make,” sold approximately 200,000 copies in one standalone week. It’s safe to say that, off-rip, the manga was a relatively huge success, and for good reason. Click here for more info on copies sold.
“Monsters We Make” is centered around a futuristic, semi-dystopian environment where monsters are a threat, and the world needs heroes to save it. The manga is considered as the action horror genre, which suits it very well.
The first volume is good, but it didn’t live up to its potential. It has all the elements of a compelling story: the world is quite captivating, and the characters are relatively interesting, but it suffers from poor pacing.
At times, the story introduces too many elements too quickly, to the point where it almost takes away from the main goal of storytelling. With any first issue, the worst thing to do is introduce too much information at once; unfortunately, that does happen.
A big concern is that this one volume could have spanned at least 10 volumes with the amount of content within it. It feels like they wanted to rush through the important beginning context, which would have greatly benefited the manga in the long run. A rushed story can lead to creative blocks on where to go next. Overall, despite these imperfections, it remained captivating.
The artistic style of the manga is very appealing. It’s nice, sharp, and well illustrated by artist Mikell Gong, and it pleasantly fits the theme of the story. It has dark tones that complement the grimy-looking environment. The illustrations were easy to digest and super eye-catching.
The world is futuristic, and the design of the environments, buildings, etc., is very well done. It wasn’t overly futuristic to the point where it seemed out of place. It remained relevant to our world; however, it was more technologically inclined.
Overall, Monsters We Make is an exciting new manga. It solidifies itself in history as something that has never been done before. A YouTuber fully realizing an entire manga and bringing it to the public in a way that feels real and professional. It isn’t just some poorly made amateur slop; it is a real, fleshed-out manga by someone who seems small compared to that of Shonen Jump and Viz Media. So it’s refreshing to see a manga made with genuine passion that isn’t produced by Japan’s biggest manga publishers.