Is Brutal: Confessions of a Homicide Investigator Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Manga, 33 chapters, 5 volumes
Run	2019–2022 · ongoing
Community score	AniList 7.6
Where to read	Comikey — official

Overview

Hiroki Dan looks like a rising star: a homicide detective, the son of a former police superintendent general, on a clear track toward a distinguished career. What nobody around him knows is that he's also responsible for more than a hundred murders — all of them people he's personally judged to be beyond the law's reach, whether through corruption, connections, or a justice system that simply couldn't touch them.

It's a premise that will feel familiar to fans of vigilante-justice thrillers like Dexter, filtered through a specifically Japanese crime-fiction lens and connected to a wider shared universe of similar manga.

What it does well

The central hook is strong: watching an investigator hunt the very crimes he's secretly punishing outside the law creates a constant low hum of tension, especially in scenes where Dan has to navigate his double life around colleagues who have no idea what he's capable of. The manga also commits to making its villains genuinely loathsome — their crimes are drawn with real weight, which gives the vigilante premise emotional stakes rather than feeling like empty shock value.

Beyond the core story, Brutal sits inside a larger connected crime-manga universe alongside Trace and its own sequel, Doom, which gives invested readers more of the same world and tone to explore if the premise clicks for them.

Where it falls short

The most consistent criticism from readers is a real structural imbalance: the crimes Dan's targets commit get extensive, often disturbing page time, while the actual moment of retribution is frequently compressed into just a page or two by comparison. For a story built around the satisfaction of seeing monstrous people finally punished, that mismatch can leave the payoff feeling thinner than the setup earns.

The series is also currently on hiatus and hasn't been completely scanlated, which means picking it up means accepting some uncertainty about when — or whether — more of the story will continue to be translated. And because the structure leans heavily on a case-of-the-week format, Hiroki Dan himself gets comparatively little development beyond his core hook across the chapters released so far.

Verdict

Brutal delivers a compelling vigilante-justice premise with real tension in its central double life, even if its crime-to-punishment ratio and hiatus status are worth going in aware of. Worth reading for fans of morally dark, Dexter-style thrillers who don't mind an incomplete, currently-paused release.