YMMV / Marginal

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Is Ashijin a reactive jerk with a vengeful streak, or an overemotional yet lovable hero?
  • Within japanese fan spaces, there are some people who love Nahstas and wish Meyard had loved her in return, and there are others who don't particularly care for her. More specifically, people argue over whether Meyard loved her. Much of this discourse centers around the expanded role given to her in NHK's radio drama of Marginal, where their shared childhood is depicted and Meyard acknowledges and reciprocates Nahstas's love before his death.
• Ho Yay: There are no women left on the planet. The social structure relies on bonds between men. That said:
  • Before everything went bad, Ashijin and Grinja seemed to get along surprisingly well.
    • Grinja ogles Ashijin while he's washing clothes half-naked, positions himself as "the older one" of the two. Near the end, he cares for Ashijin as attentively as he cared for Kira after he hits his head in the ice cave.
    • Ashijin spends much of the comic hating Grinja to the point of obsession, but he is happy to see him in the end, and ultimately chooses to spend the rest of his life with both Kira and Grinja. Their connection is not explicitly romantic or sexual, but it's not a stretch to think it could become so.
  • Meyard and Ashijin seem to share substantial sexual tension, though it is tinged with envy on Meyard's part.
    • Upon seeing Ashijin's naked body, Meyard seems troubled by the beauty of his physique. While this moment can be understood as envy in retrospect, it is easy to interpret as undesirable sexual attraction.
    • Ashijin kisses Meyard twice: once to confirm whether he is real, and once as a Forced Kiss during an attempt to bite out his tongue for lying to him. The violence of that second kiss is tempered quickly, giving way to a single gentle panel before the tension of the situation kicks in again.
    • After they are washed away together in the flood, Ashijin pulls Meyard to safety and undresses him so he can dry, revealing his Bizarre Human Biology. They converse for a while, during which Meyard vents his Freakishness Shame and implies he doesn't want Ashijin to leave him there alone.
    • Later, Meyard dies in Ashijin's arms, and Ashijin sits in one place holding his body for three days until rescue finally comes. After this experience, Ashijin is never the same again.
  • Mikal seems to develop quite a crush on Kira, though admittedly he sees Kira as "a woman, like from the legends" and his crush is mostly predicated on Kira's ability to have children. Though this would be a gay crush, his view of Kira makes him possibly the only heterosexual among the main cast.
• Squick:
  • Ivan Aleksandr's plan for the Kiras, whom he'd named after his mother. In a horrifically twisted plan to expunge his own childhood trauma, he intended to personally impregnate them with the intention of creating a new human race that could not experience suffering. Thank goodness his wife Arlene, the biological mother of the children, put a stop to his work.
  • Ivan Aleksandr's creepy obsession with wombs.
  • Feropeh, after he was found in the desert.
  • Ashijin held Meyard's body for three days, even as it started to decay.
  • The whole iroko-nensha dynamic elicits this reaction from many readers. While most readers interpret the dynamic as intentionally shocking and representative of how broken Marginal's society is, some readers see its inclusion as nefarious and indicative of the author having an age gap kink. While the latter interpretation seems unlikely considering the author's body of work, iroko-nensha relationships do feature heavily in the manga.