I finished reading The Vertical World by Kuu Tanaka last night and if you enjoyed his writing for Maison and the Man-Eating Apartment I'd definitely recommend checking it out. While it is light on complexity of character growth it has fantastic plotting and makes much more skillful use of the vertical scroll format in its art than its rougher style might suggest. Its themes are articulated clearly and consistently, and it feels like it knows what it wants to say and how to say it. It reads at a very brisk pace, as every obvious question the reader thinks of first gets answered far faster than you'd expect. As a result, the series can focus on the real complex mysteries of its setting and timeline without stretching out surface-level reveals. It feels like it is yes and-ing itself in terms of its plotting in a way that's quite gripping, and having finished it I'd safely say it was all outlined from the start given early foreshadowing and how cohesively it unravels and comes together.
Officially it's on mangaplus but you need to pay the $5 subscription. Unofficially it's kind of hard to find due to its obscurity but I found it on comick.io
I went and read the first 3 chapters, it does look like my kind of thing, the worldbuilding seems interesting and the vertical scroll format feels very appropriate for this story.
Also wow, the Made in Abyss inspirations are a lot more prominent here than in Maison and the Man-Eating Apartment with both the impossible descent, the protagonist craving to see the bottom & the robot scientist in particular
Will definitely continue it, dunno if immediately since there are other things I'm catching up on outside of manga right now, we'll see
