otakulys's manga / #pedophile(12)

This is super screwed up, but I kind of love it. The characters are aware of how sick the guy is, and I like that it isn't a story about a pedophile banging kids, but rather, the story of one of his victims grown up after all that time. It isn't as simple as one time revenge. The story seems to actually have substance, and I'm excited to see where it goes.

It bugs me how these stories are treated as cute, but it's fiction, so whatever. Pretty accurate with the predator stuff, the way a guy like that would swoop in on a kid. It's sad and disturbing, but sometimes I like sad and disturbing manga. It'd be better if the manga didn't seem to try to excuse it a little, though.

I really appreciate how Harada handles evil characters. She sets her work apart from yaoi where these things happen, but the author treats them as cute or part of romance. This is how shota, rape, abuse, etc. SHOULD be written--as the evil, fucked up things that they are. Her stories can be so subtly twisted, and if you took out the pedo aspect, that would have been the case here. It was too short, though. I'd like to see more about the characters. Either way, I love Harada for her beautiful art, dark and complex stories, and intense character emotion. But I especially love her for making messed up things happen and not pretending that they could ever be forgiven. ETA: Oh yay, it is continued! Glad that it was mistakenly labeled as finished. Just as screwed up as ever. I like the new girl. I hope something interesting happens with her. Maybe she's as fucked up as the rest of them. This is definitely the first time I've ever read a story about a young man who's in love with a pedophile. Count on Harada to make that work.

I don't like this one as much as the sequel. It isn't as careful and psychological. This one is more self-indulgent, I think, and I find it odd that the teacher would be so careless as to risk this sort of thing getting out when he'd carefully groomed the first boy over a period of time. It's an interesting concept, the process of breaking in a plaything, and the prequel was disturbing and sad, but very well done. This was... okay. It had a slight edge to it, but it ultimately felt more like typical yaoi BDSM than Harada's work usually does. Though that thing with the toy and the classroom is definitely screwed up. I've never seen that used in such a dark way.

I like the unsettling feeling throughout, knowing what kind of man this guy is. I wish there'd been more, though. It's just there and gone, though the implication is enough. Still, it felt like it stopped too abruptly. ETA: Oh, I see that it was incorrectly marked as completed. I hope the next chapter is translated soon! EDIT: What the flying fuck? I was excited to see that it was up to chapter three, but this is not at all what I thought was going to happen. That little kid is like a budding serial killer. This is like a really weird, creepy love triangle. Very disturbing and unsettling. I'm trying to figure out what the point is. The story seems all over the place, unlike her other work, and nothing really happens other than creepy interactions. I want him to just run away from that creepy house and live with his classmate. That kid is totally gonna kill that bird, ugh.

I hate the animal death. So gross. But it was there for a reason, at least. Unsurprisingly miserable story, but it's an interesting little back story for Itou-san, which was a fantastic manga. For that reason, I'm giving this a four star rating. Definitely upsetting, though, for many reasons. Also, watch out for pedophiles galore.

This mangaka has a clear fetish for people saving a person at the expense of their own life and well being, only to discover that that person is a monster and not worth being saved. I actually liked the twisted elements of the story, but it was too short for what it was, and that open ending where you don't know if he pulls the trigger or not is frustrating. That aside, this Christ dude really needs to die. It sucks that someone he loves has to be the one to perish instead. Yet another thing that wouldn't have happened if Christ's dad had just killed him in the first place. And no, it clearly wasn't because he was abusive or angry his son was gay. He isn't gay, he's a pedophile. His father walked in on him having sex with an elementary school kid. Who the hell processed that guy as an adult after all that? Surely there had to have been some questions. Though I've read real life murder cases with fatal levels of incompetence, so I guess it isn't so far fetched.

Wow, I've been meaning to read this forever, and I can't believe it took me this long. This was not at all what I was expecting. I hate that I have to wait now. I hope it updates more soon. But seriously, I went in expecting way more cliches and shallow character motivations. This is an intense thriller, not just plotless smut. I'm always looking for stuff like that, but rarely does it bay off in this way. Plus, gorgeous art. I'm scared it's gonna have a sad ending, or a bittersweet one, and I'm pretty sure at least one of the characters I like will die, so that sucks, but I'm hoping it's all worth it in the end.

Very, very odd and quite gross manga. It was interesting, and I liked some of the exploration behind the psychology. I do feel like something fell flat near the end, though. I kept waiting for him to kill one of his boys. He kills things that he loves, doesn't he? The whole thing was bizarre, as it should have been, but it never quite reached the point I was looking for. Also, there was no real punishment here, nor is his fate satisfying, because his children are monsters who may continue this stuff, so... But yeah, I would have liked it more if it had expanded beyond that little group of creeps. Also, despite all the murder, it's always animal death that gets to me, so I had to mark it down a bit for that, too.

This is a strange set of stories in that one of them is super cutesy and one of them is about child rape. But okay, whatever works for you, author. The first story is really sweet, so I rated this a four based on that story alone. The others were probably more like a three, partly because they didn't always have a natural flow from one major moment to the next. I hate stories about clones because the concept of replacing someone with a duplicate is depressing to me. Like, does the person you loved originally not even matter anymore? There's an episode of Black Mirror that touches on this very well. It's soul-crushing but it's very reflective of the issues behind the concept of creating a copy of someone. Overall, not the worst thing I've ever read. There are some weird things in the stories that don't fit, for me, but I did like elements of all of the stories included, so hey.