THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Daidai is a 2 volume manga, published in the Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. It takes place in a town where weird stuff such as Gun vending machines and creepy phenomena are just things that normally exist. It’s presented in a Slice of Life fashion that’s structured episodically. The comedy is pretty funny too.

Each chapter is interesting, and it keeps this up throughout. The art is wonderful. Another thing that makes these stories work is that despite their absurd nature, there is resemblance to real-life occurrences that one may see or experience around them, or by themselves. What really sets this manga apart is it’s smart way of storytelling.

This manga actually had two major plotlines: The original bullying/revenge story from chapter 1, and the Alien story which is the primary overarching storyline we see for the majority of chapters.

Kurome Touko is introduced to us as a girl who saves the Daidai town from marine-styled aliens with her superpowers. While each chapter has its own central character, she is the protagonist of the Alien story on an overall scale. We see her trying to convince the people she helps that she isn’t lying about the seemingly normal sea animals being an actual threat, but in vain.

In the last few chapters, She is revealed to be the source of almost everything that occurred in this manga because of her body constantly producing aliens. All she wanted was to be loved and cared, but she never got to have any family or friends, and no one could ever believe what she was going through. Combined with her tragic condition of producing aliens, worsened by her spiraling depression, I really felt for her. Chapter 12 showing her dream of finding the warmth she always wanted, only to show her lying by the pier all alone was so fucking effective at this. And the fact that she’s pretty much doomed to be lonely and fighting aliens all her life… god fucking damn. Touko was a tragic character who was written really well in my opinion.

Chapter 1 told us the story of Tomoko, who is extremely attached to her best friend Chi-chan. One day, Chi stops coming to school. Tomoko gets bullied at school afterwards, and finally sent over the edge after Chi kicks her in the water (presumably a result of Chi feeling that Tomoko is responsible for Chi’s bullying as well). She goes and ahead and kills Chi. During Chi’s funeral, Tomoko finds that Chi’s head still talks for some reason and asked Tomoko to cut off her head and take it with her. She does so, and Chi apologizes for what she did and the two enjoy their time together, before Tomoko finally decides to turn herself to the cops and that she will come back to meet Chi after she is released from her sentence.

I was wondering why both of the volume covers show the chapter 1 girls, instead of vol 2’s cover illustrating some other story. The final chapter answers it: Unlike the other unrealistic absurdities that happened throughout the manga, this was the only realistic event. Chi’s talking head was only Tomoko’s imagination. The whole manga serves to distract the reader to make Tomoko being an actual murderer followed by her falling into guilt and coping over her friend’s loss look like just another thing that happened as if it was no big deal, until the end. The minor differences between chapter 1 and 15, which intentionally play out in a similar manner, attempt at showing this. Notice how Chi is the one who apologizes in Tomoko’s made up scenario, despite her being the one who does the unforgiveable. A broken friendship can’t be fixed by literally slitting the other person’s throat, after all. That just can’t happen.

All in all, this was a genuinely unique horror manga that I can recommend to any fan of the genre. I might even check out more of this mangaka’s stuff.