Contains spoilers as it is more of an analysis. Please come back once you read the manhua or read it if you want to know if it is good or not.

Doctor Du Ming by Jing Zhang based on a short story by Xiao Han - the first work of this Chinese author - is not a perfect work (especially on the drawings side), but sinks its narrative into a chilling realism to say the least, following between past and present the mental (internal) and occasionally visible deterioration of a boy destined to enter the path of the serial killer/rapist/sociopath: Du Ming.

In his parable of unrealized love with the beautiful, ephemeral victim Qian Zhang, Du Ming grows in his obsession by carrying out a series of murders (remained unsolved) involving some characters around the young woman and which are perpetuated in her name even after her death by suicide. We don't know if the suicide had in some way been induced by Du Ming himself - a manipulator who becomes a serial killer, one of those unreachable.

The history of humanity has taught us that there have been many cold cases, therefore unsolved cases of monstrous multiple murders where the culprit has never been found. Common practice is to attribute a flashy personality to the murderer. Still, sometimes he is a very normal person who lives everyday life and has a family - in fact, in the finale our Du Ming asks the nurse to become his partner - going to solidify the idea that the mad serial killer does not want to attract attention living in a bon ton and virtuous common morality.

A fascinating thing about Du Ming's character and which has made me meditate for days now since reading the manhua is the absolute calmness and apathy of his face and his manners and the brutal things he does without ever grinning or launching into monologues like a furious madman typical of some caricatures of bad boys in Japanese manga. Du Ming is scary, because it is absolutely possible.

This Manhua leaves a state of confusion and angst as the society represented in 15 chapters is a society very much in line with the one experienced by the author (a woman) who has seen her work demolished by the international audience with irrelevant epithets and clearly out of context in accusation of misogyny. Unfortunately, it is a modern tendency to embrace any product that sees violence against women as a work written by misogynists when in reality the concept of the impossibility of the female individual being able to defend herself in a male society is expressed clearly, and therefore a woman who has sex just for pleasure is a "slut" (words used by Du Ming), a woman who is physically assaulted cannot defend herself and incurs into "victim blaming", these are some of the exhibits proposed in this Manhua.

The drawings leave much to be desired. I'm no expert, but the style feels very disjointed, sometimes the characters can't even tell one from the other. We go from drafts to what look like photographs edited with some software to make them cartoonish. However, the faces are very similar to those of the East Asians making them fortunately less childish than those of an average manga, making them very realistic.

Masterpiece?

Absolutely not. But a work that has impressed me and that you can read in French by buying it in various shops. First work by an author who I will follow and a bad character who is not forgotten.

60/100