Kami no Kodomo or rather... um, God's Child is...

...An interesting read. I definitely recommend it to any and all who are looking to read something light that will brighten their day and not make them feel... bad... and mildly disgusted. Maybe somewhat disgusted. Okay, I'll be generous and give you a moderately disgusted.

Look, let's just get into explaining what this is and why I'm gonna end up giving it a positive score.

#The Birth#

Okay, God's Child is a 2009 manga by Nishioka Kyodai which is in fact not a single person but rather a brother and sister which... I guess this is just the sort of manga they're both interested in doing?

That being said, God's Child is a look into the mind and life of a... "unique" child who grows up and essentially very quickly develops a God complex and becomes not only a serial killer, but forms his own cult of youths resembling himself when he was a boy that also go around killing people. He also has sex with them, and to them, he is essentially their God.

...I know how this is sounding as I continue describing it, but you're not really supposed to "feel good" when reading a psychological horror, are you?

I just want to take this moment though to ask, did we really need to hear his thoughts on being conceived? Look, I don't care how intelligent or fucked up of a mind you're gonna develop later, you're not going to have memories from your time as a SPERM.

If it wasn't obvious, the birth of the "Child" is in fact the first chapter of the manga, and it ends with the newly born child straight up internally declaring that he's going to get revenge on the world. For being born. He wants revenge on the world for being born.

Which I guess is a fine enough note to start the tale of a monster.

#The Child#

While it becomes very clear that the Child is already on the path to becoming a monster, it's not like the others around him are perfectly nice people. Although, that itself is debatable since the entire manga, we're getting the thoughts and the viewpoint of the child itself. Like there's a custom where he was born that if a child before his first birthday stands up, the family attaches a large ball of sticky rice to their back which would cause them to fall over so they "wouldn't leave their parents."

Basically, when the ten month old Child doesn't fall over with the rice attached to his back, one of the adults outright pushes him to make him fall down.

Putting the idea that the Child was in fact inherently evil from the very moment he was born aside, one must question the parenting of parents that fail to toilet train their child and simply allows them to play with their feces. Then, they basically just give the Child clay which helps combat their obsession with feces, replacing it with an obsession of creating an endless amount of humanoid clay figures and then breaking them all apart.

At this point of the manga, this kid isn't even anywhere near adulthood yet he's basically running full speed towards the goal line of becoming a serial killer.

In my opinion, in terms of the Child making progress on his "path", it's a little bit fast. Like it's hard to truly believe that there could be a child that is this inherently fucked up from birth itself. Never mind also adding in the Child's intelligence and awareness.

Though as unrealistic as it may actually be, I really thought this manga worked as giving a look into the mind of such a twisted mind. Like... I really, really, have to underline that this entire manga is fucked up. As a child, the Child witnesses like one of the assistant teachers of his special needs class being raped by some guy in a cabin in the woods and...

Then he just rapes her himself after the original rapist has already departed.

It's no surprise that the Child ends up starting his killings before he's even left elementary school. His killings aren't simple or subtle, either. They are brutal and sadistic to the point where while these children themselves were pretty messed up as well in their bullying ways, any possible "well at least they were bullies I guess" goes right out of the window when the killings are so sadistic that the original victim of the bullying kills herself because she can't stop the Child from killing other students but also she's far too paralyzed with fear to try and tell someone about it.

#The Monster#

I can't help but respect that this manga is completely unrepentant and doesn't hesitate even a moment to become even darker following the Child's original series of murders. Fourteen years old, and the Child has accumulated a following of younger children who can sense that there's something incredibly off about him, and begin to cling to him like moths surrounding a flickering light bulb.

One day, his followers proceed to bring a stray runaway to the Child who proceeds to give him food, stab him, rape him, and then finally kill him. He then cut off chunks of him and gave them to the children to eat, saying that it was holy communion.

I somewhat feel conflicted. Part of me feels that it's redundant to say this is fucked up and downright disturbing to read but... this manga genuinely is unsettling. Sure, the Child does apparently declare that he's gonna take revenge on the world the moment he's born, and sure, he is definitely without a doubt a horrible monster.

But when he was still a kid and killed his cat, he genuinely did apparently love the animal that he had cruelly slaughtered with his own hands. He even cried genuine tears over the cat's death and it's only when those tears ceased that he willfully made the decision to basically push any and all emotion and empathy from his mind and being. Then you as the reader are just there along for the ride as the Child continues to stray further into fucking darkness.

He witnesses an assistant teacher who tried to be close and friendly with him since he purposely isolated himself from the other "special" students get violently raped in the woods, and his reaction to this is curiosity and imitating the rapist himself after he leaves her already wounded and broken.

Then, when he starts to brutally kill bullies in his class that were forcing their one targeted victim to eat her own feces and etc, he reacts emotionless when she comes up to him and asks him to stop. The victim herself doesn't want to see anymore of her tormentors be grisly murdered and then their remains left where the other children can find them, but we as the readers, can see and know that the Child does not give two fucks about what she wants and is killing them just because he wants to.

Like as I continued descending into this manga, I couldn't help but think back to the earlier chapters when the Child muses back on when he created and then broke clay dolls. Haha, how cute! That was when I still wasn't capable of committing actual murders!

Then finally, when the Child is essentially at adulthood, he now more or less has a cult of boys younger than him who are not only entirely subservient to him, but also eagerly wish to commit murders with him. Then, when there's little response from society when he and his murder cult descend on the local vagrant populace, the Child just decides to move on from vagrants to random passerbys and describes the way they murder them like it's a matter of course.

But even then the Child feels like there's something missing, and then orders his followers to go and

#The Fall#

To conclude, while I'm of course not gonna fully give away how exactly it ends, I do feel the need to say that if after everything, this manga hadn't ended with a "Fall", it wouldn't have... worked, in my opinion. After so much horribleness and following the Child from his very birth, it would have been a horribly crushing and pessimistic ending if the Child had continued without facing any punishment for his acts.

Speaking honestly, the way it ends and how the Child gets his comeuppance is perhaps the linchpin of why I think positively of this manga that is admittedly not a fun read at all. Mind you, of the images I included in this review, I held back on including the majority of the messed up stuff.

God's Child certainly works as a psychological horror, showcasing horrible human behavior and is almost entirely a look into the extremely twisted mind of this particularly fucked up individual who is almost inherently evil from birth. The horror beyond the surface level of how awful everything in the manga is and made me feel while reading it is just... thinking... what if a person like this ACTUALLY existed?

Overall, a 7 out of 10. If you're looking to make yourself feel bad or feel disgusted, God's Child is a pretty good choice.