Man, my first review of 2024, and its for...this. I only heard about this manga through TVTropes, and seeing as its complete, I thought I'd give it a look. Ehhh...I admit, I'm not a fan of this one. I've mentioned before that bullying is a very tough subject to depict in fiction, because you have to really know what you're doing. Some stories manage to do it right while others really fall flat. For example, three years ago I reviewed a light novel called At Night I Become A Monster, and I hated it because not only are all the characters bland, one-note, and one-dimensional, the whole story felt relentlessly mean-spirited, whereas another story that tackles the issue, Lonely Castle In The Mirror, manages to succeed in its depictions because 1. It actually bothers to flesh out the characters and make them feel relatable and three-dimensional, 2. It treats the victims' trauma as valid and empathizes the importance of having a support network rather than simply blaming the victim, and 3. It actually explores different facets of bullying from different angles rather than just one aspect of it. The subject of today's review, the manga Is It My Fault That I Got Bullied? tries to show how bullying, if left unchecked, can leave people with both physical and mental scars that can haunt them for the rest of their lives while showing empathy to the victims, which normally I'd be on board with...if it wasn't for the fact that it's execution leaves a lot to be desired.

So what's the story? Shinji Suzuki has it made. He has a loving family and making high figures at his banking job, to which he is the envy of his peers. But during a middle school reunion, someone he remembers all too well is in attendance: Yuuichi Aizawa (No, not that one), a man that Shinji used to bully mercilessly back when they were in middle school, traumatizing him to the point of making him drop out of school. Aizawa is pissed to find that not only is Shinji completely unrepentant years later, he even has the gall to say "There's a reason why people get bullied," implying that Aizawa was somehow at fault. But unbeknownst to Shinji, his daughter Shiori is being targeted by bullies at school. To complicate matters further, Aizawa is Shiori's homeroom teacher. Can Aizawa be trusted? Who is friend or foe? And will the bullies, both Shinji and the girls bullying Shiori, finally face the consequences of their actions, or will justice be out of the survivors' reach yet again?

Yeah, in case you couldn't figure it out, it's a revenge story. I know, shocker, right? Considering the glut of them that we've been getting over the past few years, I'm sure we're all getting tired of them. Hell, bully revenge stories are pretty common in US media too. I've seen a few movies about people getting back at bullies, and several of them were...pretty bad. Word of warning, don't watch that 2010 indie movie The Final. It sucks, and I'm still baffled that Lindsay Seidel is in it. Unfortunately, Is It My Fault That I Got Bullied? is yet another addition to the bad bully revenge story pile, and that stinks, because there are some good parts about this manga, especially its messages about how bullying is never the victim's fault and that Japanese schools need to do more to actually combat the problem rather than just cover it up to save their schools' reputations. But execution is everything, and sometimes, even with good intentions, if you don't know what you're doing, you'll wind up really screwing the pooch here.

One of the things holding the manga back is its art. I'm not gonna lie, the art for this manga really leaves a lot to be desired. The panel layouts are fine, and I had no problem following the events of the story, but the character designs are woefully generic and amateurish, and there are even times when the body proportions are really off. Sometimes it seems like the characters' eyes are stretched really long, covering a good portion of their faces, especially when they're trying to look smug or scared, and it makes them all look like silly cartoonish caricatures rather than truly conveying horror or evil like they intended. Granted, it doesn't look nearly as bad as the manga version of Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni, but it's teetering on the edge. I've also noticed that the mangaka really likes to use thick outlines for the characters, but even those tend to be rather inconsistent. Sometimes the outlines look fine while other times they're REALLY thick, making the characters look like paper cut-outs. It just looks odd.

But the characters are really what hold this manga back. In all honesty, the characters have nothing to them other than their circumstances, or in the case of the antagonists, just being evil. The protagonists are completely defined by their tragic experiences with bullying, and I couldn't bring myself to care about them because the manga is just tragedy after tragedy every chapter, with very little reprieve. The manga seems more concerned with putting Shiori through the wringer than making her into a three-dimensional character, and the girls who pick on her have all the depth of wet toilet paper, even with their backstories explaining why they resorted to doing what they did. There are even some whose characterization is really inconsistent, with the biggest offender being Eri Yazaki. Sometimes she acts like a rational teacher, and other times she's a crazy psycho stalker straight out of a bad Lifetime movie who wants to get in Shinji's pants, it feels like two different people are inhabiting Eri's body rather than two sides of the same person. As much as I want to like Aizawa, there's so many questions about his background that go unanswered that it really stretches credibility in regards to how he managed to become a teacher. If he dropped out of school, how did he manage to get the credentials needed to become a teacher? Also, did he even go to therapy for all the bullying he endured? What did he do with himself between dropping out and going to Shiori's school? Does he have any hobbies? What relationship does he have with his parents? Did they support him or were they abusive? Seriously manga, flesh out your characters beyond the tragedies they go through! There's no point in caring about any of your characters if you can't even treat them like people! They all feel more like ciphers for the author to espouse their messages through than people.

Speaking of the manga's messages, that's actually one of the few redeeming qualities it has. Japan as a country has always had problems dealing with bullying, or rather its refusal to do so. The fact that people tried to file lawsuits against the creator of A Silent Voice in order to force them to not make it into a series tells you all you need to know how much they don't want anyone to know about it. For all of Is It My Fault That I Got Bullied?'s problems, the messages it wants to put out aren't one of them. It's clear that the author shows empathy for the victims of bullying, wanting to express that it is NEVER the victim's fault that they're being bullied and that people who partake in bullying absolutely should face the consequences, whether they're active participants or people trying to cover it up to save face. It's not afraid to show that there's never an excuse for bullying and that nobody should ever willingly participate in it or subject someone to it, so it's better than At Night I Become a Monster in that regard. However, as much as I agree with the manga's intentions, these messages are undermined by the fact that the entire manga is little more than a wish fulfillment revenge fantasy, complete with its characters having no depth or nuance to them, and what little nuance they might have had never gets utilized. Actually, the whole manga feels like a "message first, story second" kind of affair, similar to the 2019 remake of Black Christmas. The manga might have fared better if it bothered to flesh out its characters more, toned down the revenge aspect, improved the art, and made the villains less cartoony.

Overall, Is It My Fault That I Got Bullied? does have something going for it, but good messages can't make up for its lackluster plot, inconsistent art, and cartoonishly one-note characters. I can recommend several other stories that tackle the issue of bullying far better than this. This just isn't worth it.