...Let's talk about absurdism, shall we?
I've gone on record saying I really don't like things that are just weirdness for the sake of weirdness. There has to be something beyond the weirdness. Whether it's an interesting character, story, or just neat art. Daidai wa, Hantoumei ni Nidone suru was the first manga of Youichi Abe that I've read, but I read it without realizing I had also previously been planning to read one of his other manga that apparently features a guy with a fishbowl for a head.
I planned on reading that one because I saw the cover which featured a guy with a fishbowl for a head, and need to know what the fuck it's about and how the fishbowl guy comes into play. Then, on another day, I saw this manga's cover that features a girl appearing to cradle the severed head of another girl. If nothing else, weirdness for the sake of weirdness, still manages to almost immediately capture my attention if it's done effectively. And when I saw the cover of this manga, given the very brief ~~but completely fitting~~ description there is for it (The bizarre everyday life stories of the citizens of a coastal port town.), I needed to know the context for it.
And naively, I doubted the extent of how far it was actually going to go when I started reading it. Also, I should state, that it is the VERY first chapter.
...If the entirety of the story of the girl and the severed head were its own thing like a oneshot or something, I'd probably give it a full out 100 out of 100. Speaking as a person who is a fan of horror and generally just fucked up and creepy shit, this was really fucking effective. I don't want to go into it too hard since I genuinely recommend reading this series and it's definitely better the less you know, but... like going from the murder to just her picture on the coffin staring right at the reader was just...
This story is just so effectively creepy and messed up, but then there are genuinely heartwarming moments. I kind of couldn't fucking wrap my head around it, but it's wonderful.
TGG, did you just say there was a heartwarming moment in this story about a girl having her head cut off? I'm calling the police.
Please don't.
Additionally, I didn't even realize this when I first read it, but it was foreshadowed from the very start. Simultaneously bluntly yet subtly as well... then again, I should reiterate, I really didn't think this was gonna go quite as far as it did.
To be fair, there is actual context for these mannequin heads, but I don't buy the idea that Youichi Abe didn't go full "creepy mannequin" on purpose given the rest of this story. I would never go into a barbershop with these fucking mannequin heads in the window, by the way.
Though as previously stated this is in fact not a oneshot, but rather, a series. What is the rest of this series about if not the severed head story? Let's get to that right now. The actual real absurd stuff this series has to offer.
A couple of additional thoughts, that go further, but are spoilery.
#A Normal Coastal Town#
The genuinely dark and creepy story this series starts out with takes a rather strange turn and actually goes with a somewhat lighthearted but strange ending. In the next chapters, we start to see more and more of the other residents of this town. With the very next character introduced, it's shown clearly that this town is a haven of strangeness. As maybe I'm just uninformed on the subject of heart diseases, but I don't think there's a disease that will result in a person literally exploding into bits if their hearts starts beating too rapidly.
...Then, there's the girl who claims to be battling off aliens that have come to invade the town in the various forms of several different types of sealife, and she does this by just beating the ever living hell out of so many squids that the waters of this town turn entirely black with the ink of all of the squids she's beaten to death. I believe my immediate reaction was, I was wondering if I accidentally started reading an entirely different series.
FEEL FREE TO TAKE BULLETS FOR FREE.
Mind you, this is not me saying I wasn't entertained. Anything but, actually. I genuinely really loved almost the entirety of this manga. Like in this town, there's just a vending machine where you can straight up buy guns, just in case you need to go get vengeance upon your friend who murdered your beautiful beetle friend whom you loved. And if her mother gets in the way, she's gonna catch some bullets as well.
The absurd or crazy stuff of this series is in my opinion really well done. Because while it is a lot of just downright craziness, I was really enjoying it and I was also invested in the characters. Also, while my attention may seem focused on the severed head story, there actually is some more creepiness in even the more absurd stuff. Like the idea of witnessing one of Santa's reindeer brutally murdering "Santa" because they don't want to be Santa anymore and then that unstable reindeer following you home and demanding for you to take the place of Santa is... what?
At multiple points of this manga, I couldn't help but wonder how I was still taking this manga seriously. It should be complete nonsense, but the way it's done and shown, it just works. The absurdity of the idea of Santa's murderous talking reindeer aside, it's essentially an unstable character that has performed a murder coming to another character who witnessed the act and the murderer character is explaining why he did what he did and he's getting angry and starts slamming against the window... and like the girl is just inside terrified and trying to remain quiet.
First of all, I genuinely felt like the hiding girl actually had a chance of possibly getting impaled by those antlers as well, but also the reindeer is just fucking losing it. What choice did I have? She didn't want to be Santa anymore! SOMEBODY HAS TO DELIVER THE PRESENTS TO THE CHILDREN, THE CHILDREN CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO BECOME SAD BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO PRESENTS. THAT'S WHY I IMPALED HER AND THREW HER OFF OF A BRIDGE.
One of my other favorites was when a girl found out she has the ability to detach and launch one of her hands to perform a rocket punch and coincidentally, a psychotic masked serial killer descends upon the public and she uses her rocket punch to... to not successfully stop the killer at all. Her rocket punch basically just bonks him, and immediately causes his attention to turn towards her and her brother.
This guy doesn't even say a single fucking word. The idea of a completely silent masked maniac just showing up out of nowhere with a knife is... that's actually genuinely fucking terrifying.
Where is the town's one single cop??? He shows up every single other time but when a masked killer just descends upon the town with knife in hand, he's nowhere to be found until the issue is resolved and it's time to lecture the young people.
When the manga shifted away from the initial direction it was going in during the severed head story I was genuinely slightly kind of disappointed, but the joke turned out to be on me. I was very happy when I realized the girl who fights fish aliens was going to be a recurring character. She and the grumpy cop make the majority of this manga.
#Absurdity With a Point...?#
While I feel the need to kind of write out my thoughts on this, I must stress that __if you are even 1% interested in actually reading this manga, _do not read any of the following spoiler tags___. As they spoil basically the point of the series where I genuinely thought, whether intended or not, it transcended simple enjoyable absurdity and became brilliant.
During the first chapter, when the the corpse of the murderer's friend started talking again in her coffin, I immediately wondered if it would end up being all a hallucination, something that the murderer dreamed up as of a result of the guilt she felt after brutally killing her friend. But then the first chapter of course takes that detour into the absurd the rest of the manga carries out on, where the severed head of her friend is acting friendly towards her murderer, and she apparently even starts growing something out of her neck and apparently has gained a job after her friend turned herself in for her murder.
Even then at that point, you could very well think that it's all in her head. But then you get to see some of the other goings on in this town. A reindeer fucking impaled a girl and threw her off a bridge because she didn't want to be Santa anymore. I would argue that's way more out there than a talking and living severed head. Really, with each and every additional chapter, the severed head story just began to seem more and more like just another chapter of this manga.
But then... why did the cop character react realistically as he should have, when encountering the murderer and the severed head? "Is that a severed head?" Even when her friend starts talking again and sounds perfectly chipper for someone who was brutally murdered, the tone and feeling of the first chapter is drastically completely different from the rest of the stories that followed.
Finally, with the final chapter, you eventually realize that even before the final reveal, there are multiple differences in this version of the chapter that reveal the truth. Her friend didn't wake up in her coffin and talk to her. It really was in her head. So then you think about it some more. She murdered her friend who turned on her, went to her funeral, and as a result of the grief and guilt she was suffering, she thought her friend was still alive and requested to her head to be torn off of her lifeless corpse... and then her friend went to hang out with the lifeless head of this corpse, talking about the good times when they were still friends. Hell, one of the first things the imagined talking head tells her is "I'm glad that I can speak to you again." but we know that that's not true. That was the whole reason she ended up getting murdered. The murderer wishes she didn't kill her friend, but she also wishes that her friend had kept being her friend... so, in the murderer's mind, she comes back. She even tells the murderer that it didn't hurt when she cut her throat. The imagined talking head of her friend whom she murdered, apologizes to her. Who knew to repair a broken friendship, all you needed to do is kill your previous friend and then tear off her head, and then they'd come back and apologize to you and want to be your friend again. Except... they're dead, and that all didn't happen. In reality, that head perceived to have been talking is just decomposing flesh in a bag attracting flies.
The rest of the series, as absurd as it became, intentional or not, serves as a perfect distraction away from the original story. And with everything else you're being shown to happen in this town, the idea that the head is actually genuinely talking in chapter 1 becomes way less silly. So by the time I got to chapter 15, when that twist I had already sort of wondered if it was happening back in chapter 1 comes back, it actually has impact and that's the conclusion to the whole manga. Even if all of that other stuff actually did happen throughout the town, there was no funny business with this particular incident. It was straight up a clear cut murder, followed by a fall into both insanity and horrific guilt.
...The more and more I think about it, I'm not sure if there's been another manga's that fucked with my mind as much as this one has. Mind you, I should add to that, "in a positive way." I really was somewhat going into this expecting just weird but occasionally fun stuff happening. But even the really weird chapters in my opinion work on their own.
#Conclusion#
...I'm not guaranteeing that the result will be the same for others, but I don't think this manga will fully ever leave my head. The creepy moments are genuinely fucking creepy and disturbing, the absurd crazy stuff manages to hit that appropriate height where it manages to not get old, and the severed head story is just so fucking... perfect and... horrifically sad. I give it a 9 out of 10.
If you want to undergo a very wide range of emotions, most likely including "horrifically sad", then this is the manga for you.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go take some antidepressants.
49.5 out of 50 users liked this review
