Himizu

I didn't think I'd be writing another review on here but Himizu left a bad taste in my mouth. After completing it I felt as if the ending was underwhelming and disappointing.

However days later it clicked for me, Himizu portrays a very distressing reality which a lot of people face unbeknown by the others around them, even their closest friends. Nihilism and trauma are concepts which aren't entirely new to manga or fiction but Himizu's approach to these concepts is a rather unorthodox and dark one. Some of the comedy in here is distasteful and some of the art is intentionally drawn to look ridiculous at some points but all these factors help to create the unsettling atmosphere of this manga.

Suumida Yuichi is a teen abandoned by his parents and essentially left for dead, he sees no reason to have ambition since life for him has always been grey. He has this distorted outlook on life and believes that it would be a disaster if everyone's dreams were to come true since the world is too small for all that ambition. His trauma and illness manifests into this monster which is always stalking him, literally.

The world is small, boring and confining.

The people around him adopt a different mentality, they know what they want and they are willing to work towards it. His friends and acquaintances, especially a girl in his class named Keiko, try to snap Suumida out of this dangerous way of thinking. Eventually we see him begin to change and take on a meaning for his life; the meaning being that he wants to at least do the right thing for once in his life. Though what is the right thing? What does it mean to have the moral high ground? Who gets to dictate that? Suumida believes that by getting rid of scum, he himself will be able to free himself from his sins and his trauma. He goes to extreme lengths to do this and becomes obsessed with wanting to feel free and wanting to feel like the good guy since all his life he's seen himself as nothing.

This was depressing to read and despite all the weird humour it doesn't manage to mask the depressing reality. The reality that someone can be surrounded by all the right people, try to really change for the better but that still won't be enough. Sometimes the demons win, sometimes the pain from the past has an unruly grip.

Sometimes not everyone in life gets to have that happy ending, even if they are just getting to that new beginning.