anon

LMAO I read this in 2022 but skimmed it over again rn. I enjoyed it and think most of the low ratings are from people who drop it early on or don’t understand it. Didn’t reread it too thoroughly but here’s a long summary because I wanted to yap about it:

MC (Hitoshi) is a teacher who got raped by an unknown assailant and he puts up a wanted poster. ML (Kai) is a rapper in a pretty lawless area called the “shelter” and used to be MC’s student. Unknown to MC, ML also got raped by the same person (Mamiya) that MC did and has intense trauma. ML sells his body to the rapist because Mamiya is a bigshot with a lot of influence in the shelter and he was planning on making one of the kids (Buta) his next victim. ML took Buta’s place and has sex with Mamiya as a shield to try to deter him from taking on any more child victims.

ML is deeply traumatized by all this + heavily reliant on drugs; his only outlet for the pain is through rap. He sees MC with a similar starting trauma and claims he was his rapist (he isn’t) and says he wants to see MC fall into a similar hell (probably to feel a sense of solidarity knowing that somebody he looked up to can also go thru the same shitty life he had). But deep down, ML actually wanted to help MC by giving him an outlet for his anger and introducing him to rap since that was ML’s own coping mechanism.

A lot of things happen and ML does a lot of drugs while MC gets fired at his school for rapping but he starts teaching kids at the shelter instead. ML is angry/jealous seeing that MC is actually coping in a healthy way and isn’t falling into the same despair that ML went through after he got raped. Buta (the kid) gets killed by other kids because they were jealous of his happiness and ML sees himself in those kids. He feels like shit realizing that he’s been harming the MC out of jealousy for his happiness and pettiness because he wanted MC to focus only on him. (ML says he killed Buta himself but I’m pretty sure he’s just tripping out on drugs and hallucinating.)

MC realizes that ML is lying about being his rapist and remembers that he was his student. He learns that ML dropped out because he was targeted by Mamiya as a student and reads ML’s lyrics to better understand his pain. MC also realizes they share the same rapist but the police refuse to arrest him so MC sets fire to the culprit and runs away with the ML. They share a final night of love before ML commits suicide.

Turns out, the fire didn’t fully kill Mamiya but the rapist’s underling (Mitsui) finished him off with a gun because he wanted to take over his power. Mitsui planned to use the MC as the scapegoat and send him to prison but ML took his place in becoming the scapegoat, thus getting killed by Mitsui to protect MC. In the end, Hitoshi sets up a school by the shelter and reminisces about his love for Kai.

Overall- I’m probably missing some things but it was a pretty good read! Dark themes and a tragic ending so it may not be for everybody but it has a lot of raw emotions, a non-romanticized depiction of rape, and nice art. Kai is really the most tragic victim in the story :(

I think it’s crazy to comment and say that people who read this or enjoyed reading it LIKE incest. I’m not even trying to defend this manga; like I also felt disgusted while reading and trust me- I hate the incest trope with a passion. But did we read the same manga? Because not once did this manga try to romanticize a single thing that the MC does.

The entire manga actively shows us how insanely fucked up the MC’s thoughts are and the MC himself is even self-aware of how messed up he is. It’s clearly just meant to be a psychologically twisted read and doesn’t normalize his actions. It’s pretty evident that the author’s intentions are to paint incest and his fantasies in a disturbing light. There are tons of mainstream, popular works out there that ACTUALLY romanticize incest and normalize rape but this manga is imo definitely not one of them lmao.

I’m not trying to defend this manga and you’re completely free to have an opinion and dislike it for any reason, but just know that some of the claims and arguments being made in the comments here are so WILD. When a character does something crazy, it doesn’t always mean it’s “romanticized” and when a reader enjoys a story, it definitely doesn’t mean the reader always agrees with the character’s actions. I hope some of you guys stay far away from works by other psychological authors.