Blood on the Tracks, Volume 1

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The characters and their portrayal are what makes this enjoyable. The way you can see Sei's suffering and reactions and totally emphasize with him. The way the psychotic mother is portrayed and all the deranged things she says... The Bob Dylan album of the same name helped inspire the title of the manga (and would later be used as the title of the official English translation), but the works are otherwise unrelated.

Stepford Smiler: The majority of the smiles in this manga are creepy, but Seiko wins first prize as she smiles throughout all the horror. Parental Incest: Downplayed, but not in a way that detracts at all from the horror of the situation. While it's unclear whether her intentions are sexual, Seiko does seem to have a confused romantic interest in her son, kissing him on the lips twice over the course of the series and becoming horrified when she discovers a girl his age has a crush on him. She tends to delusionally view Seiichi as a small child just as much as she views him as a lover, however, so ultimately her intentions are confusing. The creepy and suspicious smile of the mother was impactful only because of the thrilling art style by the mangaka who must have poured countless hours into making them with pure precision. What a hardworking man he must be! I just can’t forget the art style of this mangaka. Seiko tossing her own nephew off the cliff, before turning around with a pleased smile on her face, as if to say "I did this for you".who is cheating, mother who is sliding to the crazy side it doesn't even matter what classification of disease and a boy who lives with it since he has no choice (Reference to a holes yes he has many choices, i know that but i'm talking about an average kid who doesn't have any trades and is of average intelligence (straight A's in school don't count )). I can't describe the story too much, without spoiling things. But the general feeling you get is like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You know some horrible thing is going to happen. You don't know when, you don't know who it's going to happen to. But you know it's coming. The dread is overwhelming. There was a scene where a woman, in the distance, got off her bike and started running. That's it. And the context of the story was so terrifying, that I actually started saying, out loud, "Oh god, no, no, no, no, no..." That's about it, I rate it a 10/10, obviously it's subjective and I don't want to imply that this is a flawless story; every manga has its shortcomings; but I think that its qualities are big enough to "forgive" them. TL;DR : If you are looking for a psychological story set in a slice of life premise, Chi no Wadachi will fulfill your desires ( and might even haunt you a few days when you'll read it... )

Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: Just before Seiko pushes Shigeru off the cliff, in several panels butterflies are shown flying around, when none were previously evident. As for the second half of the story, Seiichi's development has good ideas, but are ultimately half-assed. He goes from killing his cousin, and attempting to kill his mother in the courtroom, to becoming a depressed, hollow, shell of what he once was. I think this 180 in personality is an interesting idea that has a lot of potential, but one that needs more explanation as to how he got to this point. The only real info available as to how he got there is that he got put into an asylum and then let out, but we never get to learn what actually happened in the asylum, and are instead discouraged from thinking about it too much, because it's never brought up again. This level of blind acceptance was never asked of the reader before Shigeru's death. Anyway, with this version of Seiichi, the plot becomes very slow paced and depressing rather than tense and anxiety inducing, which isn't inherently a bad thing. It's making us really feel what a drag life is for the poor guy, but the conflicting messages scattered throughout the timeskip make it feel more like the author's stalling for time while he comes up with ideas on how to end it. I'll talk about these conflicting messages now Jizzed in My Pants: When Fukiishi kisses Seichii, Seichii wakes up to find "stuff" in his pants the next morning. To further drive the point home, in the panel where they kiss, Seichii appears to have the "stuff" explode out of his body to symbolize the intense feelings he felt. Beauty Is Bad: Seiko is portrayed as eerily, emotionlessly beautiful to make her more terrifying. Notably, when Seichi sees the incident on the cliff through her eyes, Seiko is drawn a little older and more realistic, indicating that even outside of fantasy, Seichi's perception of his mother is distorted.Seiichi gets this treatment increasingly often as the story unfolds and his life unravels; his expressions of silent horror are exaggerated until his face becomes a sunken-eyed mask.

Ultimately, I would say the manga's lasting messages that seem to be there throughout the entirety, are about time, and loneliness. Nothing lasts forever, and your past can trap you and rob you of your future if you dwell on it. Another aspect is how time doesn't necessarily always "heal all wounds", but rather time always has an affect on wounds. Seiichi was traumatized to the point of insanity by a manipulative, abusive, controlling monstrosity of a mother and a lazy, naive, idiot of a father, then as time went on, the insanity turned into depression and numbness. Had he not taken action witnessed his mom's end, he would have never healed that well, and he wouldn't have reached the point of the final chapter; peace and tranquility. With enough time, change is inevitable, and nothing will ever stay the same forever, for better or worse. As for the loneliness, Seiichi's lived most of his life having someone supervising him or weighing him down due to their own loneliness with the main example being Seiko, until both of his parents died. After their death, he's old and alone, which most would consider sad, but not only is he happy on his lonesome, but it's been foreshadowed that pretty much his entire life, he's just wanted to be alone. This is what he's always wanted, so I find the meaning of the ending to be a profound one, but having only one chapter of this and very little content in it, it is left up to a bit of interpretation, and maybe the ending isn't supposed to be quite as happy I'm making it out to be, and is supposed to be more bittersweet. Either way, I think the author had no idea how to get it to this point reasonably, so there's a whole lot of dragging your feet through the mud of the plot to get to a payoff that doesn't hit as hard as it should considering the weight these themes could have carried if the execution wasn't botched Marshmallow Hell: Sometimes Seiko does this to Seiichi. It tends to be more disturbing than most examples. Top Selling Albums For 1975" (PDF). Music Week. December 27, 1975. p.10. Archived (PDF) from the original on March 9, 2021 . Retrieved November 30, 2021– via worldradiohistory.com. Heylin, Clinton (1996). Bob Dylan: A Life In Stolen Moments: Day by Day 1941–1995. Schirmer Books. ISBN 0-7119-5669-3. I have read a LOT of horror manga. You name it, I've probably read it. I've read a lot of gory manga, too. I've read thrillers and mysteries. Basically, I've read every kind of manga that is designed to make you uncomfortable, tense, and scared.I really want to highlight the drawings' beauty because they deserve the praise, and if we think about it, that's what every manga should be about : narrating a captivating story involving complex characters whom are depicted with beautiful pencil strokes. Mama Bear: Deconstructed with Seiko. She really is way too overprotective - her response to Shigeru faking tripping her son off of a cliff is to toss him off said cliff for real, which results in the poor boy suffering permanent brain damage. It's also shown numerous times that while she loves Seichi, she's far too clingy for her own good, and her violation of his personal space makes him very uncomfortable. Seichi later comes to believe she was trying to kill him, seeing his face in Shigeru and decides to similarly discard his past self...who also seems to be Shigeru in reality. Robert Dimery; Michael Lydon (February 7, 2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: Revised and Updated Edition. Universe. ISBN 0-7893-1371-5.