Created by: Momochi Reiko
Chapters Read: 16
Hello and welcome to another Monday. Like the first day of every week, today I am supposed to talk about the manga I read in the last few days and review it by breaking down its positives and negatives. But this week, I am afraid I am going to do something different. This is not a traditional review by any stretch but is instead going to a rant about how much I LOATHED this manga. Now, I have read some pretty messed up stuff when it comes to the medium but this is the very first time that a story has infuriated me to my core.
What exactly did this one do to make me feel this way? I’ll tell you.
THE PREMISE:
A depressed high school girl forms an unlikely friendship with a classmate after watching her get bullied by her friends. The two plan to kill themselves in the most fun way possible.
WHY YOU SHOUD READ IT:
If you like abhorrently poor writing, torture porn, carelessly immature handling of sensitive topics and endless suffering with no silver linings.
WHY YOU SHOULDN’T READ IT:
Here’s the thing. I don’t really have a specific genre of stories that I enjoy the most. Depending on my mood, I read/watch stories involving multiple genres. Be it drama, slice-of-life, thriller, mystery, even romance (if done right), I am willing to judge a series based on its merits no matter how many red flags might be waving right at the point of entry. But sometimes, you encounter something which makes you say that, “This. THIS is where I draw the line.”
Well, the manga Confidential Confessions by Momochi Reiko is where I draw the line. Now, if you’re familiar with this manga or do end up reading it at some point, you might think to yourself, “Huh, it wasn’t that bad.” or “I’ve read worse.” or maybe you even end up liking it! If either of these is the case, I’ll have you known that I harbor no ill-will against you. The opinions put to words in this post are mine and mine alone and I fully understand if you don’t agree with them. But maybe I should present my case properly for you to understand why I feel the way that I do.
Last year, someone very close to me committed suicide. I had never expected something like that could ever happen to anyone I care about because surely I would see it coming. Surely I would stop it. But I couldn’t. They didn’t leave any note or letter making sense of it all. No closure to given to their family. To the uninformed, they might have as well have gone away somewhere, moved to a different city.
Even after a year, whenever I see their family, remembering or mourning, I never see them blame the gods they believe in for why it all happened. There is no blame directed at anyone. No one curses the unfairness of the whole situation. Their family understands. And to an extent I do too. Suicide as an act has been stigmatized to the point that even talking about it with people makes you sound like a possible risk. That’s why I have always appreciated stories which talk about such dark, morbid themes of death and the sorrows of living. These stories help me understand a part of human nature which exists in all of us even though we so often pretend that it’s not there – that we’re normal. That’s why I have always been drawn to honest portrayals of mental illness and depression, no matter how uncomfortably sad they may get.
And that, brings us to the manga under review. Confidential Confessions is not a realistic portrayal of mental illness or even human suffering. In fact, it actually treats the issues of suicide and sexual harassment with such callousness that it’s appalling. There is not even a shred of nuance or subtlety in the storytelling. Characters laugh and make jokes about the cool and awesome ways to die. The whole idea of suicide is romanticized to the point that it feels as if the author is making fun of anyone suffering from mental illness and gathering up the strength to live through it. The characters are far from relatable and you simply don’t care for them. It’s as if the only way the author knows of imparting any personality into them is by having them suffer. Things get from bad to worse but the reader barely cares. Reading every subsequent chapter feels like watching an old abandoned house fall apart. You have no attachment to it because for you it’s just another building – empty on the inside. No people there to care for.
This manga is one of the worst things I have had the misfortune of reading and the only reason I was able to get through sixteen chapters of it is because when I started this project, I had decided that I won’t drop anything I start reading. But you don’t have to do that. Please don’t do that. No matter what you do, DO NOT READ THIS. Do anything else. Do nothing. Even that is better than reading this crap.
RATING: Don’t Touch with a Ten-feet pole/ 10
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With that, we conclude this week’s coverage. Next week, I will be reviewing the manga chosen through the votes of last week’s poll, Shinji Kajio’s Memories of Emanon. To have your favorite manga get reviewed the week after, be sure to vote in this week’s poll here!
And feel free to leave the titles of any manga you think needs more attention down in the comments below and I will be sure to include it in later polls.
As always, thank you for reading and see ya next Monday! ^^
Yeesh, this certainly does sound like a terrible manga. I kinda feel like reading it just so I can learn how NOT to tackle the issues that it does, and I received flak years ago for supposedly doing the same thing in my fan fics, even though I know for a fact it wasn’t at the level you described here. Sorry to hear about your friend, too. hug
For what it’s worth, it’s a good thing the manga has gone out of print now, and not many people seem to know about it now. Perhaps falling into obscurity might be a good thing for this manga.
Thanks, Firechick. 𝘩𝘶𝘨𝘴 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬
Yeah. It’s pretty horrible. The thing is I get the sense that maybe the author went through similar emotions as depicted in the manga but the manner in which they are depicted is not only amateurish but frankly damaging to read for anyone going through the same.
Like you said, it’s a good thing the manga is not as accessible now.
I remember this being one of the earliest licensed shoujo manga in around the year 2000 or so, now, at this time I was fascinated with basically ANY shoujo i could get my hands on and that continued on for years.
This was one of those things I felt I might of missed out on during that huge shoujo phase I was on, this led to reading it for completions sake a few years ago and my general reaction was that shoujo manga probably wasn’t the best thing to take on these topics, worse still that it was fairly edgy and that was another reason it never connected.
I don’t think I’d have even connected with this manga during my shoujo phase in my younger days.
As it stands I do know someone who leaned toward suicide when I was younger, I think sometimes when we’re a certain age we don’t really recognize what people are going through, can’t really imagine it.
Person in question stopped before going through with stabbing himself, largely because he remembered how myself and two other friends were close people to him.
I think forming and falling back on those worldly attachments are possibly key to avoiding self-harm.
Yes, I agree with the fact that shoujo as a genre doesn’t lend itself to dealing with heavy topics such as these. The portrayal of sensitive topics such as self-harm and suicide requires subtlety and nuance in writing or else they do come-off as horridly edgy.
And I actually know quite a few people from my college who have inflicted self-harm. Without going into details, what I can say is that I have observed that not all these people are necessarily suicidal or even depressed but they mostly suffer from a lack of empathy and anxiety disorders. They cannot feel emotions as well as others. So, in order to feel something, they choose to atleast feel pain. It relaxes them in a way.
Wow really sorry for your loss. Suicide is stigmatized but ultimately I can’t judge anybody for it. All anybody can really do is wish things had turned out better. Unfortunately we only have so much control (and it really is not that much) over the world we live in.
As for this manga. It kinda sounds really bad. It seems like its a work that wants to and intends to be taken seriously but didn’t take the issues it discusses seriously at all. That is a recipe for disaster.
I wouldn’t say that the manga doesn’t discuss these issues with seriousness. It’s just very immature at their depiction. Maybe the author could have taken a leaf from the works of more accomplished mangaka like Inio Asano or even someone fairly new like Nagata Kabi who handle such themes with the maturity they require.
yeah in that case it sounds like the author just didn’t know how to adequately discuss these issues not that its easy by any means. Now I know Inio Asano does an amazing job with these themes but I didn’t know about Nagata Kabi. I didn’t think her work was as dark as the Asano’s. Now I am very interested.Not much manga or media in general, is as psychologically dark as Oyasumi Punpun.
Yes, Nagata Kabi’s My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness explores similar themes of self-harm, loneliness and depression but it’s handled in a way that never feels exploitative.
And I completely agree with the point you make about Asano. You can easily mistake him for someone who just writes these dark, heavy narratives but his real strength lies in making the characters feel like real people who just don’t know how to cope with their sadness. And that’s not an easy thing to do.
I’m sorry for your loss. At the same time I feel uncomfortable stating that, but I couldn’t disagree more with your review. This manga is a striking and honest portrayal of what actually goes on in a suicidal teen’s mind. Is it ugly? Yeah. “Tobira” (actual title of this one-shot) is amazing for not sugarcoating this shit just so people who have not lived through the portrayed experiences are comfortable. It’s brutal, but that doesn’t mean that it’s romanticizing suicide. Just look what happened after Asparagus’ death! It changed nothing in how people perceived her, contrary to what the heroines – or the reader – may have hoped for. On another note, if you think that suicidal teens that have been pushed to the brink will not be joking about suicide… you are wrong. The depression bloggers on Tumblr are the best proof of “Tobira” being extremely on point in the portrayal of teenagers (even though it was published over ten years before the phenomenon!). When thinking about suicide becomes your normal pastime, you will learn to laugh about it – for many reasons that I don’t want to get into here.
I would love to argue more, but while I have read this manga at least 3 times, it’s been some time ago, so the finer details are escaping me. It makes me sad that some people that may have actually gained something from the manga will skip it because of your extremely negative judgment (to which you are entitled, of course).