Like most mothers, Seiko is protective of her kid and will do anything to keep her son Seiichi safe - even moider?!
Shuzo Oshimi’s latest manga Blood on the Tracks, like Flowers of Evil and Happiness, is another series where the protagonist is a kid and the first volume is unimpressive.
I can see why Oshimi is sorta popular: his books are easy to read with nice, wide open panels, beautifully illustrated, dialogue is sparingly added so you’ll fly through it, and there’s a nugget of intrigue in all of them. Here, it’s the creepy mother Seiko, who seems off the whole time. Seiichi remembers seeing a dead cat while he and her were out walking when he was younger and it’s hinted that she had something to do with that.
The problem is that, aside from a shocking incident towards the finale, barely anything happens in this first book. Seiichi is a normal high school kid and Seiko is a normal housewife/mother, even if she seems a bit too intense at times. There’s a generic romance subplot introduced that I can already see what’s going to happen to the poor girl when she gets between Seiichi and mother dearest, and I’m fairly sure how Seiko’s behaviour will get explained away.
Even if I’m wrong about both storylines, there’s not enough going on in this series to make me want to keep up with it, particularly if this leaden pacing keeps up (and, having read Oshimi’s previous stuff, I’m fairly certain that isn’t going to change either). No idea why this title is named after the Bob Dylan album either, much like I didn’t get what his Flowers of Evil manga had to do with Baudelaire.
I liked the unsettling atmosphere throughout and the artwork but not much else unfortunately. Shuzo Oshimi may be a talented manga creator but he’s not the best storyteller and Blood on the Tracks, Volume 1 is a lacklustre start to what might’ve been a promising series in the hands of a snappier writer.
This has been one of the best series that I have read due to the creator's incredible gift of sequential flow. Each book is such a quick read because it just flows so well. As happens in the best of books, I forget that I am reading and it feels more like I am watching a film. I feel like I know all the characters so well, not because of what they say, but what they don't say. Oshimi is a master of capturing that cinematic quality, as well as a sense of mystery and foreboding that is part of puberty and adolescence. This book is a testament to how one, or two acts can send everything spiraling into the darkest of places. It is a slow burn narrative with some big payoffs when they happen. I have honestly never read another manga like this. Ito is just pure horrorscape, but this is a much more realistic and at times unsettling journey. I cannot wait until the next one releases. I wish that all that work he does on each volume lasted longer than 20 minutes, but what a 20 minutes it is.
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