In this sixth volume of Boy’s Abyss, we learn the backstory of the cult author Esemori (his younger self is on the cover) and his doomed romance with Rei’s mother, Yuko, when they were in high school. Back in the present, Rei’s former friend and sometime bully Gen finds out about his relationship with their teacher Shibasawa while Rei’s morbid death fascination finally leads him to a place he thought he wanted to go - or does he?
The series quality dropped off in the last couple books with not enough happening for my taste and now the opposite has happened and there’s too much drama in this one! It’s a wee bit over-the-top and I feel like the story would be better if it was focused on fewer characters, but Boy’s Abyss, Volume 6 is still a decent entry.
The first half is definitely the best. I wasn’t expecting an extended flashback on two, up to this point, minor characters but it was actually really good learning about them. Esemori moves from Tokyo to this small town and gets bullied immediately - his father left their family, his mother’s depressed, and his grandma’s distant so he’s very sad and lonely.
The one bright spot in his life is his unexpected friendship with Yuko Kurose, Rei’s future mother, who also has a miserable home life: her dad’s an abusive drunk and her mother’s an absent hostess. Together, they find friendship and solace in their shared pain.
Up to this point, that relationship had only been hinted at, and it didn’t need to be explicitly told, but it was well-done and I enjoyed it.
In the present, the characters’ motivations are bizarre and unbelievable in some cases. Like why is Gen, a student, acting the way he is with Shibasawa, a teacher - what on earth does Rei mean to him? And then Rei’s mother, Yuko - after such an empathetic flashback to her youth, how does that person become the deeply messed up person in the present?!
Even Chako’s doing weird stuff with Esemori for seemingly no reason as does Rei (that finale) - is everyone in this town mental?! Looking back at the series from this point, I feel like it would be a stronger story if it was just focused on Esemori and Yuko, Rei and Chako - everybody else’s subplots feel irrelevant and increasingly silly.
Boy’s Abyss is far from a perfect, or even great, series but it’s more often decent than not and surprisingly consistent for a manga. If you thought the last couple books were kinda flat, be prepared for a sudden burst of loud craziness in this sixth volume! The first half makes this book worth reading in itself and, even if the second half is bordering on the absurd, it feels like the series is changing and I’m interested to see what it’ll become.
No comments:
Post a Comment