Brazilian from São Paulo here!
I've lived in São Paulo my whole life + grew up frequenting some known favelas (had family living there) and i can say from reading the first chapter that the author never came here before hahaha But it's okay! there are some mistakes, exaggerations and misconceptions but there's nothing offensive (quite the opposite: brazilians love being mentioned in pretty much anything).
My notes about first chapter x reality if you are curious:
1) In Brazil, favelas are mostly placed in the margins of the cities. Historically the government tried to evict poor people and ex slaves from big cities and gave lands to european immigrants instead - that's why in Rio de Janeiro, for example, the favelas are on the "morros" (on the hills around the town). The MC in this story reaches the favela when he was at Avenida Paulista, this is the most famous and important avenue of São Paulo it is on the city's downtown and all favelas are far from there. For a matter of fact, most people living on favelas never went to Avenida Paulista before. São Paulo is huge and it would take at least one and a half hours to go from any favela to there with public transportation (40min by car). The avenue is also known for being a corporative center and a luxurious place to live.
Nowadays, on the other hand, the downtown is filled with homeless and poor people. We can see entire families living on the streets and many alleys smells like piss (not the ones near Avenida Paulista tho'). All researches shows that São Paulo's downtown area is more dangerous than almost all favelas losing only to Capão Redondo. Until last year there was a big concentration of addicted homeless people in downtown that we called the Cracolândia (land of crack). They usually occupied a whole street for 3 decades (the streets in which they agglomerated would sometimes change due to police repression but always far from tourists and relevant places). The downtown area is sad and neglected but there's no favela there (at most some small communities of poor people and recent immigrants).
2) Contrary to all expectations, we also don't have people running with guns on daylight anywhere in São Paulo hahaha even inside the favelas. I have some friends that witnessed something like this in Rio de Janeiro but any situation with guns would be eventual and people would panic for their lives this is not the type of thing we consider normal in Brazil hahaha
Favelas are protected by the organized crime. We call the gangs "facção" (plural = facções). These gangs control favelas communities by taking care of basic needs that the government fails to provide. Despite favelas being indeed dangerous, in theory, burglary, robbery, assault, r*pe and other violent conducts are prohibited there. It's common for the facção to punish anyone caught doing violent crimes against the people living in their favela. The favela is life threatening mostly as a consequence of the conflict between drug dealers and the police.
3) I agree with the comment that said that the criminals talking about the kid being at the age of becoming one of them is a bit ridiculous. It may have been the case for someone somewhere sometime in favelas history i dunno but it's not something to be usual nor expected inside favelas. I had two uncles involved with crime by their own choice and their brothers and sisters were never involved they took other paths normally. The crime has many voluntaries... there's no need to coerce people trying to live a regular life. Many criminals keep supporting their family members to pursue their studies. You would be coerced to work for the gang only if there's some personal reason that made you their target or if they offered something for you and you accepted it in exact terms (there are cases in which the Facção invest on people for the gang's future benefit - e.g: they could pay for someone to graduate on law school and defend their cases in court).
4) The police corruption is more intense in Rio de Janeiro where they have "milicias" as a culture and maybe there we can have similar cases of cops openly asking money from tourists but i doubt it would be the norm. Don't get me wrong, the cops are corrupt yes but they are way more subtle and it's not believable they would ask money so openly and specially from a victim. It is more possible they would act with little interest and make him give up but usually they would at least register the occurrence at the police station. However, if you did something wrong or were under arrest they could indeed ask for money. It's not something expected from cops here and they would probably not do this to tourists but sometimes it happens. I'm a criminal lawyer so i got my share, all of us lawyers know that when we are at the police station and the cops invite us to drink coffee there is no coffee at all - only a subtle proposal to negotiate a price for them to drop all charges from our client.
5) The author is on point about São Paulo's social inequality. The most famous example would be the buildings of luxury apartments with the Paraisópolis favela at the background (there's a famous photography of it). I think the author was trying to set the story there. Paraisópolis is the mos known favela of São Paulo and is similar to the drawings. It is located on the south region of the city about 1h30-2h from Avenida Paulista.
6) São Paulo has no landfill/dumpsites hahaha wth??
7) People in São Paulo are more "cold" and reserved than most brazilians we don't hug strangers at normal circumstances but when meeting someone we offer our cheek for a kiss while kissing the cheek of the other person (usually we just bump our cheeks hahaha but it's originally meant for a cheek kiss). In Rio they kiss both cheeks but here it's only one. The mother would probably do this instead of a hug when meeting the MC.
8) never in my life met someone named Gabu nor Mia but we do have lots o Joãos hehe (my husband's name is João Gabriel)
9) The feijoada was served like an asian dish hehe but it's cute.
In conclusion, as i said before: some little mistakes, misconceptions, exaggerations but nothing that would make it be wrong or bad if i ever made a story about living in japan i would probably get some points off as well as i've never been there. I hope the author feels appreciated by his fans as he is so dedicated. A manga about Brazil is so exciting! I'll keep reading this!!
