Blood on the Tracks

[nouzen]

I really enjoyed reading this one it able to depict the generational trauma of a person

 

[dsaiyaman]

This manga seemed like it was going in the correct direction until it shits the bed around the 80th chapter, as many others have pointed out. The main problem is how stupid the linchpin that holds the two halves of the manga is.

Spoiler: Spoilers for the middle and second half of the manga

A brain-damaged Shigeru visits Seiichi in the middle of the night and walks him to the spot where Seiko had tried to kill him as a kid? Really? Did his brain rewire into acquiring telepathy to find out about that whole episode of Seiichiro's life that no one else was aware of? Even if you argue that it could've been Seiichi deforming the actual events, it's still very difficult to believe the two boys would've just ended up in the middle of the mountain at 4AM in any way that would've made sense; I mean, just look at how Shigeru's mother was so focused on protecting him above all. I very much doubt she would've just left him out of her sight like that.

It's ludicrously bad and poorly thought out; it wasn't just the execution, it's the very idea that's flawed and it ruins the entirety of the manga from that point onwards. If what the author wanted was to show the extent to which Seiko had well and truly screwed Seiichi, then I'm sure there could've been many other ways to portray such a thing without a complete jump in logic.

And the ending... it's simply unsatisfactory.

Spoiler: ending theme spoiler

I get that that's what the author was trying to convey—that life sometimes just sucks and the things that haunt us eventually fade—but it's just dull; not bittersweet or hard to swallow, but simply boring. It's such an abrupt jump that it has little to no meaning considering everything that preceded it. A deescalation where we had seen a bit more of Seiichi's life returning to normalcy, it would've made more sense.

But instead, what do we get? A snippet of Fukiishi's life after, where she still thinks about Seiichi, and then jumping straight to him decades later. It would be heartwrenching if it wasn't so sudden, but it just falls flat. And considering how much happens beforehand, it could've been handled in a much different way.

Honestly, even if there were no changes to the plot, you could shave like 30-40 entire chapters worth of content off and it would've been less of a slog to go through. Very disappointing considering how much praise I've seen flaunted.

 

[iskelets8]

Woah were all the chapters suddenly get deleted? Probably for the best, this was a shitshow, scrapping everything will be saving a poor soul from embarking to this disasterclass of a series

 

[wanderslvt]

Japanese authors seem to have an extremely flawed vision of reality