Boy's Abyss - Vol. 18 Ch. 183 - They Were the Boys and Girls of That Town

[Absent666]

What even happened to his mother? What happened to the other characters??? this shit was so rushed.. enjoyed reading this manga though

Yuuko was arrested.

Just came here to say there weren't many additions in the final vol. other than
-Making it more explicit Yuuko and Yuri let go of Reiji (1st as a symbolical scene where mom looses her hand and kid Reiji runs free and 2nd with Yuri hallucinating with Nagi and Reiji trying to kill themselves by entering to the river, but then realizing nobody was there, by throwing the knife, she's letting her feelings for Reiji go with the river)
-Reiji being a bit wary, thinking he was also hallucinating Nagi (as how he hallucinated his childhood friends and mom when trying to off himself) before seeing her bloodstained hand and after seeing his own hand, realizing she's real, pulling Nagi's hand and asking her name.
-Gen's line where he says Reiji was a fool for choosing the mountains to live has a punchline where he says that's what he chose.
-A kinospread with a couple holding hands in front of the ocean (the twitter illustration when ch 183 was released, but from another angle, so those hands are Rei and Nagi's).

Those who expected more of Reiji's adult life will be disappointed. Chapter only gave a definite closure and severance to his relationships with Yuuko and Yuri.

 

[CookieMonster]

There is this line between being dark and depressing work of art and being ridiculous pile of disastrous events and tragedies that keep multiplying with every chapter. And this manga crossed this line half way through or even earlier. It transformed into something akin to slasher B-move, where you don't really care about characters or plot and just watching it to see what kind of tortures creators came up with. Someone should tell author, that more doesn't mean better, often it's vice versa.

Same with endless mysteries and revelations. When characters reveal another secret, you know there is no way it can be the full truth. Once again, everything is good in moderation. Also shit tons of unbelievably continent events and meetings. This is minor issue in comparison, but it too doesn't help with believability.

Best parts of the manga was Yuko\Esemori flashback. Mostly cause it was relatively short, completed and has only few characters, thus author wasn't able to keep adding endless layers of "shit got worse" to this arc. And yeah, first 1\3 of main plot was good too for same reasons, but after this point it just felt repetitive and dragging except for few good moments.

 

[KimKowabunga]

Maybe the boys abyss was the friends we made along the way.

 

[MoonMoonEN]

It was a story, but I feel like the author didn't know how to end it because that was just completely short, random and bad 😭 I waited over a year for the next few dozen chapters only to stumble upon it and get such a dumb conclusion.

Part of me wished it was a bittersweet suicide but part of me also wanted a happy ending, However it was the worst of the happy ending by no closure no detail and basically like the story being covered in a fog and we were shown only a shape that we can't make out lmao. It's not a mysterious ending it's plain and bold but at the same time we don't see literally anything.

 

[nxneil13]

is there 2 epilouge chapters left or nah?

 

[abyssSeeker]

What even happened to his mother? What happened to the other characters??? this shit was so rushed.. enjoyed reading this manga though

So from what I'm understanding, it seems Yuko ended up being taken to jail for her crimes I guess (I don't know, to me that doesn't make much sense but anyways...). Rei and Aoi apparently stayed in the mountains with that lady (forget her name), now working with her. No idea what the feck happened to Yuri and Mao, and only Esemori died.
I personally thought Rei and Aoi they ended up doing the suicide because it didn't seem like they were just thinking of anything else other than dying at that point. Aoi even thanked Mao for "tainting" Rei which to be was like her saying that they were finally ready to leave the world behind together. Kinda lame fakeout because it makes no sense at all.
Anyways, am just glad I'm done with this, ain't never coming back.

 

[Absent666]

I personally thought Rei and Aoi they ended up doing the suicide because it didn't seem like they were just thinking of anything else other than dying at that point. Aoi even thanked Mao for "tainting" Rei which to be was like her saying that they were finally ready to leave the world behind together.

Beng tainted, dirtied, corrupted or stained has another meaning. It's about how far and low could you go to be with the person you love and avoid rejection. It was always mentioned in the series by various people, when Chako called Esemori out, she said people fear rejection more than being tainted (in japanese she said people fear being hurt (in the sense of being rejected) more than being tainted), we had Yuri's oddisey where she fell lower and lower simply because she wanted Reiji's acceptance (even though in the end she couldn't accept Reiji staining his hands, so she rejected Reiji's true self), Reiji called Esemori out for disowning Yuuko instead of understanding her better, Shino'oka told Reiji how far Yuuko went only to be with Akira (she killed Uryuu).

Reiji chose to reject being hurt and stain his hands for a person who was basically a disposable being and accept her instead (something more evident in the additional panels from the final tankoubon. It was a decision he took during Tokyo after having rejected the idea of Nagi's true self not being his angel of death in the end of the hospital arc. His decision to ask her real name (AKA acceptance of Nagi's true self) came after he saw her hurt hand for having stopped his spiteful suicide attempt in ch180 and realized, by seeing his own scarred hand she did the same thing he did to stop Gen and Chako from murder-suicide (ch129) and khs (ch140) respectively, Nagi only wanted to save Reiji from himself, yet she was grateful to Mao for making Reiji go that low for her.

For all the shitburgers Boy's Abyss is eating after the end, the topic of choosing to be tainted over being rejected was always consistent alongside the story.

 

[abyssSeeker]

Beng tainted, dirtied, corrupted or stained has another meaning. It's about how far and low could you go to be with the person you love and avoid rejection. It was always mentioned in the series by various people, when Chako called Esemori out, she said people fear rejection more than being tainted (in japanese she said people fear being hurt (in the sense of being rejected) more than being tainted), we had Yuri's oddisey where she fell lower and lower simply because she wanted Reiji's acceptance (even though in the end she couldn't accept Reiji staining his hands, so she rejected Reiji's true self), Reiji called Esemori out for disowning Yuuko instead of understanding her better, Shino'oka told Reiji how far Yuuko went only to be with Akira (she killed Uryuu).

Reiji chose to reject being hurt and stain his hands for a person who was basically a disposable being and accept her instead (something more evident in the additional panels from the final tankoubon. It was a decision he took during Tokyo after having rejected the idea of Nagi's true self not being his angel of death in the end of the hospital arc. His decision to ask her real name (AKA acceptance of Nagi's true self) came after he saw her hurt hand for having stopped his spiteful suicide attempt in ch180 and realized, by seeing his own scarred hand she did the same thing he did to stop Gen and Chako from murder-suicide (ch129) and khs (ch140) respectively, Nagi only wanted to save Reiji from himself, yet she was grateful to Mao for making Reiji go that low for her.

For all the shitburgers Boy's Abyss is eating after the end, the topic of choosing to be tainted over being rejected was always consistent alongside the story.

Really insightful and interesting, I had not thought of it like that so I clearly missed the nuanced meaning to what she said. Thank you for taking the time to explain and clarify it for me.