Hen na Ie - Vol. 5 Ch. 21

[MangaDex]

 

[Bedlam123]

Fuck yeah! and its not over!

 

[Tsama0]

Just some thoughts after uploading the last two volumes.

• Holy mother of exposition, Batman! I thought the last volume was heavy on the text dump.
• Interesting how the branch family apparently still visited the main family even after the whole incest and hostile takeover thing.
• Dick move to allow your daughter to see her long-lost sister only after forcing her to read a letter the size of a novel and telling her the entire history of her family. Couldn't that wait until later?
• Not entirely sure when Shigeharu (the grandpa) was killed. I'm assuming Keita murdered him on the way to burying Kiyotsugu (tanned ponytail guy) since it seems to imply they were buried on the same mountain as the old house.
• A lot of you think Kurihara (light-haired architect/armchiar detective) is up to something. He actually shows up in Hen Na E (Strange Pictures) in a very similar role (and back in his college days), which is to introduce a mystery, drop some hints, and let the MC figure out the rest. As another reader pointed out, he's a plot device, and I don't see much evidence of him being more than that.
• That said, Kurihara always looks a little TOO happy with his "speculations."

 

[danbellucci]

Lol what the hell. I swear this plot only makes the slightest sense for Japanese or maybe east asian people. I can;t imagine any European culture where if your rich grand father tells you that you have to raise a child to murder people and cut off their , people would just do it because he's rich.

 

[danbellucci]

• Not entirely sure when Shigeharu (the grandpa) was killed. I'm assuming Keita murdered him on the way to burying Kiyotsugu (tanned ponytail guy) since it seems to imply they were buried on the same mountain as the old house.

I admit I read quite quickly and skimmed some parts but didn't it say he was found dead having wondered into the woods because of dementia?
if he was murdered by the husband then idk why the husband wouldn't admit it since he was already admiting to killing the other guy.
If Yuzuki was really trying to get revenge on shigeharu then surely there's a bunch of other ways that don;'t involve tricking your own husband into murdering a child and forcing your own daughter to raise a a child to commit murder? like she could have burnt the house down while shigeharu slept or poisoned him while making meals for him or a bunch of other things.

crazy.
Also, what's the point in going to all those lengths to avoid having Touya commit murder when you're still forcing touya to live in a single fucking room with no windows for 4 years of his life???
That's still outrageous child abuse done just because your wife is scared of her rich grandfather. Seriously what the hell?
His plan should have just been "as soon as we get married and become guardians of Touya, we take him to a local journalist who helps write a story and then go to a child psychologist who does an evaluation on Touya to confirm that severe abuse has taken place because Touya has been raised in a single room his whole life and is on no official register and has never gone to school then go to the police."

Bish bash bosh. Seriously what is rich grandpa going to do? He isn't a mafia don. He's one eccentric loony with a sycophantic nephew.

 

[ipmanvsthemask]

This should tagged horror, jfc.

 

[Exkalamity]

Wow I can't believe this is episodic. We get 11 new blueprints? Yippie.

I was screaming bloody murder when I saw the Kiyotsugu. He looked like the architect, so I was like "That's the connection, the architect wants revenge for his relative's death!"

According to the comments, I'm wrong, but still.

 

[klooqy]

read the officially translated novel recently and this adaptation feels more cohesive and has a slightly happier ending if you can believe it.

in the novel they never visit the grandparents' house or meet keita; all that time is spent talking with kurihara in a rented conference room. kurihara points out at the end that there's no proof that keita's letter was written by him and that it's weird for him to go so far for his high school sweetheart, and he thinks keita was somehow just as trapped as ayano was. he also speculates in the epilogue that keita is the unidentified dismembered corpse from the tokyo house

this is where the novel ends; the continuation is probably an adaptation of the sequel that's supposed to be published in english next year

 

[77BLc9JwJGpLVARkamJx]

Uh, so it will be all manga original houses now that the novel ended per above? I feel like if they are gonna churn out stories for the manga dateline then the quality gonna be meh but time will tell I suppose.

 

[BalrogDeMorgoth]

Oh, we're expending past the initial premise / mystery? That's cool.

 

[aaaaa8]

how many new houses can there possibly be?
Well, I'm not complaining lol I find this series quite entertaining regardless of how over the top it is

 

[StarGear]

Arc over, and it was all retarded(inbred) family drama.

 

[the_Bear_from_Bearcave]

I admit I read quite quickly and skimmed some parts but didn't it say he was found dead having wondered into the woods because of dementia?
if he was murdered by the husband then idk why the husband wouldn't admit it since he was already admiting to killing the other guy.
If Yuzuki was really trying to get revenge on shigeharu then surely there's a bunch of other ways that don;'t involve tricking your own husband into murdering a child and forcing your own daughter to raise a a child to commit murder? like she could have burnt the house down while shigeharu slept or poisoned him while making meals for him or a bunch of other things.

crazy.
Also, what's the point in going to all those lengths to avoid having Touya commit murder when you're still forcing touya to live in a single fucking room with no windows for 4 years of his life???
That's still outrageous child abuse done just because your wife is scared of her rich grandfather. Seriously what the hell?
His plan should have just been "as soon as we get married and become guardians of Touya, we take him to a local journalist who helps write a story and then go to a child psychologist who does an evaluation on Touya to confirm that severe abuse has taken place because Touya has been raised in a single room his whole life and is on no official register and has never gone to school then go to the police."

Bish bash bosh. Seriously what is rich grandpa going to do? He isn't a mafia don. He's one eccentric loony with a sycophantic nephew.

All right, so first, European culture was not at all different, when it still had aristocrats, there are books with similarly fucked up stories basically up until WW2. I remember reading book about some US couple go to Itallian countryside soon after war and get embroiled in bloody and cruel family story of local counts, where most stuff happened before war, when no one in the village/small town would have thought to oppose a local noble. That was all fiction, but so is this manga.

In modern days you can have rich people have underlings get them drugs and underage prostitutes, and in yakuza or mafia families - or cults - you can get somewhat similar "you can't leave the family, and you can't oppose evil stuff in family", but aristocracy adds the cult-like loyalty to "rich and powerful family" aspect, retainers serving them for generations, and allows for some fucked up family codes to persist because noble kids are normally raised believing in their duty to uphold family traditions anyyway. US didn't have aristocracy, and Europe doesn't really either since WW2, but I guess in some Asian countries the ethos of noble clan stayed for longer. And to be fair, it's still pictured as really weird and anachronistic in this story, it was supposed to be something of a bygone era.

As for Ayano and Keita, I can at least understand them being scared to go against family, if grandpa could already order both kidnapping of Touya, and take Ayano from her parents, with aunt Misaki just disappearing somehow. If mother and aunt couldn't oppose grandpa, they could believe it's just impossible. They could also risk losing Touya, since they weren't his real parents, and with whole family proved to be criminals Touya could be taken to orphanage. Since they only had to fake four murders, they could count on old guy dying and then getting free of this nonsense, without getting , very negative in Japan, stigma of being part of criminal family.

The real big plot hole is with both Yoshi and Misaki, especially Yoshi; normal adult women from normal families they could turn to support for, letting their kids be taken like that. They could stop the plan any time by working together and turning to police, they could even leak the plan to Soichiros and ask them to confront grandpa, which due to ridiculous requirements of ritual murders would make them impossible to carry out, sparing everyone the drama. And why didn't Misaki's family report anything about her to police?

Author tried to plug that hole with suggestion that Yoshi planned this and undermined Misaki, but this is even dumber version, and I agree with your criticism of that part. Why would she destroy her own family for revenge for her grandma's sibling? How would she know her older daughter wouldn't break and become murderer, doing grandpa's will? What would she plan to do if there wouldn't be any arm-less kid, and why didn't she use that plan instead of condemning her daughter to hell of being raised as future murderer and child abuser? Nothing about Yoshi or Misako makes sense. Mother could just stop the crazy ritual murder plan, and see grandpa go (more) crazy and die from heart attack, afraid of revenge of the ghosts.

 

[Umb3rus]

I am not too happy with how the mystery was resolved, it feels a bit like all the MCs investigating didn't really lead to anything.
But the mystery itself was very interesting nonetheless.
And I am very happy that we'll get another mystery, I can't get enough of our gender ambiguous MC <3

Thank you for translating ^^

 

[misopogon]

This was a shitty way to end things, but at least it did get a proper resolution. Not sure why it's going to continue, though?

 

[Fuzaki]

I admit I read quite quickly and skimmed some parts but didn't it say he was found dead having wondered into the woods because of dementia?
if he was murdered by the husband then idk why the husband wouldn't admit it since he was already admiting to killing the other guy.
If Yuzuki was really trying to get revenge on shigeharu then surely there's a bunch of other ways that don;'t involve tricking your own husband into murdering a child and forcing your own daughter to raise a a child to commit murder? like she could have burnt the house down while shigeharu slept or poisoned him while making meals for him or a bunch of other things.

crazy.
Also, what's the point in going to all those lengths to avoid having Touya commit murder when you're still forcing touya to live in a single fucking room with no windows for 4 years of his life???
That's still outrageous child abuse done just because your wife is scared of her rich grandfather. Seriously what the hell?
His plan should have just been "as soon as we get married and become guardians of Touya, we take him to a local journalist who helps write a story and then go to a child psychologist who does an evaluation on Touya to confirm that severe abuse has taken place because Touya has been raised in a single room his whole life and is on no official register and has never gone to school then go to the police."

Bish bash bosh. Seriously what is rich grandpa going to do? He isn't a mafia don. He's one eccentric loony with a sycophantic nephew.

I'm thinking he is affiliated with the yakuza through the nephew, Kiyotsugu. The guy looks and acts like a gang member at least. Kiyotsugu was watching their every move so they didn't want to put themselves in danger by exposing themselves. Still though, it is very common with these Japanese/Asian plots to directly avoid "confrontation" and always try to indirectly or passively approach them and never ask for or get outside help because they hate "inconveniencing" others. The fact that the grandpa has so much power, as a murderer, is definitely a harder pill to swallow though. Even his kids don't want to take part in the curse, yet they did the craziest things to try and stop it, especially when it came to Misaki (who also didn't go to the police even though she basically lost both her kids). This is especially true when it comes to getting help. If you've ever read Japanese horror stories, especially those with cults, it's very common for characters to avoid explaining the conflict.

 

[jrocker]

read the officially translated novel recently and this adaptation feels more cohesive and has a slightly happier ending if you can believe it.

in the novel they never visit the grandparents' house or meet keita; all that time is spent talking with kurihara in a rented conference room. kurihara points out at the end that there's no proof that keita's letter was written by him and that it's weird for him to go so far for his high school sweetheart, and he thinks keita was somehow just as trapped as ayano was. he also speculates in the epilogue that keita is the unidentified dismembered corpse from the tokyo house

this is where the novel ends; the continuation is probably an adaptation of the sequel that's supposed to be published in english next year

I mean that is something that makes a lot of sense since that would allow for the whole situation to continue without real repercussion. It would be just enough to end the mystery without a resolution so it could continue. I think they kept that vibe with the exposition about the mother in the chapter as it implies a deeper layer may exist that is benefitting from the decision

 

[fight2live]

i'm just happy we got more

 

[Vainfire]

Cool little series that got me to think much harder about how to draw conclusions from overlooked evidence. Perhaps we won't discover murder-homes, but there are other things to uncover. How much can we tell of a culture by the houses they build? Surely American McMansions say something by their floor plan, if we dig hard enough...

 

[Yukizakurasou]

read the officially translated novel recently and this adaptation feels more cohesive and has a slightly happier ending if you can believe it.

in the novel they never visit the grandparents' house or meet keita; all that time is spent talking with kurihara in a rented conference room. kurihara points out at the end that there's no proof that keita's letter was written by him and that it's weird for him to go so far for his high school sweetheart, and he thinks keita was somehow just as trapped as ayano was. he also speculates in the epilogue that keita is the unidentified dismembered corpse from the tokyo house

this is where the novel ends; the continuation is probably an adaptation of the sequel that's supposed to be published in english next year

I guess it's because the novel wants to keep up the veneer of being autobiographical while the manga seems to do away with it?