Ura Baito: Toubou Kinshi - Vol. 10 Ch. 119 - Supermarket Employee ③

[Vainfire]

Huh, interesting. Sort of squaring the circle on the two themes that the author has put forward consistently:
1. Japanese modernity sucks, and it's fake, and it's soulless (security guard story with the "blackest company", factory worker story where you lose your soul, Ryoutei story and the Snowy Mountain Hotel story which both mention that "this is the Reiwa era now", the persistent theme of exploitation at the hands of the rich and powerful)
2. You can't escape from reality, you can't blame anyone else for it, you have to live on your own two hands and walk on your own two feet (clinical trial with the "door", ghost marriage lady, doll memorial service, babysitter)

In this story, support for the first idea is represented by the "Mystery Man", who is everyone that has realized the fact that reality stinks and society kind of sucks. The mystery man is generally non-hostile. It seems to break up the mundanity of daily life, and it helps you realize this fact. Downside is that it seems like as part of becoming a Mystery Man, you might have to die? Shirota dies and then "becomes a Mystery Man" after all.

In support of the second idea is the entity of the Supermarket, who is empowered by everyone going through the trivialities of daily life. It feeds on everyone, apparently, and it controls everyone too—because everyone is subject to the vicissitudes of daily living. It is also extremely hostile to the Mystery Men—when Yume smelled trouble, it was only when they noticed or cared about the Mystery Men. Labeling them as "Mystery Man" made the scent disappear, as the supermarket backed off its hostility.

When corpses appear around the sightings of the Mystery Man, it's really not clear whether that's the Mystery Man's doing, or whether that's the Supermarket killing the Mystery Men. After all, the Mystery Men disappear and are replaced by dead people when Inner Line 9 is dialed and the Supermarket is alerted to their presence/location.

There are ways in which the story comes down on the side of Idea 1 and ways in which it comes down on the side of Idea 2. In support of Idea 1, we realize that the Mystery Men really aren't a big threat. They're non-hostile, basically dissenters who might be dead. In support of Idea 2, we see Yume chiding Shirota that daily life isn't that bad, isn't a cage... keep going dude, no need to die just yet.

 

[Enchiladas_de_Mole]

Theres so much to think about in this arc
Such a clear message of the daily chores of life that chain us
But yet so many things that can be open to interpretation
I was making a comment about how the supermarket and the mistery man were enemies
The supermarket controlling the lifes of the daily population and the mistery man waking people up only to be brutally killed (by either itself or the supermarket...)
But then again
Why should we believe or trust the information of the manager who sent our protagonists to die? Does he knows about the control of the supermarket? Is he but a minion of the being? Or maybe he has some esoteric way of living out of its control and getting profits from it...
Why are so many dead bodies appearing in the supermarket? and even more important, why are some of this bodies from people who realized the truth? are they placed by the mistery man in an effort to reduce the impact of the supermarket on the population (do people who realize the truth dont just explode? How can their bodies be on the supermarket. . .)
Why does the mistery man looked like shirotas mom and then like shirota himself? Can the mistery man just be whatever person he fancies or just the last person it freed?
My own theory Is that the supermarket and the mistery man are one in the same, my only argument is that we never saw it receive products so the products it sells are made of the people who realized the truth