Ranked #10998

Becchin to Mandala (Manga)

Becchin to Mandara is a story about two girls living in an abandoned battle tank at a dry Riverbed that spend their days exterminating zombies along-side a pantless man that lives in a small house nearby.
There isn't much to it other than that, though Becchin to Mandara does the whole zombie thing quite differently from what people are used to seeing, zombies actually talk and think, almost as normally, to the story's standards, as any other character there, so much so that it often feels like they are just slaughtering humans rather than zombies. Other than killing zombies, the story focuses on the main characters state of mind, their relationship, and how they met.

Story: 5/10
Unfortunately, the manga is a bit confusing, you'll often wonder what the characters are talking about since there are various sudden changes of subject, and most of the main points of the story are badly covered, with little to no backstory to help understand how stuff turned out how it is, stuff such as the origin of the zombies, the strange skull kids, the pantless man, and other supposedly important aspects, they are all left almost unspoken of, almost assuming the reader already knows what and how everything is. It doesn't help that the dialog is often confusing or sometimes completely unnecessary, which makes it quite tedious to read through.
You'll also find some somewhat disturbing scenes in later chapters, such as characters "taking a dumb" outdoors, the pantless mans penis, and a zombie raping scene, each of these quite explicitly illustrated, so be careful if you dislike that kind of thing, and to be honest, they don't really add anything to the manga, they seem added just for the sake of shock.

Characters: 3/10
There aren't much characters in Becchin to Mandara, you could say there are only three of them in total, and each character has a far-from-believable personality, Becchin may seem inhuman at times and Mandara is just plain retarded at times. Another aspect in their personalities are that non are very well established, Becchin is as often nice as she is incredibly mean, and Mandara is also as often retarded as she is not-as retarded.

Art: 4/10
The artwork has a very sketchy look to it, at first you may enjoy it if you're into sketchy looks, but it'll quickly wear-off on you and you'll realize it's just actually poorly drawn. The artwork is very inconsistent though, at times the backgrounds don't look too bad, and in others they look extremely cluttered and poorly drawn. The characters faces look very awkward more times than not, though they're not extremely bad.

Enjoyment: 3/10
Becchin to Mandara ends up being a quite tedious read and you might have to force yourself to read through the whole thing. That added with the subpar artwork, really leaves little to get out of reading it.

Overall: 4/10 read more

I love a story that will make me think. I love to question reality, even the reality of a fictional universe. If I need to watch or read something several times to understand it, then it is almost a guarantee that it will go in my closet full of wonderfully strange and complicated things. Velveteen & Mandala is not such a thing. It had the potential to be, but the presentation or lack of information and sheer intense strangeness of the story muddles this up.

The art is different, to say the least. It is very sketchy, while remaining quite detailed. I think this adds to the story considerably, almost speaking to state of the title character’s minds. This being said, I am not familiar with Jiro Matsumoto’s work, and as such don’t know if this is intentional or a fluke. I was able to see the emotions on every character’s face quite plainly, though, from the variety of annoyances that cross Velveteen to the sheer emptiness of Mandala’s head, everything is quite clear.

The book itself does not know what it wants to be. It jumps from a cute black comedy focusing on the relationship between two mentally disturbed girls to disgusting rape/scat porn with the change of a chapter. This is interesting when handled well, but this was not handled well. Everything seems to come together in the end, but is too scattered in the beginning for that to really matter. I believe that Matsumoto had a concept in mind and just did not know where to start or how to get his points across.

Velveteen & Mandala is not nearly everything it could be. I was thoroughly intrigued by the world the characters lived in, but I feel as though it required a considerably larger amount of thought and story before it would have been able to reach its full potential.

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