Himizu

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Himizu is a story of hopelessness and ultimatums. It gives you a third person view on the compromises we make to ourselves and how it affects our outlet on life. Reading Himizu reminded me more about reality than I would have liked. You will find no fantasies or dreams in Himizu, only the cold hard truth.

The story of Himizu is about Sumida, a teenage boy in his third year of middle school. He has no passions or goals, and only wishes to live a normal life without being bothered or bothering others. But sometimes life isn't that simple. With his parents ... abandoning him and his existence straying from what most would consider 'normal', Sumida finds himself cornered. Himizu has some of the darkest themes I've come across. Each chapter dragged me into despair, but I was also completely absorbed into the story. Sumida's narrative is definitely the selling point of this manga.

One would usually expect an author to try and create characters you will like and love. However, Himizu does quite the opposite: I hate every single character in this manga. Chazawa Keiko, the pushy girl who holds unnecessary expectations for Sumida. Shozo, the trash friend who leeches off of others. Sumida, the hypocrite who is basically depressions incarnate. Each one of them I hate, but at the same time I also grew attached to them. I found myself placing hope in them, hoping that they would turn a new leaf or find the answer to their problems.

Art for Himizu isn't exactly easy on the eyes. The author often over exaggerates expressions in an unpleasant manner, almost as if he's trying to add dark humor. It's the perfect style for the mood of the story and it really molds that dark realism into the story. I have no complaints on the art at all, but keep in mind this manga is old and the art reflects that.

Himizu is not something that I can outright say that I 'enjoyed', but I am extremely glad that I read it. It's is an experience that I will likely never forget and I hope that you won't either.

Himizu, we could quite fairly say, is a mature slice-of-life manga but with a dark setting and focusing more on the evils of society, rather than the flowery elements that a lot of people are privileged to have.

It follows the story of Sumida Yuuichi, a teenager boy who was bestowed by the worst of parents, which in turn made him want to grow up to be a good, decent person without much ambition in life but just to achieve the seemingly easiest task of being someone who wouldn’t ever harm anybody. All he ever wished to do was lazily spend out his life like ... a Himizu, a mole at his small home with his small boat house. But life isn’t that easy, and neither is experiencing a trauma of having bad parents. Sometimes, it’s hard to overcome your demons and people end up doing things that they never would have imagined they would.

But when such a thing actually happens, what do you actually do? How do you make up for the sin that you committed? How do you quieten the noises screeching at the back of your head? How do you simply go on with your life like nothing happened? Do you commit more sins that are favourly good for some people to justify your sin? Or do you face it? Or do you simply just choose to silence the noises the easiest way?
Himizu explores just these questions through the life of a teenage boy and the connections he has had with people. While some works are about character development, Himizu rather presents you with the cold truth of existence and explores what goes on in the mind of one such soul.

Himizu is a hard manga to describe, but I think it is essentially a manga dedicated to deconstruction. What is it deconstructing? Seemingly the idea of ‘a dream’ and what it means to chase it.

On the surface, it seems to be about juxtaposition of someone who desires to live a normal life vs those fighting to achieve a grand dream and what each are going through in order to achieve their respective desires. Underneath? Well, that’s debatable, but all is not as it seems.

But how is the actual manga?

The plotline moves along in a slow pace seeming to say little to nothing at times, but ... it does progress steadily. It also contains a lot of disturbing imagery and suggestions. Parts of it have also prompted me to include the warning that the manga contains child sexual abuse.

Now we’re talking about Japanese manga which has an endless array of ‘lolis’, sexually provocative ‘imoutos’, and etc, so it sort of seems analogous to complaining about seeing men’s underwear in a Superman comic. However, Himizu does it in a rather more realistic way easily making readers feel VERY uncomfortable.

Moving on from that disturbing thought, another aspect of Himizu that can be brought up is the art.

In short, it is awful, especially in the beginning. At best, it can be considered ‘half decent’, but whenever characters get emotional, they become horrifically ugly caricatures. Thing is that it seems intentional and a method of expressing a symbolic point by the author. There are parts where you see very well drawn art and, at times, the characters can look amazingly human in their expressions and very well drawn, but unfortunately, they’re rare.

I want to say it doesn’t detract from the manga…but it does. I tried to ignore it, but I could only do so when the bad art is used sporadically. Otherwise, I am constantly cringing. Luckily, it gets toned down as you move further on (which actually relates to the story too), so it does get bearable.

Yet another aspect I can talk about are the subplots of the story. All manga have subplots sometimes to amuse, sometimes to add complexity, sometimes to attract more than one type of readers, and etc. Himizu’s subplots? They tend to be pretty bad.

The characters they’re centered around tend to be unlikable for a variety of reasons plus they’re also a large source of the manga’s disturbing imagery. Similar to the art, though, it does eventually get better and even becomes interesting, so the manga does have that going for it.

However, to summarize so far, the art is awful, the manga seem to revel in disturbing imagery, and the subplots are terrible…but they all do eventually get better as you go along. The question remains, though, why did I continue reading beyond the horrible beginning instead of abandoning the manga outright?

Well, luckily, the manga is heavily driven by the MC, Sumida.

He seems like a simple character, yet as you learn more about him, you realize the utter contradiction that he is. Everything he says is the truth, yet simultaneously also a lie. It soon becomes plain and easy to see (and hell, the manga even outright says it), but startling once it hits you and turns the MC into a genuinely complex human being rather than just a manga character.

The interest keeps at it just long enough that I lasted until the manga became much better and the surrounding details improved – admittedly without my notice until much afterwards.

The short of it is that the MC, Sumida, essentially drives the entire manga.

And that is why I would recommend this manga. It is the story of a person who has no dream but simultaneously has one and we are introduced to his struggle through life as he tries to find a path to achieving his desire.

Struggling through the bad parts of the manga is, I think, worth it to reach the true worth of the story.