I didn’t want to bother with this text, and I hate to be the person who argues with the way others read, but the reviews here bug me a bit. I’ve seen the same complaints about Freesia, and yet again I don’t understand some of them. The first being that the manga lacks plot, the second is the lack of social commentary.
While I agree that many plotlines here stay unresolved (namely the plotlines of individual characters remain tangles of hints and suppressed memories until and past the end), the main progression is pretty clear and is, more importantly, explained by the characters themselves. What we see here is sort of a shift change in the local purgatory – the place where the dead transition to the otherworld. Perhaps the main storyline can even be considered simple, though it is loaded with psychological complications, non-linear episodes and surreal trips. And Becchin and Mandara is not centered about social stuff, nor did it ever intend to be, from what I see, although it does contain some jabs on current society. Yeah, there is war, but a background war is present in most of Jiro Matsumoto’s works.
Nor only do the events take place in the crossing place and some of the characters cross lines, it seems to me that this manga is sort of transitory for the mangaka too – a brief feverish return to Freesia and the subsequent shift to the warring shoolgirls period simultaneously. After all we see a character, that looks and acts like Hiroshi Kano (the protagonist of Freesia, who, here, talks about the author directly as if he had an experience of playing his part before), passing the relay baton to the mad schoolgirl Becchin. I wonder, if Jiro Matsumoto’s worlds altogether moved closer to hell after this, since the warring schoolgirls settings (in Houkago no Hiroko, Zenryou naru Itan no Machi, Joshi Kouhei) are so inhuman and bloody, and he is working on “Alice in Hell”… For some reason I find Bacchin to Mandara heart-wrenchingly sad. Oh, and btw, the 4th wall is broken a lot in this series – it’s filled to the brim with references to anime culture, mainly Gundam and Ghibly.
I don’t think I overanalyze it. When reading, mind it (if you don’t already) that Jiro Matsumoto’s manga tends to be built like a good literary work – besides the layer of the characters’ actions there’re motifs, composition, imagery that add an additional level. What character do isn’t necessary the very point of the work they inhabit. Things that seem random at first return and play important parts. But, yeah, sometimes its’ not easy to keep track, and not everything is connected in the end, unfortunately. Personally I felt a sense of conclusion, even though I couldn't understand everything.
The art is the usual gritty, graphical and overdetailed mess. The characteristic pitch-black humor is there. The gore is overabundant – if somebody isn’t raped, then somebody is killed or people talk nuts, usually all of this happens at once. Though in the end I ponder not why I read a manga with a schoolgirl shitting and retching at once, but the ecology of death. It was interesting to have a glimpse in Jiro Matsumoto’s cosmology too, he doesn’t focus on it often.
It’s a fine read for anyone familiar or ready for Jiro Matsumoto’s storytelling (forgive me for mentioning his name so many times, but it’s all so typical), but it may take effort to parse. If you fit these criteria, don’t be discouraged by the low rating. It’s rough but impactful.
