Plot of the manga can be summed up like so: idiot girl brings complete stranger into house one day, gets abducted by him, and then develops Stockholm Syndrome after she finds out that her captor is a mob boss with a troubled childhood. In other news, this is an escapist fantasy about being whisked away from a boring life at home and then being thrust into an exciting new life full of danger, risks, and other such things with a tall, dark, and handsome man guiding you through all these new experiences (intimate or otherwise).
I personally don't care much for escapist fantasies, but I can at least see the appeal behind them. For a girl who feels bored/wrapped up with their lives, the very prospect of being whisked away into a strange new world is something that may very well be worth fantasising over. Also, that prince charming whisking you away to his fancy mansion bullshit is so 1950s. If there's one thing that the 1980s taught us, it's that an adrenaline high will override everyone's common sense. There's nothing like the thrill of being caught up in a gunfight when you're in the middle of having a nice dinner with your new man and then tending to his wounds after the battle is over, among other such things... cough. So on that front, I suppose Haou Airen isn't /that/ abhorrent. It's certainly a frustrating read for me since I'm a dude who doesn't fantasise about any of this crap, but it's nothing worth getting my boxers in a knot over... yet.
However, this manga had to do /something/ to evoke my visceral outrage. Around the half-way point of the manga, the sexual moments between Hakuron and Kurumi devolve from James Bond-style "50 nos and a yes mean yes, so shut the fuck up and start sucking my old man dick" scenes into full-on brutal rape scenes that drop all the pretense completely. From that point forward, physical/emotional abuse coupled with sexual abuse in varying forms become a frequent occurrence in the manga. So you may be wondering here "what's so bad about this? Maybe it's trying to deconstruct the escapist fantasy it set up in the first place?" to which I say "fuck you and your overanalytical bullshit."
Aside from the fact that I have a markedly low tolerance for sexual violence or abuse, this evokes my visceral disgust because of the fact that this went from a story about a girl putting up with a dangerous new lifestyle with a sexy edgelord by her side to a story about a girl who falls in love with her rapist who frequently abuses her physically/psychologically. There's no self-awareness, no psychological commentary, let alone any moral ambiguity whatsoever (not like that would've helped out much though...). So what is the implication here? Does Mayu Shinjo honestly believe that frequent brutal rape and abuse is justifiable if it's done by a hot guy with a troubled past? I honestly don't know.
Now, it's not like this manga was any good before the half-way point: there were contrivances up the wazoo and if you're like me, odds are that your social justice/feminist senses were going off non-stop because of the fact that this manga is about a girl IN HIGH SCHOOL who gets abducted and spends most of the manga's runtime being sexually dominated by a powerful and wealthy man who CLEARLY has trouble understanding the concept of "consent" (sexual violence not withstanding). Also, this is just a minor note but the characters were nothing more than standard shojo smut archetypes: dumbass girl MC, sexy edgelord douchebag with a troubled past, all the bitches that try to get in the MC's way for edgelord dick but end up losing, the edgelord's friends who try to mack on his chick, etc. You get where I'm going with this. It may not seem apparent at first, but this is a manga that somehow manages to be more abominable than some of the most infamous pieces of horror gornography that exist in this world.
Say what you will about how horrifying A Serbian Film was, but at least all of the sexual violence in the movie had a point! For starters, Milosh was an aging porn star who was looking for a way to continue supporting his family, and then he got ensnared by Vukmir's smooth talk about creating a final porno that would bring glory back to Serbia (only to find out that Vukmir was a demented madman). On top of that, Srdjan Spasojevic has gone on the record saying that the underlying message of the film was that as a Serb, you're fucked when you're born and it doesn't stop even after you die (as evidenced by the infamous "NEWBORN PORN" scene and the final scene where a two men were about to film another man who was gonna have sex with the results of family suicide). So yeah, while A Serbian Film has WAY more objectionable content in it, the entire film had ample amounts of forethought, subtext, commentary, moral ambiguity, etc: stuff that Haou Airen had none of whatsoever.
I think the worst part about this entire ordeal also comes down to all the people on Kissmanga who were blathering on and on about how "romantic" this entire piece of shit was. In between the already piss-poor writing and the mortifying depictions of sexual violence without any hint of self-awareness, the unironic praise this manga received was enough to REALLY cement its place in my book as the WORST thing I've ever read, by far.
I can only imagine the kind of irreparable damage this manga can do to a person who was or still is going through some kind of sexual torment at the hands of someone whom they have feelings for. This manga is repulsive, abhorrent, and virtually every single negative adjective out there. This manga was not made, it was committed. You cannot read it, you can only inflict it upon yourself. Anyway, that's all for now. Feedback's always welcome and with that, I'm out. Peace :)
