Shinai naru Boku e Satsui wo Komete
My Dearest Self With Malice Aforethought

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As someone working in the psychology field, it always fascinates me how writers portray persons with mental disorders. I have always been a fan of the mystery and suspense genre, what I like is especially how they write characters with mental disorders. But like I always tell my students, mental disorders portrayed in fiction are not always a general representation of that disorder. This manga tells a story of the protagonist with Dissociative Identity Disorder, one of the rarest mental disorders in America and yet it's the most trivialized and more fictional books have been written with this disorder than any of the common ones. ... So, my perspective in writing this review is as a fan of the mystery and suspense genre and not as a psychologist. So I will not critique the inaccurate writing of someone with DID because like I said, there is still so little research about it, especially the cause and how the symptoms manifest.

STORY: 10
It starts up really quickly it's about Urashima Eiji an ordinary student who went out drinking and then, woke up with a girlfriend and no recollection of what happened. As a reader, I was treated with clues that I would piece together, I like that the author didn't underestimate the readers and tried to subvert expectations in the wrong way. All I can say is that the predictability of the plot is good, the plot twists are there to confirm what the reader has been speculating. It's the joy of being a mystery reader that your hunches and speculations are right. It just shows that the writer is capable of sprinkling in clues and foreshadowing in his writing.

I like how the theme of the story was explained in the end and that it really connects with the title. The story also tackled not only one mental disorder but several others such as PTSD and ASPD (also one of the rarest and trivialized mental disorders).


ART: 9

I like that the art doesn't shy away from the darkness of the story. I like the semi-realistic art of it. I don't really critique much about the art but I like it, I wish though that U Eiji and H Eiji have a distinct art to them like the fashion choices for example, so that the readers can clue in more who is U Eiji and H Eiji.

Enjoyment: 10

Overall it was a thrilling ride it's a page-turner every chapter.

OVERALL: 10 It's a good read a thrilling escape from reality.

I really like these psychotic thrillers about crazy people, yet this one is somewhat disappointing. Not because it is bad per se. The art is quite good, the writing is fine, the characters are layered, and the story itself is quite consistent, yet the whole manga felt like a homework. If you didn't read thrillers with split personalities you may find it interesting, but this one follows the standard script step by step. At some point in the middle of the 34th chapter it made me belive for a short time, that it may be different, but it was a short-term hope since at the ... end of the same chapter it already made crystal clear that there will be nothing new here.

Characters: How should I put this? They are complex, well fleshed out and their motivations are well founded, yet they still managed the be cliché characters. Also, despite their complexity they actions still remained one-dimensional. So in the end I didn't find any of them particularly interesting. I would like to keep this review spoiler free, and I cannot really write much more about them without somewhat spoiling the story, but I could mumble a lot about why they are so lacking.

The story: Again, the integrity is pretty good, but because of the countless ex-machina and convinietly introduced new characters it felt pretty subpar. Not to mention the most blatant issue with the stories like this. Namely, the fact that the MC's split personality is shamlessly used to keep the mistery going. I find this a really lazy way to keep the reader guessing. A cheap plot convinience tool and it quickly became pretetious. Not that it has a surprising ending what you cannot easily guess, if you've read a few similar stories. However, in a good mistery story the answer is lying in front of your nose, yet you don't notice, but here everything that happened felt like a deliberate attempt to misdirect the reader from the obvious answer.

In the end I wouldn't call this one bad, because it is not. It is just unoriginal. So as I said at the beginning, if you are new to the genre I can recommend it, but if you are looking for something new this is not the manga you are looking for.

**SPOILERS**

Repost/Edit to help explain more.
I was enjoying the manga until it's revealed the main character "gave" himself DID (Dissociative identity disorder, formally known as Multiple personality disorder). To me it felt massively like a cop out with little to no setup as to how he actually "gave" himself DID. He simply decides to form it as a tool to get revenge, the story goes into little to no detail as to how he even did this. It feels as if DID was slapped onto the story as an afterthought. I enjoyed the built up/mystery the series had for a lot of its chapters but felt ... the reveal of DID really did bring it down. I feel as though there are many better ways to utilize the core components of DID in a fictional story.
The use of real mental illness in media and entertainment is a tricky thing to portray and the way DID is portrayed in this particular manga makes me extremely uncomfortable to say the least. I could not enjoy the manga after the way it used DID almost as a fix all for its plot holes with seemingly little to no research nor creative twist to the mental disorder.

Please stop sending me hateful messages and death threats simply because I do not enjoy this manga. I'm allowed to have an opinion that differs from yours.