Bitter Virgin

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This is the 'A Crow Looked At Me' by Mount Eerie album in manga form

What happens when a truly crushing reality of the darkest aspects of humanity intertwine with a standard coming of age romance? Well I would probably say this story is the closest fit to it.

The main protagonist (Suwa) is a wannabe womanizer that accidentally hears his timid classmate's absolutely harrowing past full of sexual assault, trauma, and guilt while hiding in a confession booth. The setup is pretty good, and the story that follows is engrossing. It moves at a steady pace and I was never bored with it, which would be ... an issue for such a short series.

The art is pretty consistently above average, but nothing mind blowing. However I will give credit to Kusunoki that their ability to express shock and guilt on facial expressions is to be noted. Aside from that, nothing crazy.

The main aspect that I find issue with is the characters. Suwa is shown at first to be selfish and a womanizer, but is shown through his later actions to be a pretty selfless and caring person through empathizing with the other main character Hinako Aikawa.
Hinako is sadly more or less, more the summation of the things that have happened to her, rather than a character that had these things occur in her life. Aside from being a victim of sexual assault, she is not shown to have many interests or character quirks other than falling for who she falls for. Which is another issue I have with the next character.
Holy shit Ibuse was unbearable. She had no character other than being madly in love with Suwa. Even though they barely have had a surface level conversation? I guess she can be classified more as a stalker, but then why would Suwa bother to even entertain her intentions, as she is clearly psychotic and Suwa is likely aware of this even before he meets his love interest.
I got not a whole lot to say about Yuzu, she was fine I guess.

Im giving a special section to Izumi Suwa. Easily the best character in this story. Between choosing to keep her child on her own terms, even if the father chose not to be there because of the circumstances leading to the pregnancy, and living as a single mother and not seeing a problem being a single mother as she wants to love the child as much as she possibly can. Being an awesome older sister when Ibuse stalks Suwa home and she calls her out, while still trying to appeal to her humanity and flawed character of being an obsessive adolescent.


*** SPOLIERS***

The scene where Izumi has her stillbirth is haunting. Absolutely tragic. The panel of her wailing as her child was delivered dead, holding onto it as it goes from warm to cold. Holy fuck. And when she asks Suwa if he wants to hold it. Let me say as someone who has been in this position before I had to put the story down for awhile. And to then go over how even after the stillbirth happens, to go over the process of the medical procedures and check ups afterwards, and the psychological affects of it. I think this was handled incredibly well.

Overall, I recommend this story. Would I say I enjoyed it? I can't say I did. I dont think this is a story to be enjoyed, as this is a dark and bleak story that tells of finding solace in the face of absolutely harrowing circumstances. Again, I find it similar to the album A Crow Looked at Me, by Mount Eerie for those who are familiar

I've been thinking a bit about this story and what it's trying to convey through Aikawa. As I've read the review of
another user specifically critiquing Aikawa's lack of character or rather her character being defined too much by trauma
which she has suffered, I began to wonder whenever it's morally right.
Is it morally correct to accuse a person (or fictional character) of being defined too much by their trauma ? How could
they not be ? After all trauma is something incredibly haunting that keeps it's fangs deeply
within you until you wither away or decide to do something about it.
Aikawa is a character that was ... not too uncommon in the 2000s. With her big round bug eyes, bangs over forehead and a shy
kind response that you saw coming from miles away. In other words....boring. We don't know what she likes to do in her
free time, we don't know what aspirations she has for the future, we don't know anything that would make her "dynamic".
Precisely therein I believe lies the problem. Has her lack of "living" been imposed upon her by trauma or simply
bad writing ? Only thing that adds "spice" to Aikawa is her terrible abuse which she has suffered under her stepfather.
The only thing that is disrupting this story and refusing to let it be just another harem manga in mid-2000s.
She may not be doing anything in her free time that we would describe as a hobby. But she is doing something.
By endlessly being forced to think about her past and being held a hostage by it, Aikawa's boring character ends up
being a result of something disruptive happening within her life. As if the story perhaps subconsciously acknowledges
that such a cliché protagonist can only exist as a byproduct of something terrible. And suddently the archetype of this
shallow, shy, tame girl recieves a backstory and a purpose for its existence. In Bitter virgin, this archetype can only
exist under these circumstances. It turns her from archetype into an original. Unique. Her shyness, shallowness are a
sign of trauma. Her kindness and cheerfullness are a sign of resistance to said trauma. The unavoidable effect of
trauma comes into play. It both forms and deforms her. Ultimatelly, this is a story not about overcoming trauma but
making the first step to do so. And the first step is realising and accepting that you are a deserving of love.
That you are worthy of it. The potential of Aikawa's character can only be realised once she overcomes her past. After
which she will no longer be defined by the horror of trauma but rather the journey she took to overcome it. Journey
filled with love and support that will help her blossom and find her "true character".


Of course the more realistic interpretation is that mangaka added the horror of rape onto the archetype of Aikawa and
it simply did not change her that much. The archetype remained the same. Only "spice" was added to hide its unoriginallity.
Most other characters act as narrative tools to get our protagonists where they need to be. With the exception of
Daisuke's sister that I genuinely liked. She complimented Aikawa's and Daisuke's stories while remaining her own person
throughout. Ibuse Kazuki on the other hand only existed to prolong the story by 20 chapters. It is when I remember
Kazuki's character I realise that my "positive" interpretation of Aikawa is futile. Much like her, Kazuki too is an
archetype. So is Daisuke and pretty much everyone else besides Suwa Izumi, Daisuke's sister. Hints of potential
uniqueness that could have been added into their characters end up being nothing more than my own schizophrenic
delusions. The writing relies too much on coincidences and drawn out repetitive dialogue.

Prehaps it was precisely this cliché world of harem that mangaka was aiming for. Maybe she wanted to explore these
themes with archetypes that most of us are familiar with. The idea that rape or miscarriege can happen to anyone.
People around that you are familiar with just like these archetypes or even to you.

I'll start off by saying maybe my expectations were a little too high. I wanted to read it as it looked similar to Onani Master Kurosawa which got better with each volume to end up as one of my favorites.
As I read Bitter Virgin, the beginning was just mediocre but I gave it a second chance and kept reading it until the very last panel. [Btw I thought there'll be a few more chapters after that, so a weak ending like that managed to make the aftertaste feel ever worse somehow.]
I could sum up whole plot development with "random bull***t go" meme, that was the ... only reaction I was getting far often for manga that has just 30 chapters.
It's sad that it wanted to tell something to readers but eventually nothing came out of it, it kept juggling between carefree school romance and trying to get people feel empathetic for Hinako. While it tried to squeeze as much as possible from this tragedy it failed to show empathy itself. I just couldn't believe that you can make such insensitive lines and act like it was the right move and the same thing happened more than once. I don't want to blame the author too much, maybe this was a bad case of translation barrier, but even if that's the main cause of my perception of dialogues in this manga, the original version can't be that much better so it's mediocre at best.
In summary I could easily forgive it if it happened once or twice but multiple plot developments just felt forced and didn't really add anything which later snowballed into the whole story not conveying anything at all. Which also made dialogues worse as they had to fix past errors and make more unrealistic jumps to push things forward all while not being empathetic enough which is the worst thing you could do when trying to deal with traumatic events.
Sidenote: about another thing that happened too many times... first her father then her step father [multiple times] and then that guy on the street... Like I said you can't make people feel more emapthetic just by adding numbers to rape count. That was the final straw that made me know it won’t get better.