Watashi no Youna Minikui Musume
An Ugly Daughter Like Me

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

My first review.

This was an overall enjoyable One-Shot. If you're into Ero-Guro and Horror, you might be interested in this one. I advise everybody else to stay away from it, since it might be a little disturbing.
I am now going to point out why I liked it.

Story: 7/10
The idea of the story is really interesting. You have probably heard of occurences like that before on the news. This story shows the feelings of both characters and doesn't fail at it. It gives you a fair insight on what the life of both must be like. Also, it doesn't fail to scare you towards the ... end, so the horror-elements are present as well.

Art: 10/10
There are no flaws. Really beautiful and detailed drawings with a dark tone to it, both in colour and atmosphere. The faces are also very detailed, you can read their emotions. The body proportions are also really close to reality.

Character: 8/10
Especially the feelings of the daughter are very well conveyed. You can see her motivations and her way of thinking, since this One-Shot also shows how she was brought up.
The father's character is quite unique as well, and you can understand how deep his love for his daughter must be, even though he acts out on it in a grotesque way.

Enjoyment: 7/10
Due to the flawless paintings and dark atmosphere, it was an enjoyable, short read. The shivers it gave me at the end were also really fitting, and...

...that's what made it into an overall very enjoyable read, which is why I gave it an 8/10 at the end.

Honestly, the story itself was nasty and upsetting. The body horror was great, and that's the reason I read the manga, but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone else since the incest and emotional manipulation within it was highly disturbing.

In a way, the story did its job; I finished reading it like maybe 10 minutes ago, and I'm still disgusted and upset, and I'll probably continue feeling uneasy for a while. It gave me the feeling of the smell of old books in a used book store, if that makes sense? It wasn't frightening in like a monster sort of way, but more in ... a way like "this is something that could happen in real life", and that's probably the worst part.

Basically, I hated the incest and abuse aspect of the manga, but I suppose that was a really important part of it as well since it made me extremely uncomfortable, which is a form of horror, I guess. I liked the body horror though, and for me that was kind of the reward for reading it because it was not very enjoyable.

The first of Jun Hayami's works that I walked away from thinking "I enjoyed reading that." It's obvious from the second page what's going on (think the movie Dogtooth), but it plays out in a different way than you'd expect--especially the ending, which reminded me of the weird swerves something like Bruce Jones' Twisted Tales used to make.

The characterization is a lot better than the two dimensional predators and prey that make up most of the other Hayami I've read--there's still that dynamic here, but there's more agency to both sides.

My only complaint is that the incident that sets the second half of the ... plot in motion doesn't really make sense.