Himizu

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Alternative Titles

Japanese: ヒミズ

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 4

Chapters: 43

Status: Finished

Published: Jan 29, 2001 to Mar 11, 2002

Genre: Drama

Theme: Psychological

Demographic: Seinen

Serialization: Young Magazine (Weekly)

Authors: Furuya, Minoru (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 7.40¹ (scored by 3,868 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #3641²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1331

Members: 13,387

Favorites: 232

Resources

Wikipedia

7.40

Ranked #3641Popularity #1331Members 13,387

MangaYoung Magazine (Weekly)Furuya, Minoru (Story & Art)

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Volumes: /4

Chapters: /43

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Synopsis

Every day in Japan, 2500 people die due to any number of causes. Do you think you'll be one of the ones to die? No, of course not. Do you think you'll win the lottery? You'd like to think so, we all would. But Sumida is different. He wants the status quo to remain in every way; live a normal life, get a normal job, have normal kids, never to be anyone fortunate or unfortunate, content in normalcy. Anyone who doesn't agree is foolish, doomed to live their life scraping up a mountain that they can never conquer, fated to die in despair wishing things had been better.

When his mother kicks his father out of the house and onto the streets, he thinks he'll be fine. When his mother leaves him to live with her boyfriend, he makes the best of it. When he realizes that he's no longer average, he strives to make his life worthwhile the only way he knows how. When the demons in the back of his mind speak to him, he tries his best to ignore them.

(Source: MU)

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Background

Himizu was adapted into a live-action film directed by Sion Sono which was screened in 2012.

More characters
Characters

Sumida, Yuuichi

Main

Akada, Kenichi

Main

Chazawa, Keiko

Supporting

Shozo, Yoruno

Supporting

More reviewsReviews

Jan 26, 2015

Ryugen

Recommended

May contain light spoilers:

Himizu is a story of hopelessness and ultimatums. It gives you a third person view on the compromises we make to ourselves and how it affects our outlet on life. Reading Himizu reminded me more about reality than I would have liked. You will find no fantasies or dreams in Himizu, only the cold hard truth.

The story of Himizu is about Sumida, a teenage boy in his third year of middle school. He has no passions or goals, and only wishes to live a normal life without being bothered or bothering others. But sometimes life isn't that simple. With his parents ...

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Oct 13, 2015

MangaGreat

Mixed Feelings

Himizu is a hard manga to describe, but I think it is essentially a manga dedicated to deconstruction. What is it deconstructing? Seemingly the idea of ‘a dream’ and what it means to chase it.

On the surface, it seems to be about juxtaposition of someone who desires to live a normal life vs those fighting to achieve a grand dream and what each are going through in order to achieve their respective desires. Underneath? Well, that’s debatable, but all is not as it seems.

But how is the actual manga?

The plotline moves along in a slow pace seeming to say little to nothing at times, but ...

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Dec 28, 2015

Dietrologia

Mixed Feelings

It struck while reading Himizu that it is in many ways the archetypal seinen manga, at least as far as public perception is concerned.

The shounen demographic at large focuses on power fantasies and more simplistic, idealized characters and values and in the case of battle shounen, more of a focus on action (shounen jump's motto is, after all, "friendship, effort, and victory"). The seinen demographic, however, tends to have a far more cynical outlook on life, unafraid to show the raw ugliness of human beings and a higher focus on the psychology and flaws of the characters, and tends to be a bit TOO liberal ... with its narrative freedom, including a lot of gore and sexual content (though of course many of them still remain great stories).

All of this is consistent with Himizu's artistic goals; it is a story about ugly, weak people. The main character despises others with ambitions and dreams and hides this under speech about wanting normalcy. His closest friend is a bucktoothed spineless weasel who skips class and is a pickpocket. One of their initial acquaintances is a fat slob who wants to be a mangaka because of some meaningless dream he had the other night. The main character's love interest is a plain-looking, bizarre girl. About the only well-adjusted and respectable character you see is the mangaka, who actually gets published and has his ambitions realized.

This is all fine, as it's been repeatedly shown that a character's moral fiber has nothing to do with how good of a character they are, and in fact many times horrible people will be far compelling than a straightforward good guy.

The main issue with Himizu is that...it isn't horrible, but doesn't EXCEL in anything it really does, barring one or two minor things. It tries to have the psychological storyline with pathetic, weak characters common to seinen manga, but while most of them aren't really BAD, they aren't really that great either. Besides being weak and terrible most of them don't have that much in the way of psychological complexity, excluding the main character who is by far the best character in the manga. Sometimes having simple characters can be fine, but here the characters, while "realistic" to a certain point, just don't have as much going for them as I would like.

The storyline also spends a lot of time focusing on these other characters, and while these subplots are never really BORING, they also distract from the main conflict that the MC is going through since the characters in them just aren't as interesting. The storyline left me...confused at what it was trying to achieve exactly?

The manga's art isn't bad. There are a few moments of genuine greatness, like the representation of the "demon" that haunts the MC's mind, which is very effective and disturbing, but otherwise, it's mostly just ok.

Overall, besides the confused story structure, there isn't much WRONG with Himizu, per se, but it just feels very average in its execution of the typical elements of seinen manga. I have seen many others which have done what Himizu is trying to do in a much more interesting and frankly better way, like Homunculus or Ressentiment. I don't regret reading it by any means, but it is a story that I would have probably liked much more like 5 years ago when I hadn't read as much manga as I have now.

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Poll: Himizu Chapter 31 Discussion Zhou - Jul 11, 2013	6 replies	by kamikaze_25 »» Apr 3, 5:03 AM
Poll: Himizu Chapter 29 Discussion Zhou - Jun 29, 2013	2 replies	by kamikaze_25 »» Apr 2, 9:24 AM
Poll: Himizu Chapter 8 Discussion TheNapalm99 - Jan 3	0 replies	by TheNapalm99 »» Jan 3, 5:26 PM
Poll: Himizu Chapter 6 Discussion TheNapalm99 - Jan 3	0 replies	by TheNapalm99 »» Jan 3, 5:16 PM
Poll: Himizu Chapter 4 Discussion TheNapalm99 - Jan 3	0 replies	by TheNapalm99 »» Jan 3, 4:44 PM

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