Happiness

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I confess that I didn't have high expectations, but this ended up being my first manga that I added to my favorites, it simply exceeded my expectations, I recommend it 100%. The evolution of the characters was surgical in terms of changing the feelings you develop for them, creating affection, for example yuki and saku who had great development, I finished reading in 2 days I won't go into so many details, I recommend that you go and draw your own conclusions, maybe you don't agree with me but that's my opinion and I really think it was worth it. This is the first time ... I've written a comment. (I confess that I cried a few times)

So far I read 4 manga from this author. Flowers of evil, Inside Mari, Welcome back Alice and Happiness, being the last one the only one that I didn’t find special in any way.

The usual eeriness that the author depicts is here masked by the inherently horrific theme and physical violence. I see no psychological horror or reflection on the human being. That alone doesn’t make the manga bad in any way, it just doesn’t deliver the same as the other manga I read from the same author.

What I think makes it more of a bad than a good product is the abrupt change in ... the story a little further than the middle point. Up to half the story it is interesting, engaging, the characters are advancing in their daily life, the horror fantasy elements advance too… everything alright. Not the greatest, but interesting enough to keep reading. But then the focus shifts and the events and characters are not really that interesting, especially compared to the first half.

Another problem I have with this manga is that I’m not sure what the message is, if there is any, or what the audience is supposed to get from this. As a fantasy story, it’s not really that interesting, and as a social commentary it feels very bland.

The art here doesn’t shine either. It’s not bad, and it has the same style as the other manga I read, but I didn’t find a single panel particularly interesting. Anyway, the art wasn’t the problem for me at all.

In my opinion, adding actual supernatural elements weakened the ability of the author to find horror and creepiness in realistic characters and settings and the final delivery is a not so interesting vampire story that doesn’t go anywhere and almost nothing is said.

If nothing else, this manga was extremely sensible. Usually, when ending a manga, you will think "Yeah, that's a good stopping point", "What the fuck? Where's the rest of it?", or "Yeah you should've ended this 50 chapters ago". This one was an "Oh, okay" ending. Everything in the manga was extremely clear, every action every character took made perfect sense within the context of the motifs of the manga, the small romance subplot made sense, the budding friendship made sense, the motivation of the guru made sense, and the conclusion of the arc with Nora made perfect sense. This series is incredibly well thought ... out and well planned in terms of the characters.

You might then wonder why I rated this a 4. The reason is simply that there is NOTHING good about this series beyond what I listed above. In the first few chapters, the series is actually very fun to read and the characters are really compelling and you can really get immersed into the thoughts and feelings of our main characters. Their dynamics are fun, and their relationships are enjoyable. You can kind of tell when things are about to go south from the atomsphere. The artstyle tells you this is not going to be a happy story. When things start to go south, everything is compelling, but then there is this blurry part in the middle, where while every action in the story makes sense, the events themselves don't feel congruent to the beginning. Then, there's essentially a cut and we read almost an entirely different story which is totally irrelevant to the original story besides the fact that these characters know each other.

Happiness is like reading two really good stories forcibly glued together, except when you get to the second good story, it feels like a slap in the face because you were hoping to actually finish the first one. So everything after that point feels like another slap in the face, because even though all of the character arcs are resolved in a way that makes sense, their resolution almost feels disconnected from the first story.

This book is honestly leagues better than most other manga I've read in terms of story, plot, characters, and introspection. However, in terms of manga ABOUT story, plot, characters, and introspection, it's just abysmal. It's just a ginormous disappointment when you compare it to greats like Koe no Katachi, Distant Sky, The Horizon, etc.