Zankoku na Kami ga Shihai suru

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The artwork is really eye-catching at times, great detail, very beautiful and distinct. A dramatic story that really grabs you from the very first pages. I come across this manga by accident, and was so glad I did.

It's a detailed story although the page count isn't high, a lot of info is discussed for a manga and things go on. It is a continuing series, so I will look forward to reading more from this writer.

Words cannot describe how much I love this manga. First of, I don't read shojo manga and I'm surprised by how hooked I was with a series that doesn't particularly cater to my tastes . Without getting into massive spoilers, A Cruel God Reigns is about Jeremy, a young man who is blackmailed by his stepfather Greg, after he marries his suicidal mother Sandra. If Jeremy doesn't comply, Greg will divorce Sandra which may be the last straw to push her off the edge and end her life. This manga is heavy, and I am only briefly going over what it's about.

I believe this manga ... has some of the best depictions of mental illness and of those who fall victim to sexual assault. The leads in this story are complex broken people. While it is easy to blame Jeremy for not telling the truth to authorities, the work shows the viewer that the state of mind of these victims are very much clouded by terror and anxiety. For one, Jeremy's biggest fear is seeing his mother fall apart. He doesn't want to disrupt the stability Greg has built for her even if that stable happy lifestyle is toxic in itself and built on a pile of lies.

Jeremy is horrendously tortured by his stepfather when they sleep together. It's to the point where the poor boy barely clings to his sanity. With his hands tied, he has nobody to run to and sadly accepts his fate. He represses his feelings for the well-being of his other family members. Ashamed of what they would think of him if they knew the true colors of him and his stepfather. The audience see the symptoms of this suffering as Jeremy goes down the rabbit hole of repressed feelings. He tries to escape his life at home by taking drugs at school, sleeping with other students and has intense dark twisted fantasies of murdering Greg. We also see him try to hide his scars, physically and mentally. Even when he is alone in a safe area, the brutal domination of his stepfather still lingers in his mind and his conscious is never calm as he feels himself still being punished when no one is around.

I also congratulate the author Hagio Moto, the godmother of shojo manga, for somehow making my sympathize with the cruel monster that is Greg Lowland. Greg is tormented monster who can't escape his past trauma. After his previous wife killed herself, his ideal of love changed and turned into something sickly. He himself is struggling to understand his mind. Instead of moving on and accepting what happened in the past, he has regressed all feelings and memories of his deceased wife and harms others to repress his guilt. Yes, it is not a valid reason for it, but it does help shed light on the predators of assault as they are also mentally unstable. Things could of been different, if Greg seaked help instead of it turning into a fuel for his urges.

Sadly, my biggest issue with the manga, is the second half of the series. It's, to put it simply, terrible. At the halfway point, when the main plot of the series ends, instead of a conclusion, we get a rambly epilogue of 20 chapters that goes one for way too long. It completely shatters the latter half of the experience. It feels as if the mangaka was forced by her editors to continue the work even if it was at its end. The last few chapters completely rewrite characters such as Jeremy and his stepbrother Ian. It brings in new characters and creates needless sub-plots that don't go anywhere and are filler. It ruins the story for me. However, I cannot deny that the first half of this manga is nothing short of fantastic. Its why it made it on this list.

This manga was a nightmare.

I could've gone to hell and back and would've seen still more horrendous substance in this manga. In fact this manga feels like a falling-down to hell, but one-way, without a return ticket.

Jeremy, a Bostonian, immigrates to England with his mother after she remarries Greg, who renders Jeremy into his "weekend lover". When his mother and Greg eventually die, how is Jeremy left to deal with the dregs of trauma from Greg's abuse and guilt over their suspicious deaths?

Zankoku na Kami ga Shihai Suru is legitimately 86 chapters and 17 volumes long- and when I say it's long, ... it's really, really, long. Finishing a chapter was like running a marathon- you couldn't help but heave a deep sigh, content but apprehensive of the following chapter to come. The chapters are tantalizingly long and redundant, filler-material; I wager two-thirds of what was related in the manga hardly contributed to the story. The dialogue is rough and lengthy, and to top it off the art is downright appalling. The latter two-thirds of the manga is apparently about how Jeremy deals with his parents' deaths, mysteries and all, but it keeps dragging and nothing happens and the MCs go around in circles doing practically nothing.

In terms of character development, it's undeniably satisfactory. The cast of characters is an entirely different story though. You would think that at least the story already took up enough time to "flesh out" it's characters properly, but in reality what it's really doing is just piling up more and more characters and tragedies to follow suit. What you will see are insufferable, ridiculous characters with pretentious peculiar and pathetic personalities that NEVER give it a rest, they will always either explode in emotion or try to kill themselves (or is this what Hagio-san thought foreigners to be?)

The sheer absurdity of it all- plain ridiculous storylines (the exact same sequence of two girls trying to kill themselves after being put in the same situation only in the span of probably 8 chapters, suddenly everyone goes antagonistic and evil and every guy is gay and into Jeremy after he suffers from sexual abuse, etc.), dragged-out, snail-paced storytelling, horrid artwork ("unique" can eat shit, made me want to claw my eyes out), bad character writing (you'll see for yourselves), lengthy dialogue- it was truly horrid and unenjoyable.

I think what won the hearts of many people is it's poeticism and premise, as both are impressionable. The dialogue is dramatic at times (and occasionally pretentiously so) and we see MCs do bat-shit self-sabotage that's supposed to be darkly romantic and enticing. Especially if you're new to this sort of psychological tragedy stuff, the surprise factor plays a large role (heard of misattribution?). You see, this manga is actually appealing to our r/imnotlikeothergirls side, do you realize?

Dark romanticism or tradegy is surprisingly not uncommon in Japanese media; unconventional "love" to the point of being "beautiful". There will never quite be an absolute paragon for this severe theme; because how much is too much? What is unrealistic and what is insane? And who am I, really, to be chastising the absurdity of the mentally ill characters in this manga when I've only ever lived vicariously and have yet to see first-handedly the extent of human insanity?

"This manga is not for everyone"- how many times have you chanced upon this warning as long as you've been on this site? It's almost always an ulterior tempt. Though I think in this case, you should really heed it.

Forget whatever you read here. Try it for yourselves and don't give up until you've found "the one".