It is one thing to create a story with horrible artwork, dialogue, characterisation and themes, but it is another to marry your turd with morally reprehensible scenes which exist for no reason but to shock and appal the reader. By the end of these worthless thirty pages I certainly felt shocked, but not because of the rape, castration and murder-- but because I couldn't understand why anyone would think it OK to publish such a pile of shite.
Allow me to explain the deep, intricate story found in the torturous thirty pages of The Voices That Call Me. Do keep in mind that spoilers will follow for the next two paragraphs, in case you were in a masochistic mood and felt like experiencing this vulgar dreck first-hand.
A young hikikomori is shut away, trapped in his room and regularly participates in self-aggrandizing fantasies about the success he feels he deserves. A few pages later he is shown to not only be a delusional twat, but a serial rapist and murderer. Eventually he is caught in the act (because locking the door while committing a terrible crime would make too much sense) and has his penis presumably cut off by the victim. And then it ends. That's it. Really.
I suppose it does at least attempt to justify wasting the reader's time by passing it off at the end as some form of dark humour, but it is a terrible attempt at humour nonetheless. The punchline is a variation of the "don't do this at home" cliché, a warning for the reader to not follow the 'voices' outside or else something terrible will inevitably happen to them. And, oh wait-- prepare to die of laughter-- the news reporter says this while holding a pair of bloody scissors in the last panel. Oh, man, my sides are killing me! This is way too hilarious. It makes everything beforehand worth it.
Occasionally there's a sign that the story might delve into something more interesting: a talk at the supermarket with another lunatic about society glorifying family life, or how all humans possess a unique talent, but of course these comments evaporate into thin air in the next panel. There is no conversation going on with the reader; the mangaka would rather rely on shock value than put in the effort to say something of value.
The only way I can rationalise this manga's existence is if the mangaka considers himself a part of the 'denpa' (lit. radio wave) genre (and it's likely he does, considering the protagonist is literally following the radio waves inside his head). The denpa genre involves disturbing and horror-like stories told through the eyes of a delusional and paranoid protagonist. Most of the time they attempt to convey the protagonist's mental breakdown by being deliberately incomprehensible at points, but the incomprehensibility in The Voices That Call Me does not ever seem intentional. Unlike something such as Higurashi or the visual novel Subarashiki Hibi, the gore and degeneracy shown here exists only to disgust the reader. It doesn't bother to develop a haunting atmosphere or to create a protagonist convincing enough that the reader can empathise with them; it's just 'shit happens, here, go cringe and laugh at it!'
The Voices That Call Me is an abject failure in every regard. There is not a single thing about it that deserves praise, nor is there any reason to recommend this blubbering pile of filth to anyone who isn't a masochist. It's poorly-crafted, pointless, and worse-- utterly offensive.
I suppose the only thing in its defence is that it's still not quite as bad as Apocalypse Zero.
