'Misumisou' is about a middle school student, Nozaki Haruka, who moves from Tokyo to a small backwater town following her father's new job. Unfortunately, Nozaki immediately becomes a victim of bullying in her new school. Nozaki's trials and tribulations become increasingly severe with each passing chapter until our protagonist reaches breaking point and goes on a murdering spree. Now, the plot in and of itself is fine, if a little simple. Where the series really falls flat is in its execution. Particularly, the crux of the series' problems can be found in its characters.
The characters in 'Misumisou' suffer from the same weakness that plagued 'School Days'. That is, the characters are essentially caricatures in a series which is supposed to be based in realism. This is most obvious with the bullies. The bullies pierce Nozaki with tacks, steal her possessions, push her into a ditch filled with garbage, call her names, attempt to shoot her with a crossbow, assault Nozaki's father on school premises with tack-studded shoes, invade Nozaki's home and ultimately set her house on fire with her family trapped inside. That's not all: it turns out that Nazoki's home-room teacher is the only recurring member of staff in the series and is revealed early on to be in cahoots with the main bully. All of this takes place within the opening three chapters, no less. Their motives? They did not want the new kid to be part of their graduation ceremony. Sorry, but that is utterly ridiculous. That 14-year-old kids could commit such reprehensible acts and not feel even an iota of remorse is too outlandish an idea for any critical reader to get behind. One simply can not suspend their disbelief while reading 'Misumisou'. None of the bullies have any redeemable qualities and little effort is made by the author to provide any sort of backdrop or fleshing out of these characters. There was one instance where a flashback was shown just before one of the bullies meets their fate, but it was awkwardly tacked on, almost as if an afterthought.
Unfortunately, the rest of the cast do not fare much better. As the protagonist, Nazoki assumes the role of the innocent beauty turned killer. Nazoki's grandfather takes the role of the frustratingly ignorant relative. Aiba is Nazoki's only friend and also just so happens to be a psychopath. It may feel like these one-sentence descriptions are doing the characters a disservice, but in all honesty there is only so much one can say about what are effectively cardboard cut-outs. The mangaka doesn't give the reader much to work with: character development is non-existent and attempts at fleshing out come at a premium. In any other series, seeing the antagonists get their comeuppance would be cathartic, but not here. If the author doesn't put the effort in to making the protagonist likeable or the antagonists realistic, then why should the reader care about their fates? A good indicator of the quality of a cast of characters is how many of them you can remember by name and, in the case of 'Misumisou', it was just one. It is difficult to see any positives in what was a completely forgettable, unrealistic cast of characters. It's an extremely poor effort, it must be said.
If the characters and contrivances of the plot didn't already kill the series off then the art made sure to finish the job. Honestly, the character designs look awful. Eyes are drawn too far apart, the faces are not drawn consistently from panel-to-panel and ultimately it never felt as if the mangaka was comfortable drawing his characters. There is also a disgusting expression that the mangaka draws on all of his characters when they are angry. Needless to say, it looks more amusing than it does threatening, at least until it begins to feel nauseating due to how grotesque it looks. While the character designs were a huge let-down, credit must be given for some of the backgrounds. In particular, there is one panel in chapter three where Nazoki and Aiba are drawn as silhouettes looking up at the starry night sky. It looks stunning, so much so that it feels out of place in a manga of this quality. The mangaka also appears to have talent for drawing weapons - lots of detail went into the crossbow and pistol. These instances are rare and it doesn't make a massive difference to the overall package, but it at least saves it from attaining the lowest possible marks.
Overall, I went into 'Misumisou' with extremely low expectations and still managed to come away from it feeling disappointed. This was my first taste of Rensuke Oshikiri's work and chances are it is going to be my last. 'Misumisou' reads like an amateur's debut work, so to see that Oshikiri is an already established mangaka with a large body of work behind him came as a major shock. The characters are flat and unrealistic, the plot twists are contrived and the art is highly unpleasant, save for the odd panel here and there. I'm still not sure what message the mangaka was trying to convey, but in any event he failed. In all good conscience, I could not and would not recommend this manga to anyone.
