Henshin, also known as Emergence and Metamorphosis, was quite... interesting as it was the first of this genre I have ever read. It was definitely a ‘feel bad for Saki’ sob story and even so, I ended up feeling a great amount of pity for her. She was naive and uneducated on how manipulative people can be. I felt a ping of pain in my heart when she thought she had fallen in love and how she mistook that pleasure=love. In the end I was reasonably sad and genuinely disturbed at some of the scenes and the visuals that accompanied them.
Plot: Saki is a young girl that is about to go in to highschool and just wants to make friends like the ‘popular girls’. She gets a major makeover but since she has never experienced things like being hit on, having many friends, and being popular with boys, she gets in to some bad things. Her life continues to get worse and just when you think she’s at rock bottom she manages to get in to more trouble
Characters:
-Saki: Saki had little to no development and I assume that is because she had no positive example or anyone to teach her about saying no. She was a big push over the whole time and even when she wanted to say no, she was too easily overcome by ‘I sure love sex’. To be honest, she was mentally weak and I was shocked that she wasn’t able to change after becoming pregnant. I know getting over an addiction will never be easy but I really thought she had it in her. She was a young girl though, and didn’t know what to do ... I can’t help but feel bad.
-Hayato: Of course I think he was a jerk just like everyone else. His use of ‘I love you’ to make her consent to sex perfectly mirrored what many predators do to young girls in real life. He was sadistic, vile, and many other terrible things. He saw Saki as an object and manipulated her while abusing her. It’s incredible to think that this one boy triggered her entire downfall.
-Saki’s Father: From the second he gave her an embarrassed smile I knew something wasn’t right with him. I had a feeling he was going to sexually abuse or rape her. The way he manipulated Saki’s mother was pretty unrealistic but not impossible. I’m sure something similar has happened before. His comparing Saki to her mother was disturbing as intended.
-Saki’s Mother: She transitioned to being a terrible mother pretty quickly. I didn’t expect her to ignore Saki’s side of the story or kick her out immediately. She was basically another character made to add to Saki’s morose existence.
-Old guy she slept with for cash: Disgustingly misogynistic and disrespectful of women. Despite this even he was able to see that Saki has thrown away her pride and worth. She had become a prostitute and nearly no trace of how pure she used to be was left.
-Others: Just some more chracters to make Saki suffer. No one ever showed her any real kindness or prompted her to change. Many people comment that this aspect is unrealistic but I suppose that if you get with the wrong group of people this is possible.
Art: Decent and detailed. Amazingly expressive faces were shown and the anatomy wasn’t too bad. At one point when she is with the old man it appears her leg is bending the wrong way? I can’t judge the art based on one mistake though. It looks like the art took a fair amount of effort and time so I really liked the visuals.
Chapter 7: Yes I am writing an entire paragraph purely on chapter seven. Mostly because of how much it contained.
Chapter seven was wild. We open up to see Saki violating everything she had previously said about becoming better. She then involves herself with drugs yet again and is turned on by the chance of her baby being damaged. She has become disgusting and it is nearly impossible to invest in her now. I lost more respect for her in this chapter. The only reason why I didn’t completely loathe her was because she saved up a large amount of money for her child and didn’t blow it on drugs. What are the chances that she’d run in to some ex classmates? This bit of the last chapter still disturbes me and I’d like to think it’s very, v e r y hard to disturb me. They kick her stomach, which made me flinch, and stomp on her in other places as well. Saki is even more hyper sexual than usual, but is able to say that she doesn’t want her baby to die. It pained me to read this.
They raped her with a water bottle and the grotesque imagery left me in sheer horror. I picked up a water bottle after just to measure how far up it went in her.
The End: Seeing Saki pull up her bloody and damaged body hurt me. What hurt even more was seeing her braid her hair how it used to be before and breaking down in to tears. One makeover and her whole life collapsed before her feet. It shows how quickly one thing can change you forever. I’d like to think that she did not hallucinate her child and that instead she somehow survived and still had her child. I know that this isn’t possible but it’s a nice thought.
Conclusion: I would not call this ‘enjoyable’ and instead call it interesting since it left me with a bad feeling in my gut and in a bad state of mind. I do not get off on this sort of stuff and I fear for anyone that does. I don’t recommend this to anyone who has experienced sexual abuse or anyone who is easily disturbed. As my first experience with ‘hentai with plot’ I’d say this wasn’t a terrible read even though it repulsed me (it was doing it’s intended purpose). The art was nice and the story wasn’t too badly written.
