Greetings, my adoring fans.
I know it’s been a while since we last spoke (hell, it’s
practically March already), but there have just been so few new quality manga
available at my local bookstore.
So…many…isekai.
So, even though it’s not necessarily “new”, I bring you my
review of Shuzo Oshimi’s vampire horror manga “Happiness”. (And yes, I did only pick it up because it
was new on the shelves of my local library.
So sue me.)
You may remember this author/artist from his other series “Inside
Mari”, which I believe I topped off last year’s posts by reviewing, and from
his even earlier psychological horror work “Flowers of Evil”.
Note that I specify “psychological horror”, because that is,
up until this point, Mr. Oshimi’s bread and butter. His works don’t usually fall into the realm
of action or serious gore, so I found myself pleased with how he carries off
both of the former in this new and current work.
Makoto Okazaki is your typical loser, shorter than his
classmates and easily pushed around by them (and, yes, just like all his other
protagonists, he’s also a low-key pervert hiding behind an innocent mask). One night, on his way to return a DVD to the
Japanese equivalent of RedBox, Makoto ignores the warnings of his concerned Mom
to be careful and runs into some trouble.
As it turns out, his Mom was right to be concerned. Apparently, there’s been a mysterious murder committed
right nearby where Makoto is going to be headed.
And then anime happens.
(Or manga. Whatever.)
Long story short, a mysterious yet
pretty fanged girl draws his blood out of him.
And, unlike many other, sanitized versions of vampire where it’s played
only for hotness, this blood frenzy is graphic and painful for poor Makoto and
played entirely for horror.
The girl asks him if he either
wants to die or else become like her.
Not knowing, Makoto begs for his life and the girl leaves.
He passes out and wakes up in the hospital
from his gushing neck wound.
He is later
discharged with only an acute light sensitivity and a strange thirst for his
troubles.
That is, until he gets to
school, where his bullies mock him for being attacked by a girl.
In the hallways, Makoto finds himself
assaulted by the scent of blood, mostly from girls who are presumably on their
periods.
The overwhelming sensations
cause him to stumble in front of his bullies while he takes their orders, only
making things worse with them.
But, this
time, Makoto fights back and manages to bloody his opponent Yuuki’s nose with a
single punch.
When he tries, overwhelmed and
unsuccessful, to attack a girl, a Ms. Yukiko Gosho, she plays it off as him
sexually harassing her and quickly turns into the messed-up bully girl from
Flowers of Evil.
A few years ago, I read another
manga with a much similar premise called Kuro Zakuro, except the vampires were
more Hollow-like creatures called Ogres and the protag became one by swallowing
one of their creation seeds in his sleep, but you get the idea.
In the aforementioned, the protag
found himself overwhelmed by his desires for violence and meat.
In Happiness, we can also see Makoto becoming
overwhelmed by his desire for blood, but in a very different way.
We don’t just hear him inside his head crying
out for blood; we see it visually as his world distorts around him, denoting
his confusion and placing us, somehow, even more in his head than any mere
thoughts could.
(That is, we the readers know it
all represents his desire for blood; we ended Volume One with him still in the
dark over what he is and what has happened to him.)
Another thing that sets Happiness
apart from other monster transformation manga is that we also get to see the
aftermath of the fight from Yuuki’s point of view.
By the end of Volume One, his girlfriend Nao has
enlisted Makoto to come save him from some other bullies because his loss of
confidence has turned him into their new punching bag.
Thus far, the series breaks little new ground in the monster
transformation horror genre, but, as I’ve said, it is interesting to see such a
story put in the hands of Shuzo Oshimi.
I predict lots of psychological horror, tortured whining and pervy
fanservice before the series reaches its end.
That being said, this will probably be another series that I
only pick up/notice whenever it’s new at the library and not one that I will
excitedly scan the bookstore shelves for every other month or ever think to
own.
But, if you happen to disagree, then by all means pick up a
copy for yourselves.
