Goth: This Time the Dark Side Will Have Cookies

For this segment of Manga Management, it is circled around the dark and dreary world of the creatures we call "teenager". We know most teenagers from manga and anime as peppy or energetic and in most cases, annoying. With this manga, we look at teenagers in a darker light. In fact, there might not be anything light about it. It's about murder. No sunshine romances and happy days bullshit here. Moving on, the manga I'll be reviewing is called "Goth" by Otsuichi. The manga follows two dark and disturbed teens who find they have in interest in death and murders that happen around them. Kind of like modern day Nancy Drew...only with more death. With the different murders and mysteries that happen around them, the dive into each other and get to know about each other and who they really are. Or who they really are not. You know, for something that's in black and white, it get pretty gruesome to read with the images and even the art of the characters. Your chibi faced and doe-eyed cuteness is now replaced with black irises and silhouetted scenes that makes you feel like you're in an old black and white detective story where the detective always wears a trench coat and only speaks in monologues. With the title of this manga, it can only be explained that anyone who has such a fascination with death and murder will be considered "Goth" so all you emos can piss off. I'll find something for you later. And Goth doesn't have any painted-up weirdos with piercings in every part of their body so don't look for any mentions of My Chemical Romance. So let's travel to the dark side and look at "Goth". And I do plan on letting off some spoilers to the manga so don't get pissy at me if you wanted a mystery story. I suggest you read it yourself, see what you like, and come back to this page and see that I know what I'm talking about!

Anyone want a million high fives from severed hands is welcome to smack their computer screens as much as you want.

The manga is only about 5 chapters and is a pretty short read. Nonetheless, it still takes the time to explain the male character's background in the first twelve pages.The character we're introduced to is nameless until the very last chapter (just to move things along, his name is Kamiyama). His story is pretty simple and basic; he's been a pretty messed up kid in the head. Even showing a panel of him as a kid coloring the faces of dolls black and dismembering them. Not really Bebe's kid, but more like Damien from "The Omen". In the first chapter, the news story is that someone is killing people and taking their hands. He has been watching a girl in his class named Yoru Morino, someone whose also very distant from people just like Kamiyama. Kamiyama finds out the culprit of the hand case and tried to provoke him into thinking Morino knows what he's done. The culprit is caught and Morino gets to keep her hands, to Kamiyama's dismay. Think of it as he wanted to hold her hand, except he didn't want the body or person who was attached to it. In a weird way, Morino and Kamiyama talk and become somewhat friends Thought I doubt you have a friend that plays with the thought of KILLING YOU!!!  But they do realize that they have the same taste in death and murder and soon click (but there's nothing romantic about this whatsoever so get those perverted thoughts out of your damn head).

I don't think this kind of mosquito bite you can just put rubbing alcohol on and cover it up with a band-aid. Hope you weren't eating when you saw this.

The next story revolves around a notebook Morino finds at her favorite cafe that has the details of gruesome murders that happens. As the two walk through the forest one victim was supposedly killed in, they find her body mangled to the point of not looking human. Things get even more complicated when Morino decides to take the clothes of the victim and dress like her the next time she goes to the cafe with Kamiyama. Believe it or not, dressing and looking like a person from the news who was brutally murdered is not really the best idea when Morino is kidnapped, most likely be the killer. Kamiyama soon takes a guess and realizes who the killer is. The killer says congratulations to him, gives him the key to the room Morino is in, and leaves without another word. What the hell kind of killer acts this calm about being discovered?? And Kamiyama wasn't any much better. He just sat there and let the guy leave. The killer was basically the cafe worker of the cafe Morino goes to. Morino gets set free and Kamiyama gets a cool knife set left by the cafe owner and a piece of paper with a bunch of crosses on it. And no, it's never 100% explained why the killer had crosses on the paper.

Why the hell they did this picture for the 3rd chapter is beyond me. I guess it's hard to think of fan service ideas when the basic theme of your story is MURDER!!!

In another chapter, we start out with some random guy who buried a boy into the ground and drowned him using a stick of bamboo to flood the box. With no rhyme or reason. Just because he felt like it. Seriously!! That's the kind of reasoning for people who come back from Hell and start killing people because Hell was too boring. It's not like we ask Michael Myers why the hell he keeps coming back, but it at least shows how his life was shit and wanted to have some fun or whatever. But I digress. The big twist of the story is that the guy (whose mostly nameless through the story) thought he buried Morino, but buried some other classmate who found Morino's school ID somewhere. The girl turns out to have had a boyfriend who ultimately finds his girlfriend dead with Kamiyama. In pure grief, he has Kamiyama bury him with his dead girlfriend and on goes with the story. It's nothing really too interesting about this one since, for some reason, we mostly hang out with the killer and see that he's mostly just some confused guy who for some reason cared the fact that the girl died by killing herself.
As for the last two chapters, they deal with a gruesome past dealing Morino and her twin sister names Yu Morino. It's kinds of the cliff hanger chapters since it's finally realized that Kamiyama has wanted to kill Morino for a long. The background for the story is that Yoru and Yu liked playing jokes like they were dead to surprise people and while doing a hanging prank, her sister accidentally hung herself. The bulk is mostly that and in the end there's a bigger twist. This one, I'll leave you to find out. The last couple chapters are kind of the same as the rest of the book, but just involves the main characters more directly. In the end, Morino is depressed, Kamiyama is depressing, and you just feel like you need to watch the Care Bears Movie just to get your sanity back.
The book is fine for a read if you want something dark and mysterious. If there's one thing you notice in these stories is that whoever the villain or antagonist is in the chapter, it's someone related to the main characters, but it's so loosely connected that they don't even need to be there. It's not like you get too much info on whoever is the murderer in the chapter; it just passes by in a minute. Even in the final chapters, the killer turns out to be someone we're introduced to in the very last chapter. Another thing with this one is that what happens is usually a misconception or a coincidence. It tries to play itself as being dramatic twists, but most comes off as not getting the whole story all at once. Even how they find the killer is some twist of luck and coincidences. It kind of takes you out of the fact that these two people keep avoiding death as if the Grim Reaper was afraid of them. But the stories are interesting, the art is dark and fitting to the atmosphere, and the twists, no matter how forced, add more to the story. There's even a live action movie of the book called Goth: Love of Death. In the end, the manga isn't a big suggestion; it's more like a light read that you can be done with, not read it for a while, and end up writing a review on it for all of you six fans to read. I give it 2 out of 5 creepy ass skulls. A good story, but will remain just a one shot to me. Well that's it for my Manga Management this time. Now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta go get a teddy bear to help me sleep at night.