Suicide Club (manga)

In the search for yet more interesting and short manga I breezed through the 6 issue horror, current events shocker Suicide Club (Jisatsu Circle) based on the movie of the same name.

    During the evening commute a group of high school and middle school girls line up on the edge of a train platform in Tokyo’s Shinjuku station and with smiles on their faces, count to 3 and jump in front of the oncoming train in a mass suicide. One girl named Saya survives the incident and is miraculously mostly unharmed. Even before the incident Saya was shunned by people in school and lived a miserable life. Her only friend Kyoko tried to reconnect with her after the incident but is pushed aside by her. Kyoko hadn’t paid as much attention as she should have a few years earlier when Saya was having problems. After her father lost his job she started to sell her body and mutilate herself. When she felt alone at that time she discovered the love and wisdom of a seemingly enlightened student named Mitsuko. Saya along with other hurt and lost girls worshiped the words and wisdom of Mitsuko leading up to the mass suicide orchestrated by her. After the tragedy Kyoko soon notices that Saya behaves differently than before and girls are starting to flock around her like they did around Mitsuko.

    I have not seen the movie yet, did know about it, but will have to put it on my list now to watch. This was an interesting manga, at least in the plot or general concept. The delivery was a bit shoddy, the artwork was pretty bad (all of the characters looked like mutants) and there really wasn’t a lot of detail put into the backgrounds. You can tell it was cobbled together pretty quickly as it was commissioned by the creator of the movie and released around the same time. This would be like the manga version of the shoddy video game that coincide a movie release to bring in some more cash. The mangaka who penned it wanted to copy the movie exactly, but the original creator wanted him to take a different spin on the story. I’m not sure of all the similarities beyond the initial mass suicide at the train station but the manga has a supernatural side to it. When it comes to the dark side of Japan, I am increasingly desensitized. I’m used to the idea that there is a whole flock of teenage girls who sell themselves for as meaningless a thing as CD money. I’m used to the idea of bullying being incredibly problematic in Japanese schools and suicide and self mutilation a big teenage past time…just like it tends to be in America.

    On the other hand the supernatural aspect of the story seemed a little hokey. It wasn’t anything new and honestly it felt like a subplot from Vampire Princess Miyu minus the supernatural fight sequence and all. I know Japan is supposed to have this knack with horror but I have never really been bothered by any horror from Japan, and even love watching it, where I refuse to watch horror from America because it scares the crap out of me. It might just be a cultural thing, where different ideological mysteries affect people from different cultures differently (for lack of a better word). So, back on track here, it isn’t a shocking story or concept, to me anyways. It more seemed like a minor blip in the realm of Dark Asia that I have grown all too accustomed to.

   It wasn’t a bad read, after all it took me like 20 minutes, so it didn’t feel like I had wasted my time doing so and it offered me another review to do. I do want to watch the movie, as I had mostly forgotten about it and am now intrigued to see what happened in the movie.

     You would probably enjoy this if you watched the movie; I read that the manga makes more sense. You might also enjoy this is you enjoyed Hell Girl, Vampire Princess Miyu and Ghost Hunt. I think I need to watch more Moryo no Haku now and get some interesting super natural horror going again.

UPDATE: The movie was meh, I've seen less cheesy out of classic Hong Kong kung-fu theater time.