Blood on the Tracks vols. 9 & 12
Well, this is embarrassing.
In the almost fifteen years that I’ve been podcasting and writing about comics, I’ve never had a problem with that most basic of rules when it comes to following a series. You know, the one about reading every volume in order and not skipping over any of them. It’s a pretty easy rule to follow, I would think.
So imagine my surprise when I went to put volumes 10 & 11 of “Blood on the Tracks” on the shelf next to the other volumes in the series and saw that vol. 9 was missing from my collection. When reviewing vol. 10 and I couldn’t find a review of vol. 9 to link to, I thought, “Maybe I just didn’t write about that one?” Then I checked my history of orders on Amazon and The Right Stuf and couldn’t find a record that I’d ever ordered that volume. Which meant that I had skipped over a whole volume and didn’t notice it until TWO volumes later.
I’ll admit that I had considered just letting this error slide and not letting anyone know about this. Except that wouldn’t be fair to the series. While I’ve had issues with how “Blood on the Tracks” has been slowly turning into misery porn over the last few volumes, something happens in vol. 9 that offers a certain amount of context for one of Shuzo Oshimi’s more controversial storytelling choices, in my opinion. So it bears talking about, at least.
As for vol. 12… hooooo boy. We’ll get to that in a bit.
Vol. 9 begins in a way that made me realize that this mix-up also happened because I’d forgotten what happened at the end of vol. 8. You’d think I’d remember that Shige’s parents had come to Seiichi’s house to confront his mother about pushing their son off of the cliff at the start of the series, but there you go. What follows is a lot of yelling, some shoving, some crying and Seiko being taken away to face justice for what she’s done. This leads to Seiichi having to talk to the police about what has happened. While they’re a stern, straightforward bunch, they’re also keen to let the boy know that he is his own person and doesn’t need to let his mother dominate his life anymore.
This is all well and good, but we’re still reading “Blood on the Tracks” so there has to be something awful awaiting our protagonist here. That comes in the form of a repressed memory Seiichi experiences while he’s taking part in the police-supervised re-enactment of Seiko’s crime. It’s when he realizes that this isn’t the first time his mother has tried to kill someone by shoving them away.
I realize that anyone who has been reading the series (in order) along with these reviews already knows what I’m talking about here. In case anyone hasn’t, I’ll just say that this memory adds a lot more context to what Seiichi did to Shige in vol. 10 and I can see what Oshimi was getting at with that particular scene. It was a psychic exorcism, in a manner of speaking. That said, while the scene becomes more understandable, it doesn’t excuse the slasher-movie level of suspension of disbelief necessary for the scene to happen in the first place.
We also get the full context for Seiichi’s memory of the dead cat that has been hinted at since the start of the series. It’s every bit as disturbing as you’d expect and further proof of Seiko’s awfulness as a mother. Not that the series needed any more of that at this point.
That is, however, what we get a lot of in vol. 12. I hadn’t forgotten that Seiichi was in a juvenile detention center and I was curious to see what direction the story would take from here. Would we be getting an in-depth look at how juvenile offenses are handled in Japan? Was this the start of our protagonist’s first steps towards self-actualization? Was his mother going to visit her son while he’s imprisoned and apologize for all that she’s done to him?
No on all three counts. In fact, once Seiichi hears that Seiko has been told about what he’s done, his life becomes markedly worse. Why? Because he lacks confidence in every aspect of himself, including his memory, the main character has unwittingly handed his mom a figurative “Get out of Jail Free” card. Seiichi’s mental state, already barely holding itself together, continues to deteriorate until this skeletal-looking boy finally gets his hearing in front of the officials who will determine his fate. A hearing that his mother has decided to attend in person.
What she does there is unimaginably monstrous. It’s a complete abdication of parental responsibility right when Seiichi needed her the most. All done for the most selfish of reasons too. I really wish that Oshimi had given us more insight into Seiko’s history at this point so that we could at least have some understanding of her motives that registered as human. What she does here doesn’t register as any kind of antagonistic force. No, this is straight up villainy.
Which is a shame since the mangaka has gone to great lengths to portray the majority of his cast as well-rounded characters. Even though Seiichi has been our point-of-view character since the start, the character’s he’s interacted with have had more than a few personality traits to round them off. What we’ve seen of Seiko, up to this point, only suggests a purely selfish creature who is only motivated by her own personal gain. She tells us that she never received any love as a child, but how do we know that’s the case? I don’t know if Oshimi is saving this insight into this character for a final-chapter twist, as he did with “The Flowers of Evil.” If he is, then he’s doing the story he’s telling right now a real disservice.
Mainly because it’s not over yet. The preview pages for vol. 13 indicate that a time jump is happening and that things are going to be different for Seiichi and the story as a whole going forward. In fact, it almost suggests that everything up to this point has been prologue for the story that Oshimi has really wanted to tell. I’m not saying you can’t do something like this – just look at what Makoto Yukimura did with Thorfinn’s story after Askeladd’s death in “Vinland Saga.” It’s just that THIRTEEN VOLUMES of prologue feels more than excessive. Especially when they can get as miserable as this series does.
Which means that vol. 12 is a perfect jumping off point for anyone who has become disillusioned with the series up to this point. I wouldn’t blame anyone if they did, it feels like the smart move to make right now. As for me… I’ll be sticking around. For all that this series has frustrated and depressed me at times, it still manages to surprise. Awful surprises, like Seiko’s hearing appearance, but surprises nonetheless. There’s also this awful morbid curiosity to see whether Seiichi’s life does start getting better from here, or if Oshimi has an all-new downward spiral for him to endure. I’d also say that I’d like to see some retribution directed towards his mother… though I’m not going to kid myself about that.
It’s probably worth mentioning that all of the mangaka’s series I’ve read up to this point have had happy endings. “The Flowers of Evil,” “Happiness,” “Inside Mari” all ended with their protagonists in better places than they started. I know it’s not a good idea to get my hopes up about how Seiichi’s story is going to end in “Blood on the Tracks” but if this can’t end happily, then it should at least end surprisingly.
Assuming I can read all the volumes in order from here on out.