Blood on the Tracks vol. 13

Now that the great reading mix-up of 2023 is over with, we can get back to normal service with this series.  At least in terms of reading order.  As implied at the end of vol. 12, vol. 13 begins with a twenty-year time jump all the way to 2017.  That’s where we’re introduced to Seiichi’s current state of affairs post-juvenile hall, post-high school graduation, and post-moving out of his dad’s apartment.  If you think that his life’s still a bummer, then you’d be right.  Is it an interesting bummer?  Not yet.

Seiichi has a one-room apartment with a bathroom, futon, and enough trash to drive home the point that his depression is persistent and ongoing.  He works during the day at a food processing plant where he shows himself to be just competent enough to keep from getting fired.  It’s implied that most of his meals are take-out affairs, and that’s what we see of his daily routine.

There’s one more thing:   His dad has made regular efforts to keep in touch with his son, and we get to see him come visit Seiichi at his place in Tokyo.  While there’s still an awkward tension between them, you can see that his dad is trying his best to be a parent to his son to make up for his earlier failings.  However, we soon learn that Seiichi’s dad has his own problems as well.

“Blood on the Tracks” has always been an uncomfortable read.  At its best, it manages to be so in ways that are interesting and unexpected.  Other times it winds up being predictable in ways that aggravate and cause me to consider dropping this series.  Vol. 13 unfortunately comes off feeling more like the latter than the former.  While it’s not really a case of anticipating the worst for our protagonist and seeing it happen, there’s nothing out of the ordinary that happens here.  What you’re getting is a snapshot of an eventful period in the time of a depressed individual which  happens to be worse than usual for him.

What’s here will likely feel even more familiar to people who’ve read mangaka Shuzo Oshimi’s “The Flowers of Evil” as that series also had a similar but much shorter time jump following a traumatic event.  Its protagonist was also depressed following that event, up until the point a new girl entered his life.  We don’t quite get that here, but the end of the volume implies that Oshimi is going to take things in a similar situation.

This development leads me to believe that the story is headed in a similar direction.  With Seiichi’s life finally taking a turn for the better, up until the point he realizes he needs to confront his mother in order to move on.  I don’t want to believe that Oshimi is going to directly reprise the way the back half of his best series played out in this one.  What I get here, however, doesn’t offer me any reason to think otherwise.

The execution is still quite solid.  Particularly all of the scenes involving Seiichi’s dad.  Even after he proved to be a truly ineffectual and unhelpful presence in the previous volumes, you really do feel that he’s trying to do better here.  He may not be doing it well, but that’s the way it is.  It’s also interesting to see how Seiichi responds to this.  While the young man doesn’t give any outward sign that what his dad does has any effect on him, we do learn towards the end of the volume that it mattered in one key way.

While vol. 13 is definitely not a bad volume of “Blood on the Tracks,” it’s not one that gives me hope for future ones.  Things are going to get better for Seiichi as a result of his encounter at the end, but I get the feeling that’s only so that Oshimi can bring him down again when his mother shows up.  Which is something that’s a matter of when rather than if for this title.  Having invested enough of my money and time in this series to make it this far, I feel compelled… obligated, rather to keep following it to see how that inevitable confrontation pans out.  How it does will likely determine whether or not this series stays on my shelf, or winds up on Book-Off’s.