Blood on the Tracks vol. 15
We got our first look at Seiichi’s post-juvenile incarceration/adult life in the previous volume and it was every bit the feel-bad experience you’d expect it to be. Not content with saddling his protagonist with depression and a suicidal mindset, mangaka Shuzo Oshimi also had him reunite with his mother there as well. Only, she’s not doing so well these days and doesn’t seem to recognize him when he comes to get her at the police station. Seiichi still volunteers to pay her rent so that she’ll have some place to stay – away from him.
He’s still looking after her in this volume as a typhoon bears down on their city. After helping her rescue a familiar-looking cat takes longer than expected, Seiichi winds up staying for dinner and then the night as the rain bears down on them. It’s then that Seiko starts talking. First about the jobs she worked after leaving her family, and then about her history. Everything that she can remember from it, which made her the person she is today.
It’s one thing to try and build sympathy for a character that been portrayed as unlikeable if not outright unsympathetic for the entire time they’ve been featured in a series. That’s one of the things “The Ancient Magus’ Bride’s” recently concluded arc stumbled over when it tried to add some depth to its villain, Lizbeth Sargent. I was prepared for “Blood on the Tracks” to stumble in a similar fashion when it became clear that we were getting Seiko’s “secret origin,” if you will, with this volume.
Surprisingly, the series doesn’t stumble in its depiction of the woman’s life, and that’s down to a couple reasons. The main one being that she’s living a life that’s as depressing as her son’s in a different way. No friends. No family. She’s apparently also lost her job and can no longer afford rent either. Her decision to abandon motherhood at her son’s hearing may have been monstrous, but it doesn’t look to have made her life any better or happier, for that matter.
The other is that Oshimi manages an engaging portrait of Seiko’s history. We start at age five when she’s living happily with her mom and dad at her grandpa’s place. Then they leave and her life takes a sharp downward turn before we see her as an awkward high school student who gets the acting bug and decides to leave for Tokyo. While I wouldn’t say that her story is particularly original, there are enough details to make it specific to her and give the reader some idea of how she became the woman she did. It’s all very mundane, but not boring (Harvey Pekar would be proud).
Though all this is good, I’m disappointed by the fact that Oshimi hasn’t addressed the elephant in the room regarding Seiko. I’m talking about how she’s clearly suffering from some kind of mental illness. It’s a subject that has only become less taboo to discuss in Japan recently, so it’s understandable that Seiichi wouldn’t bring it up himself. However, the idea that Seiko may have a diagnosable condition doesn’t even look to exist in the worldview of this title. It’d be one thing for someone to bring it up, only to have it rejected by the protagonist(s), yet Oshimi doesn’t appear to want to give it even that much consideration.
That’s a shame, considering my interpretation of Nakamura’s fate in “The Flowers of Evil” is that she did get help from whatever illness she was suffering from. Still, this isn’t a dealbreaker for my interest in the series and I’m glad that the series has become an interesting bummer again for this volume. Whether or not that lasts, well… the pseudo-cliffhanger this volume ends on implies that things are either only going to get better or worse for Seiichi with no middle ground in between.