Blood on the Tracks vol. 11

I said that I wasn’t looking forward to reading this volume at the end of my review of vol. 10.  That’s what happens when you try to make the reader as uncomfortable as possible while heading towards a thoroughly obvious plot point.  I’ll give mangaka Shuzo Oshimi this, he makes the first third of this volume as compelling a portrait of self-loathing as you could ask for.  While it’s easy for us to see that Seiichi’s mind has been warped by his mother’s personality, she’s done her work all too well on her son.  The surrealism and exaggerated imagery used by the mangaka in this part of the volume excellently convey the protagonist’s feelings of self-doubt as he thinks he sees the moment where his mother pushes Shige off the cliff through her eyes.  In actuality, it’s just him capitulating to her domination of his mind one more time.

The effort Oshimi puts into these sequences is truly remarkable.  Unfortunately, it can’t quite overcome the fact that it’s done to sell a development to the story that we all saw coming when Shige showed up in the previous volume.  It’s not the first time a talented mangaka has used their considerable skills to force a plot point that just doesn’t work and it certainly won’t be the last.  What follows is a little more interesting as we get to see a part of Japanese society that doesn’t get touched upon a whole lot in manga (that are published over here, at least).  It was interesting to see Seiichi work his way through that even as we’re left to wonder, “Where’s Oshimi going with this?”  That becomes clear at the end of this volume as the mangaka makes it clear once again that the hold Seiichi’s mother has over him is truly something that will endure through time and space.

I wrote in an earlier review that I thought it was interesting to see Seiichi wholly capitulate to his mother’s demands at one point.  It was a development that I didn’t see coming, hadn’t read elsewhere, and was therefore interested in seeing where the mangaka was going to take it.  Now that I have a better idea about that, it’s coming off like a significant misfire.  Oshimi is clearly putting all of his talent into a story that captivatingly realizes misery while heading down the most obvious path possible.  I’ve invested so much into this series, but with no clear end in sight I’m left wondering if I should just call it quits now and spare myself from seeing what else “Blood on the Tracks” has in store.