Inside Mari vol. 5

The plot of this series does move forward in this volume, albeit incrementally.  There’s some drama at the beginning as Mari and Yori’s relationship goes through another rough patch.  It’s more the latter being angry at the former for trespassing against her boundaries, though we do learn a little more about Yori’s family life in the process.  This spat sends Mari into a funk which has her paying a visit to Komori late at night where she tells him about how she was masturbating in the previous volume, which…  Yeah, you can probably guess what a creepy shut-in like Komori does after hearing something like that. It’s also exactly as uncomfortable as you’d expect when mangaka Shuzo Oshimi puts any kind of sexual activity into his manga.  This encounter does appear to have long-term ramifications as evidenced by Komori’s rain-soaked proclamation to Mari at the end of the volume.

Yet the most interesting thing about this volume is how it suggests an explanation for the Komori-in-Mari’s-body conundrum that has likely already been ruled out.  At one point Mari starts talking to Yori about something that only the real Mari could have remembered. Yori suggests that the real Mari is still sleeping inside that body and the Komori personality that’s currently running the show is just remembering these things.  Here’s a better explanation: Mari has had a complete psychotic break where she only thinks that Komori has taken over her body. Everything that she’s experienced has been a delusion based solely on her observations of that lonely man. That she’s starting to remember “Mari’s” memories only means that she may finally be starting to come out of it at this point.

I really like this idea.  The problem is that it seems that Oshimi wants us to think that there’s some kind of supernatural explanation for what’s happened to Mari/Komori here.  What with that creepy look Mari gave Komori in the first volume and that mysterious phone call in the previous volume. My one hope here is that this evidence of the supernatural is flimsy at best.  So I could be right and this series will eventually take a deep dive into the realm of mental illness only hinted at in “The Flowers of Evil.” Or maybe a wizard did it. We’ll have to wait and see.