No Longer Human vol. 2

Remember when I said that the first volume of this series did a good job of conveying the “inner sadness” of its poor little rich boy protagonist’s life?  Well, this second volume proceeds to do just about everything it can to undermine any sympathy I had for the character of Yozo Oba.  After the events of his failed double suicide, Oba is remanded to the care of a man nicknamed “Flounder,” one of his father’s minions, with the aim of getting his life back on track.  This doesn’t happen as it eventually leads to him making a break for it and hooking up with his best friend’s female editor.  Oba shacks up with her and her kid for a few months before he finds out he has a talent for creating manga.  Though this gets him a steady job, it isn’t long before his neuroses wind up driving a wedge between himself and the people he shares an apartment with.  This leads him to subsequent relationships with the older owner of a small bar and the innocent girl who he buys his beer and cigarettes from.

While I don’t doubt that Oba is a wreck on the inside, his inability (or even unwillingness) to change now makes it hard for me to care about his struggles.  It’s even more frustrating to listen to his self-analysis and realize that he’s aware of all this and STILL does nothing about it.  In light of the plot developments on the last few pages, this does make me interested in seeing what happens to that relationship in the next volume… because it’s likely to be a trainwreck of utterly epic proportions.  I’m also hoping that the metafictional trick of mangaka Usamaru Furuya inserting himself into the framing device of the narrative has a payoff in the next volume as well.  Ideally I’d like for him to spout off something along the lines of, “Why the hell did I waste my time on reading the online diary of this unlikeable ass and then spend three volumes writing about it!?”  So if you held off on buying the first volume to see how the series turned out, it’s looking like you made the right choice so far.  I’ll be picking up the last volume both to see the aforementioned trainwreck, and a misguided obligation to see this through to the end.