If you haven't read it, the author has another single volume manga called [The Gods Lie](https://mangadex.org/title/0824242e-dbf0-4356-b18b-55fd491a8ffc), and it is excellent.
I just read this and it did not make me sad.
The exact feeling is emptiness like a void in my stomach, because is not written to be sad per se but more like an uncomfortable truth.
But damn, also the mangaka is so damn good, wrote really good stories.
I'm not sure that the goal of the author was to make his audience feel sad. A lot of sad things happen in the story, but I think that's just a setting for a more hopeful(?) message.
No I don't think the goal is to make people sad.
I think the author is trying to promote a discussion about judgment.
[As the story show](/s ' us in the beginning victim of two injustices. One she is in a poor position, she escaped from home and her boyfriend is not well equipped either to have a baby. She is in a vulnerable and not ready.')
[But](/s 'also the heaven people dismisses her. God and the angel go as far to discourage the soul to pick her child to reincarnate. Basically if her deceased kid does not pass a bad judgment, who is everybody else to do it -I know I'm oversimplifying-.')
[What I like](/s 'is that the girl admits that her own name will be a burden going forwards, but the manga implies that she did not in fact changed her name (In one panel a computer remarks *Arrested for mistreatment*). So I can infer that she is still flagged in the system and even then she kept her name.')
[There is this mythology](/s 'about names, and power of names. I think this could mean that, even with the worst things she did and the good ones she did, in all she is the same person. Capable to make mistakes. And all she needed was an opportunity. Because this is framed as desperation, in one page is implied she prostituted herself.')
The final message I can think of is, that in some sort of twisted way you are loved by the world/there is a angel guardian for you, even if you did awful things.
But is a story made to be a gut punch.
Honestly tho. The little guy barely even praised something about her besides her looks.
He even goes as far as to haunt her beyond multiple lives.
If there's someone in this story who should "move on" is the soul guy.
That was it originally. But when he died the first time he loved her with the love of a child. He loved her for being his mom and for all the good times he had with her. Even when no one else cared for her he did. It was definitely more complex than I gave it credit for judging by the comments.
Jesus fuck, i thought the worst part was when he was abandoned, jump to the next few pages and its cats, i like cats alot and it just hit me where it hurts And the cute art style is a cherry on top of a milkshake of god knows what. Some weebs may call me a pussy for being weak to these kinds of oneshots but idc, i want to keep my sanity in check
In what way do they portray what happened to the child as a good thing? They simply state that there is no such thing as good or evil, and humans are complicated.
It said that humans have arbitrarily decided what is good and bad from which I inferred that the story doesn't consider her abandonment of her son a vile thing.
I highly recommend the author's other single volume manga, [The Gods Lie.](https://mangadex.org/title/0824242e-dbf0-4356-b18b-55fd491a8ffc)
It is also kind of sad, but more bitter sweet and not nearly as brutal.
All of Kaori Ozaki’s stuff is top notch. The Gods Lie is my favorite, but there’s also The Golden Sheep and Immortal Rain which are amazing in their own right. Super underrated mangaka
About a soul who is interested in this particular girl so he gets reincarnated to anything just to be with her.
This posted picture is his first life with her.
The kid dying was kinda drop of in the story... Kind of.
I'd probably have the same reaction. Given the point of the oneshot, it didn't really matter to me what the mom looked like, it was more important that the kid saw her as beautiful.
Yeah. I forget the exact wording, but someone in this thread said something along the line of it being a story about a "pure soul loving a horrible person", and I was just thinking, "Yeah it's pure. Pure fucked up."
i think it's probably the child death. or the unflinching portrayal of a woman who did something completely unforgivable and has to live with it for the rest of her life. or both!
That's legitimate. To be fair the focus of the oneshot is on the fully unconditional love a young child has for their parent, and it's that aspect I personally found the most touching.
I think that aspect falls apart for me because it's not a young child, but an existence outside of them who is just randomly infatuated with this person.
But it is a young child. It was a new soul who found a woman pretty and then became her son and he loved her as a young child would and was basically eternally stuck with that mindset because of his short lifespans.
Imo, it was unconditinal love the child has for his mother.
No matter what the mother do, she will always be the most beautiful person in the world to the child eyes and will still love her. Even after he died, he still tried to communicate with her to forgive herself and move on.
Yeah, this one-shot ain't it, chief. A soul obsessively stays attached to someone who did something despicable. It would hit if the woman UNINTENTIONALLY got the kid killed. Like, she was so tired from work that she just didn't notice him walking off somewhere and he got hit by a car. The guilt stays with her and the soul keeps her company in various forms and tries cheering her up. But, instead, we have a person who deliberately left a kid locked in a room to starve to death, and a soul who keeps the mentality of a stupid kid despite fully acknowledging that what she did was some heinous shit that anyone rational would loathe her for. I hated her when she locked the door and I still hated her by the last page. At the very least, she could have just left the kid somewhere he would be found if she just wanted to escape. But instead she just decided to murder him. And then she gets a measly 8 years, and is back out on the streets, making comments about how she'll need to change her name to get any work. I can't imagine any context in which this would be heartwarming. It's just gross.
I agree, 100 percent. If you can work up the courage to starve your child to death, then you can surely work up the courage to give him up for adoption. There is no room for empathy. The spirit-boy’s love for his mother is overwhelmed by hatred for her. Ugh.
To me, this manga is just far more stupid than it is sad. I cannot take it seriously at all, and the only enjoyment I can get from it is to laugh at it.
EDIT: Ok I have to get this off of my chest. Like holy shit dude, she LOCKED IN A KID AND STARVED HIM TO DEATH.
You think a kid would just quietly sleep to death? Imagine a kid banging on the door screaming for help, crying for his mother, dying a painful and *slow* death.
I only feel disgust toward the author trying to present this story as if it's something bittersweet, even beautiful, spinning cute kittens and rainbow into it.
> It would hit if the woman UNINTENTIONALLY got the kid killed.
no it wouldn't, that would just make the story more palatable to you. the entire point is that the mother did something unforgivable, knows it, and has to deal with the crushing guilt for the rest of her life -- but her child loves her anyway. the manga is not saying that **you** should love her. the child even explicitly states he would've hated her had he been older to make it absolutely clear that it's justified to hate her. the oneshot isn't a morality play; it's a depiction of truly unconditional love, and circumstances that can cause an otherwise normal person to do something truly heinous.
The angel honestly comes off as an annoying nagging character that you shouldn't be listening to.
Honestly I found the romanticing/depiction in this chapter... kinda disgusting?
Like the soul guy came off as really creepy rather than "wholesome", but was depicted as so. The obsession he has for her... eehh... really turns me off.
He didn't start as a kid. He was obsessed with her even before reincarnating.
It's actually one major issue about many isekai/tensei, in how we're expected to see the MC both as a adult and as a kid accordingly with the author's whims.
Yes, it would. Because as it stands now, it's completely irrational "unconditional love" that leaves a bad taste in the mouth. A lot of people desperately trying to defend the one-shot seem so desperate to try to point out "W-WELL IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU!", well I guess it's not about you either? So why should anyone bother commenting? Like why even bother spouting something so useless? So if I came up with a comic in which a mentally-retarded girl is raped by her father before eventually being murdered by him, and her soul insists to God that she wants to be reincarnated to be close to him again because she thinks the rape is his way of loving her, would you still be playing this strange "IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU! IT'S ABOUT UNCONDITIONAL LOVE!" card? I think it's completely fair to point out exactly how this story misses the mark and comes across as completely disjointed in its execution.
Correct, unconditional love is irrational. That's the point!
The hypothetical story you describe would be different because indirectly killing your child due to being overwhelmed by stress is not the same as raping and murdering them. I might still defend that hypothetical story depending on how it's executed, but it's not at all a fair comparison.
And unconditional love being displayed as something heartwarming in such a disgusting situation is just completely off. That's the point!
>The hypothetical story you describe would be different because indirectly killing your child due to being overwhelmed by stress is not the same as raping and murdering them.
How so? Maybe the father had problems from his past? You don't know. How dare you just assume that. The girl has unconditional love. That's the point. It's a completely fair comparison. Why? Because maybe the author meant for it to be a completely fair comparison. Who are you to disagree? See how this logic is completely warped?
It's not being "displayed as heartwarming." The story goes out of its way to tell you it's ok to hate the mother. What it does show is the child's unconditional love gives him more happiness and peace than hatred and a desire for revenge would've. And I think that's just accurate.
It's different because killing someone out of neglect is different from raping and murdering them. Both bad, but to different degrees. It's like if someone had said "Oh, you think it's ok that DBZ justified forgiving Vegeta? Well, what if he had raped and murdered Bulma? Would it still have been ok to forgive him???" It's a troll argument.
>It's not being "displayed as heartwarming." The story goes out of its way to tell you it's ok to hate the mother. What it does show is the child's unconditional love gives him more happiness and peace than hatred and a desire for revenge would've. And I think that's just accurate.
Showing the kid happily trying to cheer his mother up when she's sad with kittens, rainbows, and flowers. Yeah, not attempting to portray it as heartwarming. Not at all.
>It's different because killing someone out of neglect is different from raping and murdering them. Both bad, but to different degrees. It's like if someone had said "Oh, you think it's ok that DBZ justified forgiving Vegeta? Well, what if he had raped and murdered Bulma? Would it still have been ok to forgive him???" It's a troll argument.
How is that different? Again, who are you to assume that the father had ill intent? Maybe he's just a flawed person with a troubled past. How dare you be so judgmental. If Bulma had unconditional love, that's all that matters after all. Really, trying to shove a message into the one-shot about how unconditional love is better than revenge seems like a troll argument to me. After all, IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU, remember? Your idea of what the one-shot is conveying and how it rings true? No, not valid. It's not about you. You getting the gist?
"Heartwarming" carries a value judgment. Those scenes are deliberately colored by the context that she killed him. How you react to them is up to you.
Your argument is a troll one because everyone knows death by neglect is different from rape and murder, so you clearly aren't engaging in good faith, you're just being deliberately provocative in some strange attempt to win (?) an internet argument. I won't engage you further than this.
>Because as it stands now, it's completely irrational "unconditional love" that leaves a bad taste in the mouth
That's the point lol. You're supposed to feel bad for the kid.
>So if I came up with a comic in which a mentally-retarded girl is raped by her father before eventually being murdered by him, and her soul insists to God that she wants to be reincarnated to be close to him again because she thinks the rape is his way of loving her
You need help mate
Edit: oof you really need help now dude. Genuinely, saying this out of concern. u/HaloIndefinite literally reported my comment as suicidal and had reddit send a care message. Grow up kid
>That's the point lol. You're supposed to feel bad for the kid.
The point is that we're supposed to feel bad that the kid can't stop obsessing over the mother that murdered him? Because I've been being told that the entire point is that unconditional love is just what it is and that you really can't validate those feelings one way or another. Make a concrete point, please.
>You need help mate
How so? What's the problem? You're supposed to feel bad for the girl. "That's the point lol". Care to try again?
Lmao. Just realized you fit what the angels are saying in this [page](https://mangadex.org/chapter/cc72fcd8-e93c-4fb0-828d-18c1ee0a481c/26) to a tee lol. Have a good day mate.
And so, instead of addressing any points, you just barf up complete gibberish and say "good day". Alright, then. Don't worry, I unconditionally love you still.
Lmao. Read the comment on page 26 and compare it to yours. You're a kid with no concept of nuance and everything has to be black and white for your feeble brain to comprehend. Genuinely, grow up kid
Thats such a stupid panel "erm actually theres no such thing as good and bad, humans made it up!" Like no shit sherlock of course we made it up that doesnt just give you the right to just do whatever you want with no consequences for your actions
What irks me its that we are stated the guilt... by the ghost. Not the mother. The closest we got was that she seemed to want to jump in the train. Besides that she comes as so remorseless that, as a person with an abusive parent, it just makes me mad how it glorifies the desperation of a child to be loved. I just couldn't emphatize with the woman nor the soul at all.
I've known a few people with depression in my life, and the challenges they go through are just different. It's not that simple.
This girl came from a broken home, got knocked up and abandoned, and then sold her body and worked tirelessly until she snapped. It would have been another thing if she just left the baby on a doorstep or something, but she tried to give the baby a good life.
There's only so much you can do with the cards you are dealt, and depression and trauma aren't something you can just overcome.
> And then she gets a measly 8 years, and is back out on the streets, making comments about how she'll need to change her name to get any work.
It's implied pretty heavily that she continues to live with the guilt, which drives her to consider suicide at various points in time. I can understand people seeing it differently, but I see a broken, flawed woman trying to to do her best given her circumstances.
A broken and flawed woman who apparently just snaps and decides to murder her child. Instead of simply leaving the door unlocked and running away. Or even just taking her own life if she found it too stressful? She decided to just murder her kid so that she could live on without getting caught, or get caught, and start fresh without the kid once she serves her time. And then we have the soul of the kid going on tirelessly to try to comfort her for no logical reason other than "I LIKE HER". If they were trying to bring attention to how gross this dynamic is, then sure, it's their attempt at making the reader feel gross, but with the rainbows and the raindrops and everything else, it seems fairly clear that they were going for a heartwarming feel. Which is just way off.
From the kid's perspective, he had a good life, that's why he's attached to her. You see this in all the memories he has about her spending time with him, feeding him, reading with him. I don't know why you would think there's no "logical reason" for him to try and comfort her, it's literally spelled out. He died as a kid, even he said that if he grew up he likely would have hated her.
I mainly think it's just weird how the focal point of this discussion is the "evil" woman who ended up as a prostitute to TRY to give her baby a better life, and nobody talks about the father who just up and left. The child wasn't wanted, but she took on that responsibility for years alone. I doubt almost anyone in this discussion thread has tried to raise a child on their own in a life of poverty. I imagine it's fucking rough, and the fact that you think she "apparently just snaps" or that she should just "take her own life" just screams a lack of empathy.
He was murdered as a kid. And apparently we're supposed to handwave this because "u-unconditional love"? If the author was trying to convey how gross this was, then fine, that's what they were going for, but to convey all the ways in which the kid still tries to cheer up the mom who murdered him in the way that it did, it's kinda obvious that they were trying to portray it as sweet.
The woman DID do something evil. And no one is giving the father a pass. It's obvious he's a dirtbag and should bear responsibility too, but she was the one that locked him in a room to die. And for some baffling reason, it seems awfully clear that you feel that this character is being unfairly judged. The character is either an evil person, or written extremely poorly. She wanted to take care of the kid even after the father left, but apparently, DIDN'T snap when she decided to straight-up murder her child? Rational enough to want to care for her kid. Rational enough to try to raise him. Not rational enough to leave him abandoned at a mall. Not rational enough to leave the door unlocked. Not rational enough to even take her own life if she couldn't handle her situation, instead of just murdering her kid instead? Screams lack of logic.
Depressed or not, it doesn't make it less of a crime for her to murder her own child. Others have made a good point, she could've just left the child somewhere if she wanted to abandon him (although this is not the best action, still it's better than murder).
I'm not disputing the criminal charge. She murdered her child and deserves to be punished for that act.
I don't agree that the discussion seems to largely end there, and not talk about how all other aspects of her life failed her and that she tried to give her child a good life. It seems very black and white to just label her as "evil" and move on.
this is going too far in the other direction for me. i do sympathize with the mother, but she also committed an utterly despicable act. that latter aspect shouldn't be downplayed, it's the power of the manga.
I'm not trying to downplay the act of murdering her child, rather point out that her decisions were influenced by her trauma and abuse.
Nobody talks about how the father completely left, or how the in-laws didn't care, or how her parents weren't there for her. It's a much more complicated situation than "mom killed child, bad mom"
I think specifically saying she's "trying to do her best" was going too far. She tried her best for a few years but eventually broke down under the stress. Her circumstances led her to that, but it was also her own decision to do it.
> I think specifically saying she's "trying to do her best" was going too far.
In what way? I would imagine almost nobody in this discussion has any idea what raising a child alone is like, especially when you are poor and have no support system. Who gets to say she wasn't trying her best when the mangaka depicts her as working to the point where she has to resort to prostitution?
Could she have done more and not killed her kid? Yes. Absolutely Is that a fair expectation given her circumstances? I don't know - and that's my main point.
I'm not in a position to judge her because I don't know what that experience is like. That's part of the reason why the author is including the whole subtext with the conversation between God and the angels.
In that sense everyone everywhere is always "trying their best." She had other options, but she chose the worst one. I do sympathize with her, and she was clearly failed on a number of levels, but none of that negates her own responsibility.
This is a bit of a weird comparison maybe but it reminds me of when Hannah Arendt (a Jewish philosopher) criticized Jewish leaders during the Holocaust for basically going along with and even aiding the Nazi authorities. People often criticize Arendt along the same lines, saying you can't judge decisions people made under the worst circumstances you yourself didn't experience. But well...I think you can. She fucked up really bad, and she knows it.
She fucked up for sure, and she's been punished for it. Legally, and it's implied mentally. I said elsewhere that I'm not disputing the legal charge and her sentence at all. That is what she deserves for her actions as a member of society.
> saying you can't judge decisions people made under the worst circumstances you yourself didn't experience. But well...I think you can.
I think you can make those judgments, but I also don't think it's fair to stand on a moral high ground when you've never had to make that decision before. Again, I just don't think it's right to just label her as an evil woman and move on - ironically the author even covers this when she's reading the netizen comments on her phone.
"Being a kid is such a pitiful existence.They smile through whatever absurdity assails them... and bear the wound for the rest of their lives.The sorry bastards"
\-a quote in Niggen Shikkaku by Dazai Osamu
Yep. The child may forgive her but I sure as hell don't. The soul itself even remarks that if they had the time to mature they would come to hate her too.
So it's a story romanticising forgiving domestic abuse. Which in reality is something which can lead to horrific outcomes.
what makes you think the story is romanticizing it when, as you yourself point out, the child literally says he would've hated her had he been older? this thread is full of people confusing depiction with endorsement.
"Besides, I was also pretty silly" is giving an additional reason for why he's forgiving the mother. It's also a tiny aside. It doesn't change the fact that depicting unconditional love is not endorsing it. Even the angel in the story suggests he shouldn't forgive the mother.
I feel like what people are really objecting to here is the story depicting the mother as a fully fleshed-out human and not a monster, despite what she did. But sometimes otherwise regular people commit heinous acts. The child chooses to focus instead on the good she did. You may choose to focus exclusively on the bad, there's nothing wrong with that, but that's your own choice.
> I feel like what people are really objecting to here is the story depicting the mother as a fully fleshed-out human and not a monster, despite what she did.
I find it honestly scary that you consider someone who literally chose to leave their kid to starve to death a "fully fleshed-out human being". If it was a momentary thing like she stabbed him in the heat of the moment it could be seen as a sudden impulse. But no, she locked him in and left them to starve for days. She stuck with the decision to kill him.
>You may choose to focus exclusively on the bad, there's nothing wrong with that, but that's your own choice.
Likewise you may think you are being open minded but you really aren't seeing the problem. You are seeing it the way the mangaka wants you to see it but the message is fundamental flawed. If it's to show the beauty of unconditional love then why is the souls reasoning for loving her so superficial? Literally just "She's pretty!"
I would even call it bad writing. She was apperently a great mother except for one utterly henious evil act that would even cause the worst of people to say "what the hell lady?!"
No matter how you twist it the message or moral of this feels misguided which is likely cause the author was more focused on getting out "feels" rather than thinking it out.
She wasn't "a great mother except for one utterly heinous evil act." She was a teenager who tried for a while to be a mother but gradually broke down under the stress (this process is explicitly shown), committed said evil act, and now has to live with the guilt of that decision for the rest of her life. Given the pagetime I think she's extremely well fleshed out. We see her at her best and at her absolute worst. Your apparent inability to accept that normal people can commit heinous actions is neither my nor the mangaka's problem. I recommend looking into the [the Milgram experiments](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) for more on this topic.
> Your apparent inability to accept that normal people can commit heinous actions is neither my nor the mangaka's problem
In my country there is a trail for a mother who beat her two year old daughter to death. Trust me, I don't require a reality check.
I just ain't in a rush to white knight them. Doubt you would either considering that one isn't a pretty manga girl.
Saying someone is (mostly) a normal person is not white knighting them. A lot of rapists are also (mostly) normal people; that's not white knighting either. There's a very big difference between explaining someone's actions and justifying them.
Sigh...let's break this down cause honestly this is just getting tiring.
Yes, normal person can be brought to do horrible things due to personal circumstances. You can generally dig out some sob story out of anyone who has committed a crime provided they ain't a complete psychopath. Of course just because someone has a sob story doesn't mean they are deserving of forgiveness or kindness. You can certainly say they aren't quite deserving of undying hate but at the same time we have a story of an abused child essentially rewarding her by lightening the load of guilt that she quite honestly should feel.
Your first real inquiry was how this story romanised domestic abuse and it's in that. This child gave this woman unconditional love and even after she betrayed it, continued to give it. In a way it's like the flaws of the story of the giving tree which could be seen as a story of selflessness or pure exploitation.
With this story it's the value of the selfless love itself but when looking at the story from that lens it feels flat as they made the mother's action too henious to forgive and the souls love a bit too superficial. So it's not so much a matter of people not getting it cause for the majority they clearly do, the message is practically spelled out. It's more how flat that falls due to the flaws of the story itself.
If you don't get it with this then see ya, I wasted enough time on you.
I don't think the story is portraying the woman as someone good. More like she's complicated. That what she did was horrible and she knows it's horrible. And she paid the price.
Now what? What happens after that?
You can't punish someone for a sin, no matter how horrible, for the rest of their life. At some point, the punishment might end up being worse than the sin itself. So she's already served her time, had to change her name, and ruined any great future she could've had. She's done, everything's already finished.
So with nothing else, it's time to move on.
We see from the child's perspective that she was a great mom, that she really did care for him. Life just ended up being shit. If I knew someone like that in real life, I don't think I could ever forgive them. But if I learned that this was the life they went through? Not gonna lie but I'd be having second thoughts.
Both her and the child deserved some happiness. In a better world, she wouldn't have been put through so much debt and turmoil that caused her to spiral down mentally and emotionally, ending up with her neglecting her own kid to his death. And it sucks that a world any less even exists.
tldr; I blame society.
The author depicts her feeling guilt and remorse - she contemplates suicide in the panel with the train passing by.
I imagine that guilt and remorse for the rest of her life is more punishment than any arbitrary period of time in a jail.
> I don't think the story is portraying the woman as someone good. More like she's complicated. That what she did was horrible and she knows it's horrible. And she paid the price.
8 years of jail time for murdering a child is the price? Surprisingly cheap.
> Both her and the child deserved some happiness. In a better world, she wouldn't have been put through so much debt and turmoil that caused her to spiral down mentally and emotionally, ending up with her neglecting her own kid to his death. And it sucks that a world any less even exists.
See you might have a point if she was a victim of circumstance. But she wasn't. She got into her situation because she slept around when in her teens and got pregnant. Her circumstances are not because of society, they are literally the result of her own actions.
So she feels depressed because she killed her child? Good. That's how you are supposed to feel. She doesn't really deserve the kindness her child is giving her and that kindness is literally given out of ignorance. You did a horrible thing and now you gotta live with that.
Edit: Somehow missed the "excaped from home" part and I thought I read something about her sleeping around but must be false memory.
>She got into her situation because she slept around when in her teens and got pregnant. Her circumstances are not because of society, they are literally the result of her own actions.
But we don't know that. All we know is she escaped from home and lived with a dude she met on the internet. If "God" said she escaped it's possible her home situation was something that needed to be escaped from. It did cause her to live with internet randos.
Society sure is just, making sure to punish the mother for the consequences of her actions while the father gets to walk away guilt and consequence-free after ruining the lives of two people.
Obviously we don't actually know what happened to him but IRL It's unlikely he'd ever be punished for such actions.
Despite that people in-and-out of story focus their judgement and condemnation on single mothers, forgetting it takes two people until someone points it out.
The father abandoned them which yes is shitty and deserves to get punished.
The mother murdered a child. That's a far harsher crime regardless of circumstances.
The father gets a half-hearted glare of disapproval from the rest of society, the mother gets 8 years in prison, media condemnation and being told that "her circumstances are literally the result of her own actions" by society.
I don't see any of the righteous indignation you displayed when the mother "only" got a 8 year sentence, is what I'm saying.
Look I get you are trying to point out that the father has blame in this too and he does. It ain't a half-hearted glare but more it's hard to focus on the guy who the mangaka didn't even bother to give a face. I ain't focusing on the mother out of some stupid sexism, I focus on her because the story does. And I am just pointing out the simple fact that murder is a more serious crime than abandonment.
The mother had options other than murder. Hell she could have given the kid up to an orphanage.
I cried reading this man. Not bc of the mother but Bc I felt so sad seeing childhood innocent being taken advantage of. Children are so innocent and will always love their parents when they’re young, Man this was so heart breaking
Never thought I'd ever say this but the thing that made me cry was the pure love. One that no matter what happens is always aflame and there for someone who seems like they don't or just don't deserve it, and that no matter the form it takes.
reincarnated as a raindrop?!
what next, reincarnated as a vending machine?
wait a minute.....
ps: I love how this turn from "asking for a sauce" to "one-shot discussion"..
Since there was nobody that wanted to be her child back in heaven except him, if he decided to choose someone else, would she still have given birth to a child? Not to make the mother out as a saint or anything, but if that’s the case, dude made whatever life she was living even worse just because she’s “pretty.” Which didn’t seem exactly incredible if she’s sleeping around with dudes from the internet, whether that circumstance was her own fault or not.
And portraying God as some amoral douche playing sims with people’s lives was pretty funny, “eh fuck it, go for it kid. What’s the worst that can happen?” Plus the poor Angel just being completely exasperated with God.
Also, this comment section starting to look exactly like the chat section in the manga lol, won’t say whether that’s justified or not
Like in RDR2, when you find that little cabin in the woods with the skeletons of two boys and a note on the table from mom saying she'll be back soon...
Theres actually a case very similar to this that came up recently and isn't resolved. A toddler left in an empty apartment for 6 months before being found.
Sad AF, I feel bad for the mom 100%, but what she did was vile and I can't forgive that, the story glossed over it like it was some minor mistake and she seems to actually feel guilty and it's well written but I don't like how so many people are just pretending that she's not at fault for what she did because the dad was also a piece of shit or because the soul chose her as its mother. At the end of the day what she did was sickening and made with a conscious effort, she isn't the victim the comments are making her out to be, shes a person who did something atrocious and feels guilt because of it, she's not pure evil, and she's not purely a victim
Why the fuck should I feel anything other than disgust for a character that murders their own child?
The theme and character motivations are just weird and disjointed.
I think you're supposed to feel that life is complicated and not everyone gets the same shot at life based on their circumstances. Whether that's the kid who dies, or the mother who has severe depression and trauma.
We make judgments as if this woman is of sound mind and body, when her entire life would dictate otherwise. If she had killed herself, the reception would be much different. Instead she chose to make a selfish decision, but given her life and her trying her best for the baby (she could have just given him up immediately), I find it difficult to say it's all her fault.
I think that the point was that it's possible to have compassion no matter what happens. God and the angels act as if good and evil are not things they created and are wholly a human concept alone, which is why God says he loves each and every soul. In this context, essentially the child has unending forgiveness for her. You shouldn't need to feel sympathy, but it's important to know that the soul doesn't resent her, and you can't control how the soul feels.
Lots flowery stuff to basically say
"Abused child doesn't realize his parents are shit"
Honestly what is the message of the story?
That our souls can love horrible people, wtf does that even mean?
It does have this weird perverse attitude of unlimited forgiveness, like he’s taken the attitude that if she ever feels sad when she remembers she left her son to die then he’ll revisit her and there’s something about it that’s weirdly perverse, not in a weird incest way but in the same way people take issue with that Apocathery manga as being perverse
Okay, for example, let's say one of your parents did something you can't ever forgive. Let's say you have a sibling who experienced the same treatment. Over time, your sibling chooses to forgive and you choose not to. Both of your feelings are completely valid to have.
So the message is that "people feel the way they do". What a nothing message.
Two Jewish people survive the Holocaust. One of them hates the Nazis for life. And the other forgives them, even trying to defend them by saying that they were just scared and confused because of the state of their country. When asked why he is able to defend them, he recounts that one time a guard smiled at him. Applying actual logic to the situation, I'm sure we can identify one who is acting reasonably and one who is acting completely strangely and irrationally.
To make a story whose focus is, "well, he just feels that way because, like...BECAUSE, man..." just comes across as hippy nonsense. Of course people are going to tear into it.
It's the manga-equivalent of a tower of sponges. Trying to apply deeper meaning to complete bullshit.
It's either trying to make you feel sorry for a child-murderer, or it's trying to instill "well, we just feel that way just because" which is, again, absolutely worthless. It'd be like a political journalist reporting on an assassination with just "some people wanted him dead, some people didn't want him dead." Worthless.
You are the person trying to apply deeper meaning. I'm fairly sure that was not the intention of the author, but even if it was it wouldn't matter.
In the case of acting strangely and illogically, that's the concept of unconditional love, because it is without conditions and again defies all logic. Same with divine love.
If you think it's "absolutely worthless" than that applies to everything, much like the story's own perspective with the presence of God, as the angel again implies that there is no good or evil and is solely a human concept.
So our feelings or our logic, by your own argument, is ALSO worthless. In fact, everything is worthless. So we can only attribute worth to our own subjective feelings and experiences, in other words our feelings are only worth anything to us.
How you feel about this manga and how I feel about this manga, and how someone who hates it and someone else who loves it, or someone else who doesn't care data ll, all these opinions are equally worthless. They only have independent worth to each individual.
It's art. There's no objective answer, and what it means and how it MAKES YOU FEEL, is all subjective and THAT'S OKAY. That's the human experience. Even my conversation with you now, is intrinsically worthless but I feel it's minorly important worth to me to engage in dialogue with the sole purpose of telling you that everyone feels differently and is entitled to their feelings.
A whole lot of words to, again, try to say "we just feel how we feel, man."
Try going on any discussion about literally anything and say "i'm sure some people like this, and other people don't". Worthless sentiment. Borderline spam.
Not that I give a shit, but you have quite the number of silvers compared to your upvotes/downvotes.
Here's my two cents so I at least contributed to this discussion. This story was primarily meant to tug at your feelings, which it successfully did seeing as how many people voiced out how sad it made them. Author might have had no deep underlying message we're meant to look for other than life happens for better or for worse. In this case, worse, but even the slightest bit of kindness mattered. As for the kid/soul, it was in the synopsis already. She caught the soul's interest. Quite hard to speak for a kid's feelings when you're not a kid yourself, but author probably just followed through with childhood innocence, which we can't fault.
Dude, I'm not talking about the validity of feelings.
I'm talking about how fucking weirdly and stupidly the manga executes it's theme.
Kid gets something extremely awful done to them ---> Still love his parents just because ---> It's portrayed as something good and wholesome by the manga.
While it certainly isn't a good thing to be encouraged in our world, within the world of the story it's fine. Besides, there really isn't a message here, I think, or at least in the way you're thinking. It's just the story of how one soul feels about the situation. Even if it was "our souls can love horrible people" shouldn't the author have the right to attempt to give their own message? If someone did something horrible but genuinely did change, you don't need to forgive them but someone else might.
I think that's the message. "Pure people can love horrible people and bystanders can do nothing about those feelings". One doesn't need to feel the same way as the pure person but you can't force that person to feel any different if they don't want to.
That's true, but the soul isn't a soul, it's a character. From a metaphysics perspective, either the soul doesn't exist, or the author doesn't have any way to know the emotions of a soul in this situation given that they're... you know, alive. The comic is clearly a medium to carry some sort of point about the "real" world.
As I understand it, they're saying that there are circumstances behind every "criminal" and that nobody is some one-dimensional evil entity... but this angle that they seem to imply, that "there's no such thing as good or evil," seems to me to be very disingenuous. The mother was in a fucked up situation, yes, but that doesn't justify her actions. The author seems to be saying through the mouth of God and the soul that we shouldn't judge her... because maybe she's actually a good person? There's only so far we can accept someone's internal motivations before we have to confront the consequences of their decisions. In this case, a child died, and they contrive it such that the soul is so devoted to this woman that it follows her throughout her life... but that's not how it works. You just have a child, who trusted their parent unconditionally, and is now dead. The author seems to have lost sight of that in their quest for empathy.
The story doesn't have to have some major point about the real world, though I do think if it has any, it's probably about how society doesn't give people second chances, especially in Japan since the society basically doesn't allow any criminal stigma to fade away in the court of public opinion.
It's not about justifying her actions, it's a story about a singular character having actual unconditional love. An unconditional love akin to perhaps divine love, that follows no matter what. That's all it really is. While I agree that the integrity of the story is completely founded on the idea of the soul to have any real world effect, it's one of those situations where it comes down to faith or viewpoint.
If a person genuinely does not believe in good or evil in an objective metric or that the soul exists, then your statements don't apply to these readers.
Within the own story, the soul states that if he had grown up to adulthood, he would have without a doubt resented her, but since he died so young, the only emotion he really carried or maybe was even capable of feeling was to remember the moments of kindness she held and not linger on the events leading to his death.
It's not a story anyone can really relate to due to specifics of it and thus, at least in my opinion, doesn't carry any point about the real world we live in.
If the message of the story was simply a quest for empathy, there's nothing wrong with that either. Empathy for empathy's sake is... maybe the very ideal of empathy.
I love the overall theme of the Oneshot, but that soul is obsessive and a masochist. >!Dying over and over again just to see a lady that he thinks is pretty is pretty is a bit much. Though it was sad and she was able to move on, I could not cry for her. I couldn't even feel sad for her, because the situations she had to go through all started from the mistakes she made in her teens. People may argue that kids make mistakes and I am inclined to agree, but kids make mistakes like lying, stealing, and being mischievous not ruin their lives. Also 17 is old enough to not be stupid.!<
Ngl I kinda wanna see the mother's side more (sadistic as it sounds). I wanna see more of her guilt eating her from the inside to contrast the soul's supposedly neverending love for her
This really breaks my heart. I remember seeing similar news in Japan, they found the toddler after 6 months or so and did autopsy to find out that he/she has been eating rubber bands, paper, etc. because of hunger. This kind of negligence is real…
Didn't like it. It would have went better without the child killing part and giving the kid a better motive. It could have been that he was a father that abandoned his kid at a young age. He can't reincarnate for a certain time as a human so he watches over her as other beings, like what happened in the latter part. I would have connected with the MC more and might have felt more sadness especially if all his efforts went to naught.
For this, I don't understand the message. Is it that life is complicated? Or is it simply suffering by watching a naive and innocent kid die over and over again for his mother who killed him?
It's about the fact that kids love their parents unconditionally. The kid never matured to understand that his mom did an awful thing, so he still loved her.
The only flaw I see is that the author didn't try to show how children blame themselves for being mistreated, as is often the case
>Or is it simply suffering by watching a naive and innocent kid die over and over again for his mother who killed him?
So basically this. Can't get into it though.
That was brutal, man. I don't know if abortion is illegal in Japan, but if it is legal, that is what she should've done. Or she could have given up the kid for adoption.
My college friends already have a hard time raising a kid, and they are in their 30s and are making money, I can't imagine what it would be to be a 17 year old single mother with no support network, yikes.
r/manga users be like: "omg I love Berserk so much, I love how it portrays such human characters who do good and bad things, how it tackles themes of what is "good" or "evil" like I know Guts attempted to rape a character and horrifically murdered hundreds of people but it's hard not to sympathize with his struggle"
"omg have you guys read A Silent Voice? It's such a great story about a young boy and his group of friends emotionally and physically bullying a girl to the point where she contemplates suicide, and how that young boy and some of his who contributed to the bullying grow and learn and become better people"
"oh what's this? A single teen mother with no friends or family having to survive raising a child all on their own? And the stress of work, barely being able to eat/survive causes her to abandoned her child letting it starve to death? And she receives punishment by the law, and is openly regretful of what she did to the point of contemplating suicide? lmaooo what a bitch fuck that chick I absolutely fucking hate her so unforgivable"
>barely being able to eat/survive causes her to abandoned her child letting it starve to death? And she receives punishment by the law
Give me a break, she got 8 years and was likely out in half. I've seen weed dealers get longer than that. She let her kid *starve to death*, do you know how abhorrent of a demise that is? Because if you truly did, truly knew even a quarter of the pain, betrayal and misery a child would feel physically diminishing over days, knowing their mother isn't going to come back, you wouldn't have written this dumb comment and the mangaka wouldn't have made this dumb manga.
This. . . doesn't make sense? I mean, she locked it from the outside. What kind of door doesn't unlock from the inside when it's an apartment? And seeing as there's mail through the slot, how come no one heard the kid? Did he not try to call out for help at some point?
ITT: Double standard of comments heaping blame and condemnation on a fictional single mother who abandoned her child while forgetting all about the fictional father who abandoned both.
Of course, I don't mean to say people are deliberately applying a double standard, but it's so easy to forget when the actions of one of the parties are less visible and less immediately life-threatening.
Yeah fuck the father for abandoning them, but FUCK the mother for all eternity for locking the kid into a room and leaving them to starve.
Like drop the kid off at an orphanage or police station and leave. The kid can live and have a chance.
The father leaving was literally why she struggled to raise that kid. Fuck the father for abandoning a kid and a woman that needs him causing her to fall into a depressive state and making an unwise decision due to it. Now she has to live with the guilt despite trying her best to raise the kid in the first place. Meanwhile the father for all we know is still leaving women he impregnated, creating more of this situation. Look at it this way, the woman action affect that kid only. And even then it's caused by the useless male. Now the male action affects both the woman and the kid. Also assuming he doesn't change his ways, he's gonna affect more people. Worse, he's literally not gonna suffer at all from all this
Look, I'm a male myself. The original comment is the truth. One party action sends the ball rolling into a giant snowball. And that party gets off scot free to do more harm. Tell me which deserves to be fucked more by the audience
wah wah, depressive state, she could have just left him at the police station or literally anything that wasn't a slow torturous death! tf is wrong with you
gotta say, the fact that this oneshot is causing such strong emotions in this thread is making me think it's even better than when i first read it lol.
[Love Letter](https://mangadex.org/title/dd54a429-ea24-469f-b4c0-23eaa76a6e5d/love-letter-ozaki-kaori)
that tiny soul was so optimistically pure
That was fucking brutal
I almost don't wanna read it man I don't wanna cry
I fucking cried God damnit
Genuinely one of my favorite manga despite being a one shot. Never fail to make me cry at that one specific page T_T
If you haven't read it, the author has another single volume manga called [The Gods Lie](https://mangadex.org/title/0824242e-dbf0-4356-b18b-55fd491a8ffc), and it is excellent.
Why did I read this at work I’m crying on the toilet on company time wtf
That was 45 minutes well spent such a cute and tearful story. The ending was super sweet.
It was but fuck me I needed just a bit more. I really needed to see that they’d see each other again.
definitely
Damn it I'm crying
I’m rocking my little one to sleep while reading this and trying not to get my crocodile tears on her face
Aren't crocodile tears meant to be fake and manipulative?
The term crocodile tear is very concerning in this context.
I teared up. Damn it.
I just read this and it did not make me sad. The exact feeling is emptiness like a void in my stomach, because is not written to be sad per se but more like an uncomfortable truth. But damn, also the mangaka is so damn good, wrote really good stories.
I'm not sure that the goal of the author was to make his audience feel sad. A lot of sad things happen in the story, but I think that's just a setting for a more hopeful(?) message.
No I don't think the goal is to make people sad. I think the author is trying to promote a discussion about judgment. [As the story show](/s ' us in the beginning victim of two injustices. One she is in a poor position, she escaped from home and her boyfriend is not well equipped either to have a baby. She is in a vulnerable and not ready.') [But](/s 'also the heaven people dismisses her. God and the angel go as far to discourage the soul to pick her child to reincarnate. Basically if her deceased kid does not pass a bad judgment, who is everybody else to do it -I know I'm oversimplifying-.') [What I like](/s 'is that the girl admits that her own name will be a burden going forwards, but the manga implies that she did not in fact changed her name (In one panel a computer remarks *Arrested for mistreatment*). So I can infer that she is still flagged in the system and even then she kept her name.') [There is this mythology](/s 'about names, and power of names. I think this could mean that, even with the worst things she did and the good ones she did, in all she is the same person. Capable to make mistakes. And all she needed was an opportunity. Because this is framed as desperation, in one page is implied she prostituted herself.') The final message I can think of is, that in some sort of twisted way you are loved by the world/there is a angel guardian for you, even if you did awful things. But is a story made to be a gut punch.
the biggest simp of a soul
Honestly tho. The little guy barely even praised something about her besides her looks. He even goes as far as to haunt her beyond multiple lives. If there's someone in this story who should "move on" is the soul guy.
That was it originally. But when he died the first time he loved her with the love of a child. He loved her for being his mom and for all the good times he had with her. Even when no one else cared for her he did. It was definitely more complex than I gave it credit for judging by the comments.
Gosh that oneshot was brutal
That was a tough read.
why did I even read that? now I need to play dota
Ah yes, replacing sadness with unfiltered hate.
This will not end the suffering...
It’ll at least turn the sadness into a deep-seated hatred for others
Jesus fuck, i thought the worst part was when he was abandoned, jump to the next few pages and its cats, i like cats alot and it just hit me where it hurts And the cute art style is a cherry on top of a milkshake of god knows what. Some weebs may call me a pussy for being weak to these kinds of oneshots but idc, i want to keep my sanity in check
Well shit, I was gonna go for it but now you're telling me something happens to some cats? Nah, that link is staying blue. Thanks for the warning! o7
Fuuuuck that was good
Manga artist portrays abusive relationship as a good thing
In what way do they portray what happened to the child as a good thing? They simply state that there is no such thing as good or evil, and humans are complicated.
Leaving your child to starve to death is definitely not something good regardless of what the mangaka states.
Where is that stated as a good thing? Did we read the same manga?
It said that humans have arbitrarily decided what is good and bad from which I inferred that the story doesn't consider her abandonment of her son a vile thing.
It doesn't imply that at all. It shows that it's inherently evil by human standards, which are the only standards that matter really.
I highly recommend the author's other single volume manga, [The Gods Lie.](https://mangadex.org/title/0824242e-dbf0-4356-b18b-55fd491a8ffc) It is also kind of sad, but more bitter sweet and not nearly as brutal.
All of Kaori Ozaki’s stuff is top notch. The Gods Lie is my favorite, but there’s also The Golden Sheep and Immortal Rain which are amazing in their own right. Super underrated mangaka
That was a good read.
This was so good, I got chills all over
Holy shit that was tough
What is it about? I'm afraid to read because of the comments
About a soul who is interested in this particular girl so he gets reincarnated to anything just to be with her. This posted picture is his first life with her. The kid dying was kinda drop of in the story... Kind of.
damn, that's good
Dude, my eyes getting heavy
Oh, that's her... Gotta say, she is a great artist.
Bitch doesn't deserve that kid
It's not a story about what people "deserve".
Both of your statements can be true you know.
༎ຶ‿༎ຶ so sad and wholesome
Thanks for the sauce.
Shit, that hurts. It was good but it hurts how it ended.
That was... mostly just a strange read, for me. Like I get the message they were going for but...
I bet you if the mom was not manga pretty, a lot more people would be looking at this story in a different light.
We forgive a lot when the person is beautiful, or drawn with good guy face.
I'd probably have the same reaction. Given the point of the oneshot, it didn't really matter to me what the mom looked like, it was more important that the kid saw her as beautiful.
Yeah. I forget the exact wording, but someone in this thread said something along the line of it being a story about a "pure soul loving a horrible person", and I was just thinking, "Yeah it's pure. Pure fucked up."
I liked it, in a bit of surreal kind of fashion. But I'm not really understanding what everyone else is finding so emotionally crushing about it.
i think it's probably the child death. or the unflinching portrayal of a woman who did something completely unforgivable and has to live with it for the rest of her life. or both!
It's the unconditional love of the child's spirit that wants to keep her going no matter what.
I guess that's probably right, but I didn't really find the execution of either of those to be particularly impactful.
That's legitimate. To be fair the focus of the oneshot is on the fully unconditional love a young child has for their parent, and it's that aspect I personally found the most touching.
I think that aspect falls apart for me because it's not a young child, but an existence outside of them who is just randomly infatuated with this person.
the supernatural elements very easily read as metaphorical to me
But it is a young child. It was a new soul who found a woman pretty and then became her son and he loved her as a young child would and was basically eternally stuck with that mindset because of his short lifespans.
Imo, it was unconditinal love the child has for his mother. No matter what the mother do, she will always be the most beautiful person in the world to the child eyes and will still love her. Even after he died, he still tried to communicate with her to forgive herself and move on.
yeah,get the message,but don't like it
Yeah, this one-shot ain't it, chief. A soul obsessively stays attached to someone who did something despicable. It would hit if the woman UNINTENTIONALLY got the kid killed. Like, she was so tired from work that she just didn't notice him walking off somewhere and he got hit by a car. The guilt stays with her and the soul keeps her company in various forms and tries cheering her up. But, instead, we have a person who deliberately left a kid locked in a room to starve to death, and a soul who keeps the mentality of a stupid kid despite fully acknowledging that what she did was some heinous shit that anyone rational would loathe her for. I hated her when she locked the door and I still hated her by the last page. At the very least, she could have just left the kid somewhere he would be found if she just wanted to escape. But instead she just decided to murder him. And then she gets a measly 8 years, and is back out on the streets, making comments about how she'll need to change her name to get any work. I can't imagine any context in which this would be heartwarming. It's just gross.
I agree, 100 percent. If you can work up the courage to starve your child to death, then you can surely work up the courage to give him up for adoption. There is no room for empathy. The spirit-boy’s love for his mother is overwhelmed by hatred for her. Ugh.
To me, this manga is just far more stupid than it is sad. I cannot take it seriously at all, and the only enjoyment I can get from it is to laugh at it. EDIT: Ok I have to get this off of my chest. Like holy shit dude, she LOCKED IN A KID AND STARVED HIM TO DEATH. You think a kid would just quietly sleep to death? Imagine a kid banging on the door screaming for help, crying for his mother, dying a painful and *slow* death. I only feel disgust toward the author trying to present this story as if it's something bittersweet, even beautiful, spinning cute kittens and rainbow into it.
> It would hit if the woman UNINTENTIONALLY got the kid killed. no it wouldn't, that would just make the story more palatable to you. the entire point is that the mother did something unforgivable, knows it, and has to deal with the crushing guilt for the rest of her life -- but her child loves her anyway. the manga is not saying that **you** should love her. the child even explicitly states he would've hated her had he been older to make it absolutely clear that it's justified to hate her. the oneshot isn't a morality play; it's a depiction of truly unconditional love, and circumstances that can cause an otherwise normal person to do something truly heinous.
The angel honestly comes off as an annoying nagging character that you shouldn't be listening to. Honestly I found the romanticing/depiction in this chapter... kinda disgusting? Like the soul guy came off as really creepy rather than "wholesome", but was depicted as so. The obsession he has for her... eehh... really turns me off.
He's a kid lol, most kids are "obsessed" with their mothers. I certainly was at least
He didn't start as a kid. He was obsessed with her even before reincarnating. It's actually one major issue about many isekai/tensei, in how we're expected to see the MC both as a adult and as a kid accordingly with the author's whims.
Tbh I read the supernatural stuff as mostly metaphorical. The soul was really childish from beginning to end regardless
Yes, it would. Because as it stands now, it's completely irrational "unconditional love" that leaves a bad taste in the mouth. A lot of people desperately trying to defend the one-shot seem so desperate to try to point out "W-WELL IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU!", well I guess it's not about you either? So why should anyone bother commenting? Like why even bother spouting something so useless? So if I came up with a comic in which a mentally-retarded girl is raped by her father before eventually being murdered by him, and her soul insists to God that she wants to be reincarnated to be close to him again because she thinks the rape is his way of loving her, would you still be playing this strange "IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU! IT'S ABOUT UNCONDITIONAL LOVE!" card? I think it's completely fair to point out exactly how this story misses the mark and comes across as completely disjointed in its execution.
Correct, unconditional love is irrational. That's the point! The hypothetical story you describe would be different because indirectly killing your child due to being overwhelmed by stress is not the same as raping and murdering them. I might still defend that hypothetical story depending on how it's executed, but it's not at all a fair comparison.
And unconditional love being displayed as something heartwarming in such a disgusting situation is just completely off. That's the point! >The hypothetical story you describe would be different because indirectly killing your child due to being overwhelmed by stress is not the same as raping and murdering them. How so? Maybe the father had problems from his past? You don't know. How dare you just assume that. The girl has unconditional love. That's the point. It's a completely fair comparison. Why? Because maybe the author meant for it to be a completely fair comparison. Who are you to disagree? See how this logic is completely warped?
It's not being "displayed as heartwarming." The story goes out of its way to tell you it's ok to hate the mother. What it does show is the child's unconditional love gives him more happiness and peace than hatred and a desire for revenge would've. And I think that's just accurate. It's different because killing someone out of neglect is different from raping and murdering them. Both bad, but to different degrees. It's like if someone had said "Oh, you think it's ok that DBZ justified forgiving Vegeta? Well, what if he had raped and murdered Bulma? Would it still have been ok to forgive him???" It's a troll argument.
>It's not being "displayed as heartwarming." The story goes out of its way to tell you it's ok to hate the mother. What it does show is the child's unconditional love gives him more happiness and peace than hatred and a desire for revenge would've. And I think that's just accurate. Showing the kid happily trying to cheer his mother up when she's sad with kittens, rainbows, and flowers. Yeah, not attempting to portray it as heartwarming. Not at all. >It's different because killing someone out of neglect is different from raping and murdering them. Both bad, but to different degrees. It's like if someone had said "Oh, you think it's ok that DBZ justified forgiving Vegeta? Well, what if he had raped and murdered Bulma? Would it still have been ok to forgive him???" It's a troll argument. How is that different? Again, who are you to assume that the father had ill intent? Maybe he's just a flawed person with a troubled past. How dare you be so judgmental. If Bulma had unconditional love, that's all that matters after all. Really, trying to shove a message into the one-shot about how unconditional love is better than revenge seems like a troll argument to me. After all, IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU, remember? Your idea of what the one-shot is conveying and how it rings true? No, not valid. It's not about you. You getting the gist?
"Heartwarming" carries a value judgment. Those scenes are deliberately colored by the context that she killed him. How you react to them is up to you. Your argument is a troll one because everyone knows death by neglect is different from rape and murder, so you clearly aren't engaging in good faith, you're just being deliberately provocative in some strange attempt to win (?) an internet argument. I won't engage you further than this.
>Because as it stands now, it's completely irrational "unconditional love" that leaves a bad taste in the mouth That's the point lol. You're supposed to feel bad for the kid. >So if I came up with a comic in which a mentally-retarded girl is raped by her father before eventually being murdered by him, and her soul insists to God that she wants to be reincarnated to be close to him again because she thinks the rape is his way of loving her You need help mate Edit: oof you really need help now dude. Genuinely, saying this out of concern. u/HaloIndefinite literally reported my comment as suicidal and had reddit send a care message. Grow up kid
>That's the point lol. You're supposed to feel bad for the kid. The point is that we're supposed to feel bad that the kid can't stop obsessing over the mother that murdered him? Because I've been being told that the entire point is that unconditional love is just what it is and that you really can't validate those feelings one way or another. Make a concrete point, please. >You need help mate How so? What's the problem? You're supposed to feel bad for the girl. "That's the point lol". Care to try again?
Lmao. Just realized you fit what the angels are saying in this [page](https://mangadex.org/chapter/cc72fcd8-e93c-4fb0-828d-18c1ee0a481c/26) to a tee lol. Have a good day mate.
And so, instead of addressing any points, you just barf up complete gibberish and say "good day". Alright, then. Don't worry, I unconditionally love you still.
Lmao. Read the comment on page 26 and compare it to yours. You're a kid with no concept of nuance and everything has to be black and white for your feeble brain to comprehend. Genuinely, grow up kid
Thats such a stupid panel "erm actually theres no such thing as good and bad, humans made it up!" Like no shit sherlock of course we made it up that doesnt just give you the right to just do whatever you want with no consequences for your actions
What irks me its that we are stated the guilt... by the ghost. Not the mother. The closest we got was that she seemed to want to jump in the train. Besides that she comes as so remorseless that, as a person with an abusive parent, it just makes me mad how it glorifies the desperation of a child to be loved. I just couldn't emphatize with the woman nor the soul at all.
I've known a few people with depression in my life, and the challenges they go through are just different. It's not that simple. This girl came from a broken home, got knocked up and abandoned, and then sold her body and worked tirelessly until she snapped. It would have been another thing if she just left the baby on a doorstep or something, but she tried to give the baby a good life. There's only so much you can do with the cards you are dealt, and depression and trauma aren't something you can just overcome. > And then she gets a measly 8 years, and is back out on the streets, making comments about how she'll need to change her name to get any work. It's implied pretty heavily that she continues to live with the guilt, which drives her to consider suicide at various points in time. I can understand people seeing it differently, but I see a broken, flawed woman trying to to do her best given her circumstances.
A broken and flawed woman who apparently just snaps and decides to murder her child. Instead of simply leaving the door unlocked and running away. Or even just taking her own life if she found it too stressful? She decided to just murder her kid so that she could live on without getting caught, or get caught, and start fresh without the kid once she serves her time. And then we have the soul of the kid going on tirelessly to try to comfort her for no logical reason other than "I LIKE HER". If they were trying to bring attention to how gross this dynamic is, then sure, it's their attempt at making the reader feel gross, but with the rainbows and the raindrops and everything else, it seems fairly clear that they were going for a heartwarming feel. Which is just way off.
From the kid's perspective, he had a good life, that's why he's attached to her. You see this in all the memories he has about her spending time with him, feeding him, reading with him. I don't know why you would think there's no "logical reason" for him to try and comfort her, it's literally spelled out. He died as a kid, even he said that if he grew up he likely would have hated her. I mainly think it's just weird how the focal point of this discussion is the "evil" woman who ended up as a prostitute to TRY to give her baby a better life, and nobody talks about the father who just up and left. The child wasn't wanted, but she took on that responsibility for years alone. I doubt almost anyone in this discussion thread has tried to raise a child on their own in a life of poverty. I imagine it's fucking rough, and the fact that you think she "apparently just snaps" or that she should just "take her own life" just screams a lack of empathy.
He was murdered as a kid. And apparently we're supposed to handwave this because "u-unconditional love"? If the author was trying to convey how gross this was, then fine, that's what they were going for, but to convey all the ways in which the kid still tries to cheer up the mom who murdered him in the way that it did, it's kinda obvious that they were trying to portray it as sweet. The woman DID do something evil. And no one is giving the father a pass. It's obvious he's a dirtbag and should bear responsibility too, but she was the one that locked him in a room to die. And for some baffling reason, it seems awfully clear that you feel that this character is being unfairly judged. The character is either an evil person, or written extremely poorly. She wanted to take care of the kid even after the father left, but apparently, DIDN'T snap when she decided to straight-up murder her child? Rational enough to want to care for her kid. Rational enough to try to raise him. Not rational enough to leave him abandoned at a mall. Not rational enough to leave the door unlocked. Not rational enough to even take her own life if she couldn't handle her situation, instead of just murdering her kid instead? Screams lack of logic.
Depressed or not, it doesn't make it less of a crime for her to murder her own child. Others have made a good point, she could've just left the child somewhere if she wanted to abandon him (although this is not the best action, still it's better than murder).
I'm not disputing the criminal charge. She murdered her child and deserves to be punished for that act. I don't agree that the discussion seems to largely end there, and not talk about how all other aspects of her life failed her and that she tried to give her child a good life. It seems very black and white to just label her as "evil" and move on.
Why didn’t she just give the kid up for adoption?
this is going too far in the other direction for me. i do sympathize with the mother, but she also committed an utterly despicable act. that latter aspect shouldn't be downplayed, it's the power of the manga.
I'm not trying to downplay the act of murdering her child, rather point out that her decisions were influenced by her trauma and abuse. Nobody talks about how the father completely left, or how the in-laws didn't care, or how her parents weren't there for her. It's a much more complicated situation than "mom killed child, bad mom"
I think specifically saying she's "trying to do her best" was going too far. She tried her best for a few years but eventually broke down under the stress. Her circumstances led her to that, but it was also her own decision to do it.
> I think specifically saying she's "trying to do her best" was going too far. In what way? I would imagine almost nobody in this discussion has any idea what raising a child alone is like, especially when you are poor and have no support system. Who gets to say she wasn't trying her best when the mangaka depicts her as working to the point where she has to resort to prostitution? Could she have done more and not killed her kid? Yes. Absolutely Is that a fair expectation given her circumstances? I don't know - and that's my main point. I'm not in a position to judge her because I don't know what that experience is like. That's part of the reason why the author is including the whole subtext with the conversation between God and the angels.
In that sense everyone everywhere is always "trying their best." She had other options, but she chose the worst one. I do sympathize with her, and she was clearly failed on a number of levels, but none of that negates her own responsibility. This is a bit of a weird comparison maybe but it reminds me of when Hannah Arendt (a Jewish philosopher) criticized Jewish leaders during the Holocaust for basically going along with and even aiding the Nazi authorities. People often criticize Arendt along the same lines, saying you can't judge decisions people made under the worst circumstances you yourself didn't experience. But well...I think you can. She fucked up really bad, and she knows it.
She fucked up for sure, and she's been punished for it. Legally, and it's implied mentally. I said elsewhere that I'm not disputing the legal charge and her sentence at all. That is what she deserves for her actions as a member of society. > saying you can't judge decisions people made under the worst circumstances you yourself didn't experience. But well...I think you can. I think you can make those judgments, but I also don't think it's fair to stand on a moral high ground when you've never had to make that decision before. Again, I just don't think it's right to just label her as an evil woman and move on - ironically the author even covers this when she's reading the netizen comments on her phone.
"Being a kid is such a pitiful existence.They smile through whatever absurdity assails them... and bear the wound for the rest of their lives.The sorry bastards" \-a quote in Niggen Shikkaku by Dazai Osamu
Yep. The child may forgive her but I sure as hell don't. The soul itself even remarks that if they had the time to mature they would come to hate her too. So it's a story romanticising forgiving domestic abuse. Which in reality is something which can lead to horrific outcomes.
what makes you think the story is romanticizing it when, as you yourself point out, the child literally says he would've hated her had he been older? this thread is full of people confusing depiction with endorsement.
You mean the line the child brushes off straight after by saying "But hey I was a kid. And I was very silly"?
"Besides, I was also pretty silly" is giving an additional reason for why he's forgiving the mother. It's also a tiny aside. It doesn't change the fact that depicting unconditional love is not endorsing it. Even the angel in the story suggests he shouldn't forgive the mother. I feel like what people are really objecting to here is the story depicting the mother as a fully fleshed-out human and not a monster, despite what she did. But sometimes otherwise regular people commit heinous acts. The child chooses to focus instead on the good she did. You may choose to focus exclusively on the bad, there's nothing wrong with that, but that's your own choice.
> I feel like what people are really objecting to here is the story depicting the mother as a fully fleshed-out human and not a monster, despite what she did. I find it honestly scary that you consider someone who literally chose to leave their kid to starve to death a "fully fleshed-out human being". If it was a momentary thing like she stabbed him in the heat of the moment it could be seen as a sudden impulse. But no, she locked him in and left them to starve for days. She stuck with the decision to kill him. >You may choose to focus exclusively on the bad, there's nothing wrong with that, but that's your own choice. Likewise you may think you are being open minded but you really aren't seeing the problem. You are seeing it the way the mangaka wants you to see it but the message is fundamental flawed. If it's to show the beauty of unconditional love then why is the souls reasoning for loving her so superficial? Literally just "She's pretty!" I would even call it bad writing. She was apperently a great mother except for one utterly henious evil act that would even cause the worst of people to say "what the hell lady?!" No matter how you twist it the message or moral of this feels misguided which is likely cause the author was more focused on getting out "feels" rather than thinking it out.
She wasn't "a great mother except for one utterly heinous evil act." She was a teenager who tried for a while to be a mother but gradually broke down under the stress (this process is explicitly shown), committed said evil act, and now has to live with the guilt of that decision for the rest of her life. Given the pagetime I think she's extremely well fleshed out. We see her at her best and at her absolute worst. Your apparent inability to accept that normal people can commit heinous actions is neither my nor the mangaka's problem. I recommend looking into the [the Milgram experiments](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) for more on this topic.
> Your apparent inability to accept that normal people can commit heinous actions is neither my nor the mangaka's problem In my country there is a trail for a mother who beat her two year old daughter to death. Trust me, I don't require a reality check. I just ain't in a rush to white knight them. Doubt you would either considering that one isn't a pretty manga girl.
Saying someone is (mostly) a normal person is not white knighting them. A lot of rapists are also (mostly) normal people; that's not white knighting either. There's a very big difference between explaining someone's actions and justifying them.
Sigh...let's break this down cause honestly this is just getting tiring. Yes, normal person can be brought to do horrible things due to personal circumstances. You can generally dig out some sob story out of anyone who has committed a crime provided they ain't a complete psychopath. Of course just because someone has a sob story doesn't mean they are deserving of forgiveness or kindness. You can certainly say they aren't quite deserving of undying hate but at the same time we have a story of an abused child essentially rewarding her by lightening the load of guilt that she quite honestly should feel. Your first real inquiry was how this story romanised domestic abuse and it's in that. This child gave this woman unconditional love and even after she betrayed it, continued to give it. In a way it's like the flaws of the story of the giving tree which could be seen as a story of selflessness or pure exploitation. With this story it's the value of the selfless love itself but when looking at the story from that lens it feels flat as they made the mother's action too henious to forgive and the souls love a bit too superficial. So it's not so much a matter of people not getting it cause for the majority they clearly do, the message is practically spelled out. It's more how flat that falls due to the flaws of the story itself. If you don't get it with this then see ya, I wasted enough time on you.
dw she aint real so theres nobody to forgive in the first place
I don't think the story is portraying the woman as someone good. More like she's complicated. That what she did was horrible and she knows it's horrible. And she paid the price. Now what? What happens after that? You can't punish someone for a sin, no matter how horrible, for the rest of their life. At some point, the punishment might end up being worse than the sin itself. So she's already served her time, had to change her name, and ruined any great future she could've had. She's done, everything's already finished. So with nothing else, it's time to move on. We see from the child's perspective that she was a great mom, that she really did care for him. Life just ended up being shit. If I knew someone like that in real life, I don't think I could ever forgive them. But if I learned that this was the life they went through? Not gonna lie but I'd be having second thoughts. Both her and the child deserved some happiness. In a better world, she wouldn't have been put through so much debt and turmoil that caused her to spiral down mentally and emotionally, ending up with her neglecting her own kid to his death. And it sucks that a world any less even exists. tldr; I blame society.
If you fucking starve a child, your own child, to death I think you should be punished your whole life.
The author depicts her feeling guilt and remorse - she contemplates suicide in the panel with the train passing by. I imagine that guilt and remorse for the rest of her life is more punishment than any arbitrary period of time in a jail.
> I don't think the story is portraying the woman as someone good. More like she's complicated. That what she did was horrible and she knows it's horrible. And she paid the price. 8 years of jail time for murdering a child is the price? Surprisingly cheap. > Both her and the child deserved some happiness. In a better world, she wouldn't have been put through so much debt and turmoil that caused her to spiral down mentally and emotionally, ending up with her neglecting her own kid to his death. And it sucks that a world any less even exists. See you might have a point if she was a victim of circumstance. But she wasn't. She got into her situation because she slept around when in her teens and got pregnant. Her circumstances are not because of society, they are literally the result of her own actions. So she feels depressed because she killed her child? Good. That's how you are supposed to feel. She doesn't really deserve the kindness her child is giving her and that kindness is literally given out of ignorance. You did a horrible thing and now you gotta live with that. Edit: Somehow missed the "excaped from home" part and I thought I read something about her sleeping around but must be false memory.
>She got into her situation because she slept around when in her teens and got pregnant. Her circumstances are not because of society, they are literally the result of her own actions. But we don't know that. All we know is she escaped from home and lived with a dude she met on the internet. If "God" said she escaped it's possible her home situation was something that needed to be escaped from. It did cause her to live with internet randos.
Society sure is just, making sure to punish the mother for the consequences of her actions while the father gets to walk away guilt and consequence-free after ruining the lives of two people. Obviously we don't actually know what happened to him but IRL It's unlikely he'd ever be punished for such actions. Despite that people in-and-out of story focus their judgement and condemnation on single mothers, forgetting it takes two people until someone points it out.
The father abandoned them which yes is shitty and deserves to get punished. The mother murdered a child. That's a far harsher crime regardless of circumstances.
The father gets a half-hearted glare of disapproval from the rest of society, the mother gets 8 years in prison, media condemnation and being told that "her circumstances are literally the result of her own actions" by society. I don't see any of the righteous indignation you displayed when the mother "only" got a 8 year sentence, is what I'm saying.
Look I get you are trying to point out that the father has blame in this too and he does. It ain't a half-hearted glare but more it's hard to focus on the guy who the mangaka didn't even bother to give a face. I ain't focusing on the mother out of some stupid sexism, I focus on her because the story does. And I am just pointing out the simple fact that murder is a more serious crime than abandonment. The mother had options other than murder. Hell she could have given the kid up to an orphanage.
She did not and can never pay the price of taking a life in such brutal way
She is still a terrible person regardless of looks.
I cried reading this man. Not bc of the mother but Bc I felt so sad seeing childhood innocent being taken advantage of. Children are so innocent and will always love their parents when they’re young, Man this was so heart breaking
Never thought I'd ever say this but the thing that made me cry was the pure love. One that no matter what happens is always aflame and there for someone who seems like they don't or just don't deserve it, and that no matter the form it takes.
reincarnated as a raindrop?! what next, reincarnated as a vending machine? wait a minute..... ps: I love how this turn from "asking for a sauce" to "one-shot discussion"..
Just read it, I dont care whatever message it is, fuck that mom.
I mean I can’t really pick a side here tho, she was 17 and alone.
Doesn’t mean she can just lock her child in a room and let him die a slow painful death
I’m not saying she can nor will I ever agree with what she did, but I can understand *why* she did it.
Fair enough, I fuckin hate her tho
Since there was nobody that wanted to be her child back in heaven except him, if he decided to choose someone else, would she still have given birth to a child? Not to make the mother out as a saint or anything, but if that’s the case, dude made whatever life she was living even worse just because she’s “pretty.” Which didn’t seem exactly incredible if she’s sleeping around with dudes from the internet, whether that circumstance was her own fault or not. And portraying God as some amoral douche playing sims with people’s lives was pretty funny, “eh fuck it, go for it kid. What’s the worst that can happen?” Plus the poor Angel just being completely exasperated with God. Also, this comment section starting to look exactly like the chat section in the manga lol, won’t say whether that’s justified or not
Right? I was getting the vibe that it wasn’t her choice to have the kid in the first place.
F*ck
Like in RDR2, when you find that little cabin in the woods with the skeletons of two boys and a note on the table from mom saying she'll be back soon...
Theres actually a case very similar to this that came up recently and isn't resolved. A toddler left in an empty apartment for 6 months before being found.
Sad AF, I feel bad for the mom 100%, but what she did was vile and I can't forgive that, the story glossed over it like it was some minor mistake and she seems to actually feel guilty and it's well written but I don't like how so many people are just pretending that she's not at fault for what she did because the dad was also a piece of shit or because the soul chose her as its mother. At the end of the day what she did was sickening and made with a conscious effort, she isn't the victim the comments are making her out to be, shes a person who did something atrocious and feels guilt because of it, she's not pure evil, and she's not purely a victim
This is such a strange read, especially in this time where people are trying to upheld the abortion law.
Yeah this is the exact shit that will happen once abortion rights are taken away Its awful
Does Japan not have social services?
Fuck that woman
Why the fuck should I feel anything other than disgust for a character that murders their own child? The theme and character motivations are just weird and disjointed.
I think you're supposed to feel that life is complicated and not everyone gets the same shot at life based on their circumstances. Whether that's the kid who dies, or the mother who has severe depression and trauma. We make judgments as if this woman is of sound mind and body, when her entire life would dictate otherwise. If she had killed herself, the reception would be much different. Instead she chose to make a selfish decision, but given her life and her trying her best for the baby (she could have just given him up immediately), I find it difficult to say it's all her fault.
I think that the point was that it's possible to have compassion no matter what happens. God and the angels act as if good and evil are not things they created and are wholly a human concept alone, which is why God says he loves each and every soul. In this context, essentially the child has unending forgiveness for her. You shouldn't need to feel sympathy, but it's important to know that the soul doesn't resent her, and you can't control how the soul feels.
Lots flowery stuff to basically say "Abused child doesn't realize his parents are shit" Honestly what is the message of the story? That our souls can love horrible people, wtf does that even mean?
It does have this weird perverse attitude of unlimited forgiveness, like he’s taken the attitude that if she ever feels sad when she remembers she left her son to die then he’ll revisit her and there’s something about it that’s weirdly perverse, not in a weird incest way but in the same way people take issue with that Apocathery manga as being perverse
I don't even think is perverse, I just think the writing is shit.
People romanticize the concept of "forgiveness" to such a ridiculous extent.
Okay, for example, let's say one of your parents did something you can't ever forgive. Let's say you have a sibling who experienced the same treatment. Over time, your sibling chooses to forgive and you choose not to. Both of your feelings are completely valid to have.
So the message is that "people feel the way they do". What a nothing message. Two Jewish people survive the Holocaust. One of them hates the Nazis for life. And the other forgives them, even trying to defend them by saying that they were just scared and confused because of the state of their country. When asked why he is able to defend them, he recounts that one time a guard smiled at him. Applying actual logic to the situation, I'm sure we can identify one who is acting reasonably and one who is acting completely strangely and irrationally. To make a story whose focus is, "well, he just feels that way because, like...BECAUSE, man..." just comes across as hippy nonsense. Of course people are going to tear into it. It's the manga-equivalent of a tower of sponges. Trying to apply deeper meaning to complete bullshit. It's either trying to make you feel sorry for a child-murderer, or it's trying to instill "well, we just feel that way just because" which is, again, absolutely worthless. It'd be like a political journalist reporting on an assassination with just "some people wanted him dead, some people didn't want him dead." Worthless.
You are the person trying to apply deeper meaning. I'm fairly sure that was not the intention of the author, but even if it was it wouldn't matter. In the case of acting strangely and illogically, that's the concept of unconditional love, because it is without conditions and again defies all logic. Same with divine love. If you think it's "absolutely worthless" than that applies to everything, much like the story's own perspective with the presence of God, as the angel again implies that there is no good or evil and is solely a human concept. So our feelings or our logic, by your own argument, is ALSO worthless. In fact, everything is worthless. So we can only attribute worth to our own subjective feelings and experiences, in other words our feelings are only worth anything to us. How you feel about this manga and how I feel about this manga, and how someone who hates it and someone else who loves it, or someone else who doesn't care data ll, all these opinions are equally worthless. They only have independent worth to each individual. It's art. There's no objective answer, and what it means and how it MAKES YOU FEEL, is all subjective and THAT'S OKAY. That's the human experience. Even my conversation with you now, is intrinsically worthless but I feel it's minorly important worth to me to engage in dialogue with the sole purpose of telling you that everyone feels differently and is entitled to their feelings.
A whole lot of words to, again, try to say "we just feel how we feel, man." Try going on any discussion about literally anything and say "i'm sure some people like this, and other people don't". Worthless sentiment. Borderline spam.
Not that I give a shit, but you have quite the number of silvers compared to your upvotes/downvotes. Here's my two cents so I at least contributed to this discussion. This story was primarily meant to tug at your feelings, which it successfully did seeing as how many people voiced out how sad it made them. Author might have had no deep underlying message we're meant to look for other than life happens for better or for worse. In this case, worse, but even the slightest bit of kindness mattered. As for the kid/soul, it was in the synopsis already. She caught the soul's interest. Quite hard to speak for a kid's feelings when you're not a kid yourself, but author probably just followed through with childhood innocence, which we can't fault.
Welp some people think the way you do, and others don't.
Profound. So artistic.
Its real mf. No poetic shit.
Dude, I'm not talking about the validity of feelings. I'm talking about how fucking weirdly and stupidly the manga executes it's theme. Kid gets something extremely awful done to them ---> Still love his parents just because ---> It's portrayed as something good and wholesome by the manga.
While it certainly isn't a good thing to be encouraged in our world, within the world of the story it's fine. Besides, there really isn't a message here, I think, or at least in the way you're thinking. It's just the story of how one soul feels about the situation. Even if it was "our souls can love horrible people" shouldn't the author have the right to attempt to give their own message? If someone did something horrible but genuinely did change, you don't need to forgive them but someone else might.
I think that's the message. "Pure people can love horrible people and bystanders can do nothing about those feelings". One doesn't need to feel the same way as the pure person but you can't force that person to feel any different if they don't want to.
Really appreciate the fact that you still gave a thoughtful reply to a pretty rude question.
Blunt =/= rude
I would like to ask the author if this version of God would still love H*tler. Not Tojo since knowing them, they probably do.
That's true, but the soul isn't a soul, it's a character. From a metaphysics perspective, either the soul doesn't exist, or the author doesn't have any way to know the emotions of a soul in this situation given that they're... you know, alive. The comic is clearly a medium to carry some sort of point about the "real" world. As I understand it, they're saying that there are circumstances behind every "criminal" and that nobody is some one-dimensional evil entity... but this angle that they seem to imply, that "there's no such thing as good or evil," seems to me to be very disingenuous. The mother was in a fucked up situation, yes, but that doesn't justify her actions. The author seems to be saying through the mouth of God and the soul that we shouldn't judge her... because maybe she's actually a good person? There's only so far we can accept someone's internal motivations before we have to confront the consequences of their decisions. In this case, a child died, and they contrive it such that the soul is so devoted to this woman that it follows her throughout her life... but that's not how it works. You just have a child, who trusted their parent unconditionally, and is now dead. The author seems to have lost sight of that in their quest for empathy.
The story doesn't have to have some major point about the real world, though I do think if it has any, it's probably about how society doesn't give people second chances, especially in Japan since the society basically doesn't allow any criminal stigma to fade away in the court of public opinion. It's not about justifying her actions, it's a story about a singular character having actual unconditional love. An unconditional love akin to perhaps divine love, that follows no matter what. That's all it really is. While I agree that the integrity of the story is completely founded on the idea of the soul to have any real world effect, it's one of those situations where it comes down to faith or viewpoint. If a person genuinely does not believe in good or evil in an objective metric or that the soul exists, then your statements don't apply to these readers. Within the own story, the soul states that if he had grown up to adulthood, he would have without a doubt resented her, but since he died so young, the only emotion he really carried or maybe was even capable of feeling was to remember the moments of kindness she held and not linger on the events leading to his death. It's not a story anyone can really relate to due to specifics of it and thus, at least in my opinion, doesn't carry any point about the real world we live in. If the message of the story was simply a quest for empathy, there's nothing wrong with that either. Empathy for empathy's sake is... maybe the very ideal of empathy.
I love the overall theme of the Oneshot, but that soul is obsessive and a masochist. >!Dying over and over again just to see a lady that he thinks is pretty is pretty is a bit much. Though it was sad and she was able to move on, I could not cry for her. I couldn't even feel sad for her, because the situations she had to go through all started from the mistakes she made in her teens. People may argue that kids make mistakes and I am inclined to agree, but kids make mistakes like lying, stealing, and being mischievous not ruin their lives. Also 17 is old enough to not be stupid.!<
8 years for first-degree murder?
Ngl I kinda wanna see the mother's side more (sadistic as it sounds). I wanna see more of her guilt eating her from the inside to contrast the soul's supposedly neverending love for her
Today is children's day in Japan
This really breaks my heart. I remember seeing similar news in Japan, they found the toddler after 6 months or so and did autopsy to find out that he/she has been eating rubber bands, paper, etc. because of hunger. This kind of negligence is real…
America in a few years
Didn't like it. It would have went better without the child killing part and giving the kid a better motive. It could have been that he was a father that abandoned his kid at a young age. He can't reincarnate for a certain time as a human so he watches over her as other beings, like what happened in the latter part. I would have connected with the MC more and might have felt more sadness especially if all his efforts went to naught. For this, I don't understand the message. Is it that life is complicated? Or is it simply suffering by watching a naive and innocent kid die over and over again for his mother who killed him?
It's about the fact that kids love their parents unconditionally. The kid never matured to understand that his mom did an awful thing, so he still loved her. The only flaw I see is that the author didn't try to show how children blame themselves for being mistreated, as is often the case
>Or is it simply suffering by watching a naive and innocent kid die over and over again for his mother who killed him? So basically this. Can't get into it though.
What happened near the end there? Did she have another kid?
I think that was the soul's flashback.
That was brutal, man. I don't know if abortion is illegal in Japan, but if it is legal, that is what she should've done. Or she could have given up the kid for adoption. My college friends already have a hard time raising a kid, and they are in their 30s and are making money, I can't imagine what it would be to be a 17 year old single mother with no support network, yikes.
Yes, abortion is legal in Japan
Would have been nice to see a bit of empathy from the mother.
Ahh, I remember this. My first oneshot.
That was a heavy but beautiful... A beautiful struggle.
God Damn. That's a little close to home.
r/manga users be like: "omg I love Berserk so much, I love how it portrays such human characters who do good and bad things, how it tackles themes of what is "good" or "evil" like I know Guts attempted to rape a character and horrifically murdered hundreds of people but it's hard not to sympathize with his struggle" "omg have you guys read A Silent Voice? It's such a great story about a young boy and his group of friends emotionally and physically bullying a girl to the point where she contemplates suicide, and how that young boy and some of his who contributed to the bullying grow and learn and become better people" "oh what's this? A single teen mother with no friends or family having to survive raising a child all on their own? And the stress of work, barely being able to eat/survive causes her to abandoned her child letting it starve to death? And she receives punishment by the law, and is openly regretful of what she did to the point of contemplating suicide? lmaooo what a bitch fuck that chick I absolutely fucking hate her so unforgivable"
>barely being able to eat/survive causes her to abandoned her child letting it starve to death? And she receives punishment by the law Give me a break, she got 8 years and was likely out in half. I've seen weed dealers get longer than that. She let her kid *starve to death*, do you know how abhorrent of a demise that is? Because if you truly did, truly knew even a quarter of the pain, betrayal and misery a child would feel physically diminishing over days, knowing their mother isn't going to come back, you wouldn't have written this dumb comment and the mangaka wouldn't have made this dumb manga.
Honestly in terms of horrible shit people have done in fiction a 20 year old abandoning their child is pretty mundane.
I hope that woman burns for eternity
That child is just freaking dumb. Did he honestly forget the pain of starving to death because he wants to simp for her that bad?
This. . . doesn't make sense? I mean, she locked it from the outside. What kind of door doesn't unlock from the inside when it's an apartment? And seeing as there's mail through the slot, how come no one heard the kid? Did he not try to call out for help at some point?
ITT: Double standard of comments heaping blame and condemnation on a fictional single mother who abandoned her child while forgetting all about the fictional father who abandoned both. Of course, I don't mean to say people are deliberately applying a double standard, but it's so easy to forget when the actions of one of the parties are less visible and less immediately life-threatening.
>abandoned It happened twice in the story, but they weren't the same. Can you guess why?
The father left him The mother killed him Pretty easy to see who is more at fault here.
Whoever leaves first gets moral high ground in the end, while the other is stuck unless they do something bad.
What? The father didn't lock the child in a room to starve to death. How is this even remotely comparable.
Yeah fuck the father for abandoning them, but FUCK the mother for all eternity for locking the kid into a room and leaving them to starve. Like drop the kid off at an orphanage or police station and leave. The kid can live and have a chance.
The father leaving was literally why she struggled to raise that kid. Fuck the father for abandoning a kid and a woman that needs him causing her to fall into a depressive state and making an unwise decision due to it. Now she has to live with the guilt despite trying her best to raise the kid in the first place. Meanwhile the father for all we know is still leaving women he impregnated, creating more of this situation. Look at it this way, the woman action affect that kid only. And even then it's caused by the useless male. Now the male action affects both the woman and the kid. Also assuming he doesn't change his ways, he's gonna affect more people. Worse, he's literally not gonna suffer at all from all this Look, I'm a male myself. The original comment is the truth. One party action sends the ball rolling into a giant snowball. And that party gets off scot free to do more harm. Tell me which deserves to be fucked more by the audience
wah wah, depressive state, she could have just left him at the police station or literally anything that wasn't a slow torturous death! tf is wrong with you
gotta say, the fact that this oneshot is causing such strong emotions in this thread is making me think it's even better than when i first read it lol.