I sadly read the manga years ago but it somehow made the rounds recently and here is my belated takedown of it.
Hiroaki´s art is good as always that doesn´t matter as the story stared of on weak legs to quickly kill itself as it only features pedophilia, (gang) rape, suffering, medical experiments and every other deranged thing under the sun without any context or purpose. I can remember no clear characterizations but only walking corpses with some basic character motivations which is the definition of bad writing at it´s finest. Why did Hiroaki "write" this?
Because he love to draw suffering and a manga by him without excessive sexual violence to women barely exists. Worst of all is that he is an actual Ero-Guro artist (stay away from Brute Love) and we can talk about comfort women, child prostitution and sexual slavery all day long but Bradherley no Basha itself is based on nothing and wildly inaccurate from a historically standpoint which is the real crime. The author himself even admits in the afterword that he wanted to do a version of Anne of Green Gables with lot´s of sex and gore. Phenomenal! The only difference between this manga and his Ero-Guro work is that this "work" features more dialogue. That is all.
The deeply imperfect Mugen no Juunin (8,5/10) may forever remain his only work i can recommend and street trash like this is the reason why. Watch the award-winning City of Life and Death or read Vertigo´s Unknown Soldier (10/10) if your are interested in seeing a historically accurate portrait of hell on earth and sexual slavery.

... Last updated on December 31st, 2015, 9:52am

Bradherley's Coach present the most awful story I've ever read, and I mean that as positively as is possible.

Without a little knowledge of Japanese history, it seems like just a well-done tragedy porn, exploring the limits of the evils of mankind - mankind, specifically - while stirring up as much righteous anger in the reader as possible. The only consolation for the unthinkably heinous things people do in this manga is that they couldn't possibly happen in real life. But they can - and they have.

As other reviewers have mentioned, the situation bears a striking resemblance to the Japanese practice of collecting so-called "comfort women" for the use of its soldiers. It's transposed onto an exotic European background, and the drama is cranked up a few notches - there aren't many figures more pitiable than a little orphan girl who dreams of being an opera singer - but all the main parts are still there. I don't know if this was a subconscious national guilt thing on the part of the author or just a premise he thought might be fun to draw, but it's definitely not a coincidence.

Despite my hatred of gore, I managed to read through this volume without any queasiness - except for one niggling element. Something about this manga makes it seem like it's supposed to be sexy. A certain angle of bloody breast, a certain curve of broken leg. Something about the author's casual afterword. Even though the rape isn't really all that explicit, there's something about it that seems like he intended jacking off to be part of the reader's viewing experience. I don't like to judge, and I don't like to think people can ever be considered "evil", but if I ever was to I think I'd include getting turned on by this manga as one of the criteria.

it is a depressing manga, because it is too close to reality. i'm sure similar things happen in war-torn area even in 21st century. the beautiful art really capture the ugliness of the human heart here. there is slight 'justice' at the end of the manga, but how can you ever atone for directly destroying several children? how can you atone for making a large number of people also monsters and demons by helping and abetting this cruelty, whether they like it or not? i'm an atheist but it make me really want to believe in hell just knowing they will pay for their sins hundredfold.

this manga can inspire very ugly feelings in you. it make you want to do good deeds to balance out all the sufferings the lost girls endure. a really remarkable feat for a one volume manga.

Ok, so you're probably going to ignore my advice but I will give it anyway. If you are at all likely to be disturbed by tragic, violent and sexual scenes involving young girls then do not read this. Naturally, having been told not to read this you will now go ahead and read it (it was the very same thing that suckered me in so I don't blame you).

To be fair I will mention that the art is great and the story actually has a deep, if disturbing, idea behind it. As other's have mentioned, this manga is clearly based on the 'comfort women', which makes you seriously consider the capabilities of human cruelty. Not just of the Lord who organises the whole thing but all those who help him, the prisons which allow it, the prisoners who act so violently towards these girls, the orphanages who provide the blissfully ignorant girls despite knowing their fate and even the ruthlessness of the girls themselves as they long to be chosen. Each chapter shows a new story, from the perspective of a new girl, which makes them almost independent but each one has an almost overwhelming feeling of sorrow mixed into it.

Despite how excellent this manga is I really wish I hadn't read it, just because this will haunt me and I'd rather forget what I saw.

This manga was really good and interesting. It would've gotten a nine, but its ending was a bit open, so I had to lower it to an eight.

The art was great; a bit scratchy, but I like it that way. The plot wasn't much of one, but how the author tells the story and the story as a whole is utterly fascinating.

Awesome manga, but it kinda brings up historical grudges in me. The atrocities depicted in the manga really happened during the Japanese occupation in my country in WWII. Women were taken in as captives and turned into "comfort women"--pretty much the same concept as comfort rooms, only, the soldiers were not lining up to pee, they were lining up to fukc. The sad thing was, this rapings were all legal and institutionalized.

The dreams of young girls, the darkness and evil that gives them hope, and the emotion of every chapter is very well written it touched me every single time. This story has a realistic touch to it, even though it's dark. It's not just sexual. The story, I really do believe, has been influenced by the tragic events during the World War. Yes, these brutality has been experienced by hundreds of women during that time. It's just in different settings, but the torture and everything really happened.

It's a very interesting, thought-provoking read. Well done.

it's a collection of stories around the same idea, and all of it was bleak... not one trace of happiness! although i didn't mind, i liked the tragedy and horror surrounding it; it was interesting, and terrifically horrific. like others said, what makes it worse (or better??) is that it's very realistic, and the plot is reminiscent of things past. except maybe a little more violent haha...

it keeps you wondering what's going to happen next, and keep reading to find justice.

ps, this is really not THAT graphic - it doesn't show everything going on, and the "sinister fate" - just kinda hints at it and shows the after effects. i was expecting a lot worse, and i lot more actual horror. it's more psychological horror for the readers IMO.

... Last updated on June 21st, 2012, 3:29pm

should i ever meet mr.samura,i would give him a hug and thank him for all his wonderful works...
and then proceed to shake the crap out of him while screaming,"what is wrong with you?!"
just kidding.
this story is told in a way that while being very depressing,it manages to wrap its unyielding dreariness with just enough hope that you hold one til the very end.
which is really just the continuation of hell.
damn that mangaka is good.

Just don't read this. Spoiler/Trigger warning: It's about twelve and thirteen year old girls being gang raped to death. The only difference between different volumes is a slightly different backstory or hair color for the young girl and how many days before she dies of massive internal injuries and sepsis. Oh, also, the grown men who are gang raping the little girls, in every single chapter, abuse and torture them in creative ways. So that's another difference between chapters, I guess. Sometimes the girls almost escape, but they never do. In one of the first chapters, the girl gets her eye pulled out by one of the rapists. Then she's raped by fifty more men that day. Then she lingers for days more of being raped, before she dies.

So, uh: Trigger warning. Ya think?

Also, in the manga, the reason the government has these girls killed is to keep peace in the prisons. The author makes his world-view explicitly clear in the entire series. That is: All men have an instinctive need to rape women and children, and if their need to rape is not satisfied, they destroy the social order. Any men insulted by this? At all?

You would think that, even if the prisoners were all going to go full-on Attica if they didn't get laid, the government could have just hired prostitutes and given them a reasonable workload and some assurance of safety. But no, the "only possible" solution is to throw pre-teen girls into the prison yards and leave them there until - and only until - they are dead.

What is wrong with this guy? This manga is stupid and perpetuates the idea that men are hard-wired to rape.

... Last updated on August 20th, 2013, 8:21am