I'll start off by saying I really like the premise of this manga. It's dark, compelling, and most satisfyingly, it's open to a whole range of moral exploration and interpretation. It poses the age-old question: On what level, if any, is murder morally acceptable? The protagonist Shiki, a substitute high school teacher, struggles with this dilemma after he agrees to become a criminal-killing hitman so that he can use the bounty to pay for his elder sister's expensive cancer treatment. The author does a wonderful job portraying Shiki's gradually deteriorating state of mind, showing him continuously haunted by the "ghosts" of his victims, most persistently
Bizen, an innocent young man who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and who Shiki murdered in self-defense. Making the matter even worse for him, he is later confronted by Bizen's best friend Makihara, who becomes an inescapable living reminder to Shiki of the innocent life he cut short when he's forced to take him prisoner and confine him in his own home.
Such aspects are handled extraordinarily well by the author, and suffice to say, this manga definitely fits its "psychological" tag, leaving the readers with plenty of food for thought.
What really irks me about this series, and it's been growing progressively worse with each chapter, is the characters' attitudes toward females. Now, don't get me wrong, I like a lot of the female characters in this series. I really like Itsuki. Because of her situation, she's quite socially awkward and doesn't behave in a way one might expect an eighteen-year-old girl to behave in. She's very pure and open with her emotions. She reminds me a bit of Alice from Pandora Hearts, though with much less tsundere. Shiki's sister is a strong, motherly character, a good contrast to Itsuki's childish nature, who is very easy to understand and sympathize with. The character I have the biggest problem with is the young detective (her name escapes me at the moment). She's incredibly clumsy as well as ridiculously compliant to her male coworkers. Okay, she's a rookie in the police force and is having trouble adjusting to the job. I totally understand that. But honestly, so much more could be done for and with her character, and it seems like she's being continually played up for her moe factor. She's always eager to please and always fails miserably in her work, unwittingly letting suspects escape and even endangering people around her. Somehow, it seems like she finds a way to screw up in everything that she does. Further, it's blatantly stated that she only got the job because of her father, who, creepily enough, requires her to wear high heels and a skirt while ON THE JOB (yes, that includes while she’s out in the field). His intentions seem to be to marry her off, but the fetishistic way in which he forces her to present herself is offensive both to the character herself (though she does nothing to preserve her dignity) and to the readers who would rather see her portrayed as a human character with an actual self-esteem rather than a moefied Ms. Fanservice. She has yet to show any improvement in character or in her line of work, though there has been plenty of opportunity for both. Also, rather than quit her daddy-given position and try to work her way up the legitimate way, she stays on the force despite the serious complaints from her coworkers, which are so pronounced that they border on bullying. She even directly acknowledges that she's a burden and promptly apologizes for it, yet she makes no effort to remove herself from a post she only has because of blatant nepotism. This treatment of her character makes her vapid and irritating, a burden to the readers themselves, and I wish the author had spent time developing her, as she has the potential to be a very intriguing character.
That’s more of a small complaint compared to my next point, which involves the overtly obnoxious attitudes of the male protagonists toward women that have arisen in the latest story arc. While the detective girl can easily be ignored, as she doesn't appear obtrusively often, this second point is quite prominent. In this arc, the protagonists are once again given targets to eliminate. There are two of them, a husband and wife who allegedly killed employees of their factory in order to claim insurance money. Shiki has an immediate reaction to receiving the wife as a target, stating that he is uncomfortable with the idea of killing a woman. I brushed this reaction off, as it’s not exactly unrealistic for a certain type of person to have reservations about harming the so-called fairer sex. However, when nearly EVERYONE, including Shiki’s normally ruthless partner, suddenly gets cold feet about the killing because a woman is involved, it became really impossible for me to ignore. First of all, there’s the sheer implausibility of it that took me off guard. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 22.7% of homicides are committed by males against females (the second highest after male on male homicide), and according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports 2011, almost 1/3 of female homicide victims are killed by their partners, which are, more often than not, male. Clearly, there are men who are perfectly okay with killing women, yet in the world of this manga, not one of these CAREER HITMEN has the gall to kill a female alleged MURDERER. And it’s not because they think she’s innocent, either. It’s simply because she’s a woman that they are uncomfortable with killing her. With the husband, there are no problems, as he’s a man. I get the impression that even if the wife had committed more atrocities than the husband, they’d still not want to kill her. As a feminist and a woman, I can honestly say that that this mentality in the manga irked me.
As it turns out, the wife is apparently innocent, and the husband is apparently guilty (though they don’t find any hard evidence to support this claim), and so he is tortured both physically and psychologically and then strangled to death. (Which is a shame, too, because he looked an awful lot like T.O.P’s character in the k-drama IRIS.) And guess what? All the characters consider themselves heroes for, hooray! Saving the innocent woman and killing the evil man! The innocent woman who, by the way, now has to live on her own trying to raise her deceased sister’s child and who will now probably be traumatized for life when she eventually realizes that her husband wasn’t taken away, as she was told, but rather brutally murdered. Excuse the sarcasm, but geez, good job breaking it, heroes. You guys really saved the day, didn’t you? Despite the fact that the author could have very easily justified the characters’ reservations with killing her because of Itsuki’s vision that suggested the woman’s innocence, she instead chooses to focus on the fact that she’s a woman. What confuses me most of all, though, is that the author seems to celebrate and condone this choice, treating a murder as something righteous for the first time in the series, which I thought was a little odd since the author is apparently a woman herself. Honestly, does she really believe that the even the most screwed up of women deserves gracious mercy simply because she’s a woman?
I don’t condone killing people, even other killers, but I do think that you reap what you sow, and a female criminal ought to be punished in the same way that a male criminal is. Otherwise, it just leads to some unfortunate implications, as this manga sadly went along with.
So anyway, I’ll keep reading this manga for now because it is interesting and enjoyable to read. But since it’s lost some respect from me because of this unfortunate aspect of it, I can’t rate it higher than 7/10. I just thought I’d warn others ahead of time if they’re not into the whole double standards thing.
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