Disclaimer: There are a lot of people who have Watashitachi as their favorite manga. My arguments can’t change that, as all reviews are ultimately subjective and have no truth values. I can’t honestly say I don’t judge your taste if you do like this work but it doesn’t invalidate whatever emotional response you got from reading this manga. All I can do is lay out my arguments and hope people hear it.
Watashitachi no Shiasena Jikan, hereby referred to as Our Happy Time, is the manga adaption of a Korean bestselling novel by Gong Ji-young, an influential author with her own Wikipedia article. I have not read the novel and am only judging the manga, though I’ve read that it is mostly faithful to the novel. The manga was adapted and drawn by Sahara Mizu, whose art I really do enjoy. I have no qualms with the art so let’s get into the story.
The most problematic aspect of the Our Happy Time, is how the author softballs the entire issue of the death penalty by portraying the murderer in an extremely favorable light. Yuu or Prisoner 3987 is set up on this page 1http://i.imgur.com/NEXgc5J.jpg to be a death row inmate who brutally murdered three innocent lives. He has a tragic back-story that stretches creditability: his abusive parents die leaving him to an abusive orphanage, which leads him running away to live on the streets, prostitute himself to support his blind little brother. His blind brother then commits suicide in order to not be a burden. 2 http://i.imgur.com/JLuitRj.jpg 3 http://i.imgur.com/GbyVMIe.jpg [4] http://i.imgur.com/4hHJY3A.jpg 5 http://i.imgur.com/5W7LcuV.jpg The warden speculates that his own unhappy family situation leads him to kill a happy mother and child out of jealously. 6http://i.imgur.com/UH8WWTF.jpg However Yuu then turns out to be so remorseful that the mere mention of the victims triggers a panic attack 7http://i.imgur.com/bI60gMC.jpg 8http://i.imgur.com/1F3y6ka.jpg All of the previous setup for his character turns out to be a smokescreen because Yuu reveals the actual villain of the story who forced him into the circumstances of his murders; the character I call sadistic faceless evil businessman.
Sadistic faceless evil businessman pays poor people to do violent acts like removing eyeballs just because he’s evil and sadistic. 8http://i.imgur.com/fIqpiXR.jpg [9] http://i.imgur.com/fXQXgqf.jpg Meanwhile Yuu adopts a kid and his cat and stops working for the businessman. When the businessman finds this out, he sends out his goons to trick Yuu’s adopted kid into a traffic accident when he tries to save his cat. 10http://i.imgur.com/zI9taMp.jpg The kid and the cat both die. So the obvious next logical step the businessman makes is try and get Yuu back into his game by offering to pay him to push a young mother and her daughter onto the train tracks. 11 http://i.imgur.com/9MM7UO3.jpg This leads to Yuu taking the young mother’s umbrella which accidently knocks her off of the station while the train is coming. He kills the faceless sadistic evil businessman and is simply too late to help the young mother and her daughter. 12 http://i.imgur.com/qKyAbf1.jpg 13 http://i.imgur.com/oiKjVmP.jpg 14 http://i.imgur.com/SSrprWu.jpg
The obvious purpose of this convoluted series of events is to absolve Yuu of pretty much all blame for his crimes. The mother and her child were just accidents. The guy was evil and Yuu just wanted justice. Remember both the warden and the female lead, Juri, essentially say in page 1 and 5 that tragic back stories don’t excuse the crime done; but that narrative is essentially doing the opposite for Yuu. He’s basically the most lovable murderer out there because of his blame being shifted to the awfully convenient villain in the sadistic faceless evil businessman. One defense of Yuu being forgiven is that the moral of the story is that victims ought to forgive their tormentors as a way to move on with their lives as evidenced by the Nun’s story of her daughter getting killed by a drunk driver. [15] http://i.imgur.com/5LgWDOn.jpg 16 http://i.imgur.com/BxsqLYr.jpg 17 http://i.imgur.com/lZn21TO.jpg
But that’s exactly my point. Our Happy Time makes it so easy for us to forgive Yuu that this story is a strawman argument against the death penalty. Most murderers aren’t tragic bishounens who are remorseful of their crimes. Our Happy Time doesn’t have the courage to show the ugly side of this issue and still stand firm that the death penalty is wrong. Take this example of when Penn and Teller argued against the death penalty on their show “Bullshit.” They invited Polly Klaas’s father on to tell the story of her kidnapping, rape, and murder by a remorseless criminal who then taunted him in court by claiming Polly said her father raped her as her last words. And Penn and Teller were still against the death penalty. I’m not saying you have to have such graphic examples in order to make a statement on social issues like the death penalty. But I can’t take Our Happy Hours as a seriously as either a critique or tragedy when the author makes such a sloppy and poorly written attempt to defend her main character with an obvious villain to redirect his crimes and an overwrought tragic back story.
I don't object to stories having rape in it, its fine to address heavy real world issues. But I object to the way rape is used in Our Happy Time. Rape is used in here as an easy sympathy grabber for what is essentially an unsympathetic character. The female MC is beautiful, drives fast cars, and hasn't worked a day in her life. She's the perfect casting role for a k-pop star, but how do we make the audience relate to her? Throw in a rape plot. Throw in a horrible maternal figure to contrast a great maternal figure (a classic in K-dramas). Throw in some trite lines about forgiveness. What message is this actually sending? 18 http://imgur.com/a/ssVhX
I hate you but I forgive you is nonsensical. The vaguely Christian undertones here is that she becomes a bigger person and moves on by forgiving her mother. But that doesn't have any consequences besides letting a rape accomplice off scot-free. Forgiving your torturer isn't a necessary step to moving on it life, and I think it’s incredibly trite and cliché to think so. Will she invite her mother to her eventual children's birthdays? Or more cynically is this an agreement to keep paying the bills for her socialite lifestyle? This form of forgiveness is meaningless. I don’t think Our Happy Time does enough to answer this very important moral question; why should you forgive your rapist? Why is moving on without forgiveness not possible?
I want you to imagine an alternative Our Happy Time in which Yuu really did intend to kill that innocent mother in the train station; an alternative story where his counsel wasn’t a beautiful young woman who also was his childhood idol. Could you find it in your heart to comfort and forgive a ruthless killer without the sappy romantic tragedy and blame shifting? I think an emotional complex and morally well reasoned story could convince me to so. But Our Happy Time isn’t that story.
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