I've seen comments on here that claim this manga is promoting pedophilia and claiming that it's trying to portray a 10-year-old girl as being mature enough to consent to sexual relations. I would suggest these people take a closer look. Yes, the girl is portrayed as either mature or jaded, at least in comparison to her father and brother who are clearly shown to be more than a little lost when it comes to raising and supporting others. But it never claims that the girl was right or in her right mind to have tried to get her brother's friend to have sex with her, or that the guy was in any way right to have done so. In fact, it makes it rather clear that her biggest reason for wanting to become romantically/sexually involved with the man is because he called her "family" and in her mind "family" is someone who's never around and provides food but doesn't care beyond that. The moment he called her "like a sister" she turned hard, and when she meets him again much later she goes on about starting their "relationship" back up and trying to handle things, and concludes it with "so please don't leave me alone" with lost, desperate eyes. And it's also made clear that the guy himself realizes this, realizes that he'd taken advantage of a girl's desperate search for attention and a "love" she'd feel secure in. In the end, I'd say the author made it quite plain that the girl had some maturity but was still very much a little kid, that her actions were the desperate attempts of a little kid to get attention with nowhere near the understanding necessary to even approach "consent", and that thus this is a tragic crime that was committed. Just read some of the author's other works and you'll get a good idea of her view on pedophilia. One of her other works I read had two girls around this girl's age trying to work up the courage to run away from their father who'd been sexually abusing them both; said story ended a lot worse than this one.

Let me tell you one thing that many you should already know. Children at the age of 10 do not think like adults at the age of 18 or older. Even if they have genius level intellect and can do calculus problems in their heads and are able to recite Shakespeare in Latin, it does not mean that their maturity is that of an adult. Kids have a very limited knowledge about the world and their experiences are limited. Let me tell you what this manga suggests. It suggests that a 10 year old girl has the maturity and cognitive reasoning of an adult and because of this some of the characters actually do treat her as an adult. In one sense, this manga is promoting pedophilia by saying that if a child has a mentality of an adult, it is fine for that child to make his or her own choices in regards to her life . With that being said, they could potentially agree to have intercourse with an adult . There are reasons why there are consent laws around the world. It is to prevent the potential abuse that children could face when they are young due to their lack of judgement and what this manga is suggesting is that it is okay to have sex with a 10 year old kid because she or he seems adult like. Let me tell you all this; that is statutory rape and he or she should be put into prison. Seriously don't read this manga. It is bad and promotes all the wrong ideas.

I'm a perv and how can i not enjoy a cute girl having mature relations?
But there's no way a 10 year old girl thinks mature enough to act and talk like our protagonist. Mangaka just put an adult character into a 10yo body for shock effect.
He could have done much more with the setting but he was either lazy or that's just the best he can do.

I don't know why Author wants to show this girl pitiful, she's such a Disgusting sister who just thinks for hers good being. her brother just suffering and everyone are telling him he's selfish what is wrong is being right in this story. really she makes me sick. and such an a****** friend he has doing something like that to a 10 years old child and ran away. this story is a real bad one to read.

... Last updated on August 5th, 2014, 5:37am

This manga handles a sensitive topic in such a realistic & amazing way. It does not try to convince the reader of anything; it just shows what happens, and the logical aftermath.

The use of dark panels, the powerful endings of chapters . . . The storytelling method is astonishing. This is a manga that will make you think, & think hard . . .

This title handles the one subject that Aki-Sora, another psychological series that I hold in high regard, did not . . .

A true gem in the manga world . . .

... Last updated on December 27th, 2011, 1:15am

...including the stuff in this manga. The brother has been hurt to the core by the divorce and then the father's abandonment, followed by having to take on a crushing workload. The sister has been hurt worse by those two prior abandonments, because, as I've read many times, children react to abandonment with terror and self-blame. She finds a desperate last possible way of assuring herself a reliable kind of parent, and goes for it. The brother reacts personally. Effectively he's been abandoned AGAIN, by the only family member he had left. Caught between his horror of now not being number 1, or even very important, to that last family member, and his disgust at the betrayal of trust by his friend, he goes into a kind of ecstasy of self-pity, and desire to wound all those around him, from which he may never recover. As for the friend, he most likely had always felt the desire that he acted on after resisting it for a long time.

Anyone who's felt abandonment during a period of their childhood will recognize the desperation of the child and the self-pitying world-hatred of the brother will realize that this is the kind of thing that can happen in a passage of extreme misfortune in life. Since we are, in terms of what motivates us, primarily emotional creatures, when our emotions become too dreadful to bear, considerations of morality and duty cannot stop us from going kind of nuts.
This is how these forces might well play out.

... Last updated on August 22nd, 2015, 6:36am

But I always find stories like this so hard to get through. It really shows the depth of humanity's flaws and it's disturbing but at the same time filled with important themes and such. I had the same hard time with Lolita which is an amazing book, probably the best writing I've ever encountered-yet there were some parts I found so hard not to reject humanity altogether. If you're like me, just... read it. Without any of your own judgement and biases to get in the way.

I can understand why there are so many negative reviews and ratings for Mon Seul: the vast majority readers view manga as a superficial source of entertainment and thus do not seek to derive anything greater than its ostensible value.

In that sense, the content of Mon Seul would not be very appealing and no reader would be able to sympathize with the immorality of Kanda's actions. The plot is nothing special and all the characters are flawed to the extent that even an optimistic ending would hardly justify the toils they struggled through to reach that point.

However, from an analytical perspective, Mon Seul would serve as excellent material to deconstruct and examine. If viewed as a piece of literary work and not as pure shallow enjoyment, then Mon Seul is rich in themes and content that mirrors the realism of our current contemporary society. In that aspect, this mature piece of work is thought-provoking and rather highlights some important issues.

Don't waste your time if you're looking for something lighthearted that concludes with a happy ending. You won't find any of the sort here.

This is a huge moral dilemma. I'm very disturbed by this one(morally, at least). It's unbelievable that this kind of thing could occur willingly between two people such as Kanda and Minami. It's especially mindblowing on Minami's part. I really disagree that this manga is trying to justify statutory rape. If that was indeed the case, then *SPOILER ALERT*Minami and Kanda would have had a "happy ending" *SPOILER END* I find the characters of the brother and the father to be very believable. There are all sorts of people out there and this kind of thing is totally plausible.

In the end, I see a giant cause and effect pattern occurring with each interaction between the characters. The divorce impacted the whole Ikeuchi family as a whole, resulting in different negative results. It weakens the father's self-confidence in his role as the breadwinner of the family. It lowers the brother's belief in "family", which causes his lashes at the father. It serves as the reason why Minami is more "mature" than other children her age. And then when the father loses his job, the whole family setting goes into a downward spiral; Minami basically seduces Kanda, and this serves as the main moral dilemma of the story.

Another thing I found really interesting was the character of Kanda. He's really...confusing. The mangaka portrayed him as this generally "good" guy. We can see scenes in which he genuinely cares for Minami. At the same time, however, he took Minami's bait and went for the kill. Is this a case of pedophilia or a case of love defies age? I can't decide; if he really loved her, then why did he leave her?(because he feels that it's "wrong"?); and yet if this is simply pedophilia, Kanda seems really deeply emotionally invested...

Man, this is just really disturbing. I don't regret having read this though. Well, not too much.

For such a topic that aimed to be taken seriously, it felt more like one of those Asian dramas where everyone tries to "deal with the topic" but ends up lashing out at one another. Furthermore, none of the characters were very complex and it was a bit too simple: soo everyone of the cast has some "problems" in order to create some strife in the story.

And imho, it feels very wishful and more like one of those generic lolicon eromanga you read(except without the sexual scenes). And also, very contrived too 'cos pedophiles don't behave like that at all: from what I know, they desire children for all their life and not suddenly. If people want a far more realistic approach to pedophilia(and if you can tolerate BL/yaoi), try A Cruel God Reigns. And actually, it felt more like this was a shoujo manga than a seinen. -__-;; Plus, even if someone matures a lot as a child, there had to be warning signs beforehand but there were none.

... Last updated on July 18th, 2011, 12:58pm