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Frau Faust, Vol. 1 - Kore Yamazaki
3.75 stars
3.75 stars
I’m not sure how to summarize this story, since so much of it counts as spoilers. I suppose I’ll start at the beginning. A young woman named Irene wants to run away with her boyfriend but is afraid that her dad will find them and literally kill her boyfriend. She then comes up with an idea that immediately qualifies her as a horrible person: pick up a random homeless guy, convince her dad’s goons that he’s her boyfriend, and run off with her boyfriend while the goons beat the homeless guy half to death. It seems like a great (horrible) plan, until she learns that her random homeless guy, Ian, is actually same same guy who convinced a family member of hers not to run off three years ago.
Unfortunately, a misunderstanding results in Ian lying on the ground, dying from a gut wound. Ian’s friend, Jim, tells Irene that he plans to turn Ian’s life into a book that will be coming out in about a year. The rest of the manga is Ian’s life up to this point: growing up with an alcoholic mother and cold and dismissive father, trying to keep his promise to his sister so that he can see her again, and then walking across the US searching for his sister after she disappears.
I read Ono’s Ristorante Paradiso several years ago. I wasn’t a huge fan of it the first time around, but it grew on me after a reread. I’ve always wanted to try another one of her works, and this one-shot seemed like a good place to start. I vaguely remembered it getting some buzz when it first came out.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be almost unrelentingly depressing. Ian was written as being very innocent and pure, no matter what sorts of horrible things happened to him. All he wanted was to be with the one person he loved and who loved him back, his sister. When this turned out to be impossible, he sought out other people who’d been good and kind to him...and the universe stomped on him yet again until finally even he couldn’t take it anymore. The horribleness of it all bled into his friend Jim, if the rumors about his fate after the publication of his book were true.
There’s a massive amount of child abuse in this story:
neglect, emotional abuse, child prostitution, and incest.
It sometimes came up in such an offhand manner that I found myself wondering if the things I had thought just happened really had. Ian kept taking absolutely horrific things in stride.
I can’t even say this ended on a bittersweet note. Yes, it stopped at a slightly happier time in Ian’s life, but readers had already been told that that was all going to fall apart in the next 3-5 years. I wanted a do-over, with Jim telling Ian “that stuff that happened to you wasn’t okay, and I know it can’t be undone, but we can try to make some good memories from here on out.” Instead, I feel like the mom and her “you should never have been born” speech won out. And wow, her words still make me angry. She spent years heaping punishment on people she should have been trying to help and protect.
In the end, this manga just pissed me off and left a bad taste in my mouth. Not Simple bent over backwards to hurt its characters - the bit with Ian's sister's boyfriend was both cruel and difficult to believe. I also wasn't a fan of this on an artistic level. Although I know some people love Ono's unusual style, it doesn't work for me. I’m at least glad that I got this via the library and didn’t pay for it.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
Kimi, Nishiki's human girlfriend, comes to Kaneki for help - Nishiki's wound isn't healing well. Unfortunately, this puts her in the Gourmet's sights. He
uses her as a hostage to lure in Kaneki, and ends up getting Nishiki and Touka as well. None of the three are strong enough to battle him, so Kaneki offers himself to Touka as a snack, thinking that his body is probably human enough to help her build her strength up enough to fight the Gourmet. She does manage to beat him and then wants to kill Kimi too, for knowing too much, but ends up sparing her. There's a flashback showing how Kimi and Nishiki met. She learned he was a ghoul shortly after Kaneki fought him - she even offered herself to him as food so that he could heal better. Then there's another flashback, this one to Rize moving from the 11th Ward to the 20th. Then back to the CCG and the present - things are ramping up, and a new ghoul investigator, Juzo Suzuya, is introduced.
I enjoyed the flashbacks to Nishiki's past, although the way that Kimi came to accept him isn't something that would work for most humans. I'm not quite sure how I feel about their relationship. On the one hand, they seem to genuinely care for each other. On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure that hanging around ghouls is healthy for Kimi.
While her relationship with Nishiki kept her from committing suicide, she's made it clear that, if he needs food, she's willing to be his meal even though she might end up dead.
The flashback to Rize's past was a bit worthless, although it did show that there were lots of ghouls with a reason to want her dead. Kaneki is going to have a tough time narrowing down the suspects.
The CCG stuff was just...not good. Even if one of them hadn't killed the relatively harmless Ryoko Fueguchi a few volumes ago, every time they appear on page at least one of them strikes me as being at least as scary as the scarier ghouls. The scene with Suzuya and the officer made me decide that I probably don't want to watch the anime, not if that scene is included. I couldn't tell exactly what it was he did (I mean, did he really just blow something through the guy's skull via his ears? did I interpret that right?), but whatever it was, it should have qualified him as just as much of a monster as the ghouls they were trying to defend humanity against. And yet.
Amon seems to be the most normal of all the ghoul investigators readers have so far gotten to know, and I'm not particularly impressed with him either if he can witness the behavior of someone like Suzuya and not start to question whether he's on the right side.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
We get a glimpse of Touka's school life. As anti-human as she has previously seemed, it turns out that she actually really values her best human friend, to the point of regularly choking down the food her friend makes for her. Kaneki visits Hinami at Touka's place, learns more about how to fight, and meets up with Yomo, Uta, and their friend Itori (the owner of a bar called Helter Skelter). Itori wants to know more about a special ghoul restaurant, so she offers to exchange info about
the person who killed Rize - it turns out that Rize's death was not an accident like Kaneki had previously thought. In order to learn about the restaurant, Kaneki has to get closer to Shu Tsukiyama, nicknamed the Gourmet. Unfortunately, he is soon betrayed. Instead of taking him to the restaurant as a guest, Tsukiyama brings him there as an exciting new entree.
I wish these volumes came with translator's note and/or a bit more information about the world terminology. So far words like "quinque" and "kagune" have been thrown about with little explanation. In the previous volume, Mado's last words were something to the effect that he wanted to bury the "Sekigan" with his own two hands. In this volume, the translator opted to translate "Sekigan" as "one-eyed king." Why not translate it this way in the previous volume as well, or include a brief note?
We see more of Nishiki in this volume (who, since I took crappy notes, has not been mentioned in my summaries at all - I'm not even entirely sure I have his name right). He
hasn't been doing too well since he was injured. Kaneki saves him and learns that he has a human girlfriend who knows he's a ghoul and doesn't seem to mind.
I suspect that this will end badly.
Kaneki is kind of dumb. He knows that Tsukiyama is a flashy killer, and yet he's still drawn in. I wouldn't be surprised if
Tsukiyama manages to trick him again.
Again, this series continues to throw characters at me that I don't really like and don't necessarily care to see more of. Part of me is still tempted to get the anime, to see if aspects of the series go over better in that format, and part of me is just not into this series enough for that.
One thing that surprised me: apparently this series is digitally illustrated, and Ishida only has one assistant.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
Touka and Kaneki try to spread a little disinformation about Hinami at the CCG 20th Ward branch. It doesn't work, but they do discover that
Kaneki can go through RC scan gates like a normal human being - apparently his body is still human enough for that. At any rate, Hinami leaves Anteiku, and Touka and Kaneki go after her. Touka finds her first, but the two are soon attacked by Investigator Mado. Kaneki, meanwhile, comes across Investigator Amon. Hinami attacks Mado when it looks like he might be about to kill Touka - it turns out that Mado (who is, in fact, human and not a ghoul, no matter how strange he looks) fights with quinques he made from the kagunes of Hinami's parents. It's no wonder the ghouls hate the ghoul investigators so much, when they use pieces of their friends and family members as weapons against them. Mado is killed by Touka. Kaneki defeats but doesn't kill Amon, determined to show Amon that there's more to ghouls than he thinks.
Dang but these battles are hard to follow.
I rolled my eyes a bit at Kaneki's battle. As cool as it was that he was able to
survive and defeat Amon
, he really shouldn't have been able to.
Amon had at least some experience under his belt, while Kaneki had no clue what he was doing. He was just lucky that Amon was apparently off his game or something.
Hinami is the first ghoul we've seen in this series who for sure has ghoul weaponry but who also doesn't seem to be emotionally capable to killing. I wonder if that's what Yoshimura meant by ghouls who are unable to hunt?
This volume was pretty decent, and I'm interested to see if Kaneki can bridge the gap between humans and ghouls, but I'm still not in love with this series.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
