Blood on the Tracks - Reviews

Heart wrenching. Gut wrenching. All my innards were beautifully wrenched.

The characters all feel human, and in this manga that is the highest of compliments. The art does a great job of portraying emotions and the style matches the drab and unsettling tone of the story. Even though the story generally covers mundane activities, the context keeps it tense. At times this can be entrancing, but it can also get tiresome. Fukiishi's importance to the story can't be overstated. Fe acts as Sei's only connection to normalcy: a tragic reminder of what can never be, a glint of hope in a mire of darkness.

[Reviewed at chapter 46]

This manga is a hit and miss with me. I honestly find it highly disturbing (or maybe I find the mother disturbing) I don't know but, the manga usually has me creeped out, worried for the sons mental health and terrified for those around the son (friends, the girls etc). 

The mother in this manga scares the crap out of me and I think its a mix of the art style and her chilling personality. 

This manga is a psychological manga, its tag is correctly labeled and you can tell already 1 chapter in the mother has problems, the child has problems and the only healthy one is currently the father. A tragic event done on purpose seems to send the mother over the deep end, the son just becomes broken (but honestly, I think he always was broken rather than he became broken). Things escalate and this story was born.

If you want to give it a try go for it. The art style is a bit weird though. It isn't bad but, it just gives an uncomfortable feel to it. Read if it fancies your interest if it doesn't you can skip over it. 

It's amazing how Shuzo Oshimi is being able to create such unique mangas like Happines and Aku no Hana and now Chi no Wadachi. Most of his creations are dragging the reader to them self so hardly and it's nice to see how the disturbing art style is growing stronger. Just look at those emotions staring back at you.

The mother character is very interesting especially the throwbacks to the past make you think if she was ever sane? 

Spoiler
The action at the cliff for some might look like it was far fetched but was it? Looking at how we met the mother and the son they were both very annoying characters before the tragedy. Most of the son's actions was showing-off. Also you as a reader can think did it really happen, what we got in chapter 45 might not even be lies as we just got a part of sons story who isn't the healthiest person in the world.

End of the Spoiler.

Going back to art and characters it was nice to see same female character as in aku no hana and net cafe, somehow they are the type of a personality that I woulnd't most likely get bored of them ever. If you read Yutai Nova it was also nice to see the art of connecting two people in "love" again in use.

Thank you for reading.

My man Seichi never gets to catch a break. It sucks but the manga is so creepy I love it. The feeling of discomfort you get from it is not momentary but it stays and leaves an impact. Looking forward to the next chapters.

I was ready to bash this manga because all i hear on reviews is the psycological thriller/horror aspect, and after reading the first 7 volumes that was i completely dumb lie. This is more like a slice-of-life with ridiculously funny reaction faces, i can't take this manga seriously when those faces and situations just make me laugh. Maybe the japanese sensibility is too different for my hispanic-country mindset... i don't know. Maybe it suppose to be eering, but for me it was just ridiculous.

Now, that's until it reach the red cover volumes (i dont remember the exact number, but all covers turns to red) that's when the manga actually deliver its psyco thriller selling point, that's when things actually turn fck up.

The art i think is good, the author can draw very good looking humans when he wants. And also, there's a lot of art-only panels, so this manga  reads quite fast.

About the ending i like that Seiichi didn't turn in some kind of sociopath but i HATE the final "redeption" of the mother... That woman destroy Seiichi's life and soul, she deserve a worst ending.

At the end of reading this manga i feel it's way too sad and depresing, those good red volumes do not worth the slow previous 7 volumes or the sad last ones.