This week's manga
My Broken Mariko
By Waka Hirako (Kadokawa)
"My Broken Mariko" is a web manga by a newcomer mangaka, that has been published in book form. As soon as it debuted in early January, news spread like wildfire through word of mouth, and all the first prints disappeared quickly from bookstores, though by the time you read this article, I am sure reprints will already be back on the shelves. Without a doubt, this is the first manga worthy of being considered as one of the top 10 manga of 2020.
Shiino, an office worker with a bad attitude, learns through a TV news report of the death of Mariko, her best friend since childhood who plunged to her death after taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Shiino then visits Mariko's home, points a knife at her father and runs off with the cinerary urn containing her ashes, Shiino knowing all too well about the abuse and sexual violence he inflicted on Mariko in her teens. "Even if we stab each other to death, I am taking Mariko's ashes with me!" she screams.
This introduction is quite intense. Hugging Mariko's urn close to herself, Shiino heads straight to a cape by the ocean that Mariko wanted to see. This is a tandem journey of these women, one alive and the other dead. Where will it take them?
This is a depressing and sentimental story, but it's fast-paced and has a life of its own, largely thanks to Shiino's animalistic personality. I almost thought it was supposed to be funny.
In Shiino's memory, Mariko is always smiling and carefree, but something about her is actually already "broken." She does not know how to take care of herself. Due to being abused by her father since childhood, the only kind of relationship she can form with even her boyfriend is a distorted one in which she always winds up injured or bruised. Shiino couldn't understand this. She continues to talk to her best friend who is now only bone and ashes. "Why couldn't you at least tell me, ask me, to die with you?!"
It is hard to tell whether this relationship is platonic love or a kind of destructive back-scratching by two people who are both lacking. This story may be a modern version of "Sonezaki Shinju" (Love suicide at Sonezaki), a sewamono joruri puppet play written by Chikamatsu Monzaemon in the Edo period (1603-1867). For us in the new era of Reiwa, love suicides between only a man and a woman may no longer be valid. That is the kind of world we live in today.
"My Broken Mariko" is a story with knife-like sharpness, but upon rereading it several times, I began to notice an unpolished roughness in the story, such as repetitiveness in the monologues and lack of clarity in the relationship between Mariko and Shiino. Despite all this, the story holds a powerful reality that seems to reject being categorized as a fiction. And I imagine that this may be a unique kind of story that even the author, Waka Hirako, will not be able to replicate.
Also included in this volume is Hirako's debut manga, "Yiska," a hard-boiled short story set in the American Wild West. It is surprising that this story succeeds in creating a completely different world. I am so looking forward to what this new talent will deliver next.
Ishida is a Yomiuri Shimbun senior writer whose areas of expertise include manga and anime.
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