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Thinking about how Ghibli made a boring movie in the 90s that had such a gay vibe going on and everyday I am sad that the hetero romance was forced instead of these 2

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Pi reviews: Ode to Kirihito by Osamu Tezuka

published in 1970-1971

Synopsis: A new disease called Monmow shows up around the world changes a person’s bones until they take on a dog-like appearance. We follow a doctor who is studying this rare disease and gets send to the said village of it’s origin, but things go south fast. 

Content warnings of media: Racism, sexism, rape, torture, violence, blood, hospital/doctor themes, body horror, nudity

This review is full of spoilers! In case those warnings won’t trigger you I recommend reading it

The story

Our main guy is Kirihito Osanai, a doctor studying this weird sickness. When he tries to find out how people contract it by going to Goddogtale, a small village in the mountains where it’s said to originate from. The villagers try to trap him inside there, being not afraid to show violence and attempt murder, which forces Osanai to marry a local; Tazu to be safe, until he gets the disease himself. After he starts looking like a dog-man they all get scared and let him do whatever he wants, even give him items he asks for. Though the marriage leaves him quiet heartbroken since he had his fiancé Izumi back at home already. 

We then follow him on his long journey to get back home to his former fiancé and hospital where Kirihito has to go through horrible treatment such as: being kept as a collection piece, forced to have sex with women, being tortured and generally people being disgusting towards him because he doesn’t look human anymore (so they don’t treat him as such). A friend and colleague; Urabe that worked in the same hospital as Osanai is getting worried over him and for a chunk of chapters we follow the story from his perspective and how he tries to find his friend again together with Kirihito’s fiance. He goes crazy though, gets declared as mentally ill and commits suicide. The story ends with Kirihito finding out that he was deleted from his hospital register, 2 people who caused him great pain, dying of Monmow and he himself living in a village in Syria where he helps the people out as a local doctor.

Overall this story had me absolutely engaged. I wanted to stop reading at parts where the contents were just incredible cruel, almost tasteless in my opinion, but I couldn’t because I just had to know how it ended. The start and the end are strong but parts in the middle section where Kirihito just gets thrown into one misery from the other had me almost annoyed. I really just wanted it to end at these parts, not particuarly because of the characters but just the themes.

Apart from these few parts the pacing was done really well. Although the part where we followed Urabe seemed almost a bit tad too long. I was just wondering where Kirihito was at that point! There was a part where we see Kirihito get captured by Chinese people who put him in a cage, poke him and display him where his story just gets cut off and we follow Urabe? We never see him escape and the next time we see him he is just out and about again. (could be an issue with the site i read the manga on online, but if it isn’t I would be even more confused)

The art

This was the part, apart from the premise that really pulled me in.

It’s a simple style that Osamu wasn’t afraid to break out of, getting more realistic or exaggerated when it needed to be. There were a lot of great uses of how creative you can get with how your page looks like. I also found the character design quite nice, you could easily tell people apart and get a sense of their personalty by just their first looks.

(a particuarly fav page of mine as the layout works so great as we literally see this man go into a spiral of worry and madness)

Overall this is a horror manga and it does create such an atmosphere, you get a feel of how horrible these characters are feeling in their situations

I’ve also noticed looking through it again that the lines get sketchy at some points, compared to the usual style. I thought it was for adding emotion but it just seems to happen randomly

My big issues

If the content warnings didn’t indicate anything... My biggest issues with this manga is not the quality but I guess my ethical views. Women aren’t treated well, in fact they basically just motivation factors for the male characters. 

I really wanted to like Urabe. I like his design a lot and he would make for a great character if you could ignore the 2 women he rapes in the manga. Which he just gets excused for like “okay but please don’t do that again” “okay” and then he does again. And it just makes me sad because it keeps me from being able to like him.

As for the first warning, black people are drawn as caricatures and portrayed as dumb and poor which... is just something I can’t gloss over and have to mention.

Which is almost ironic because the manga is very critical towards racism against asian people (most likely as the Osamu Tezuka could have experienced it himself)

TL;DR

I liked this manga a lot, the rape and racism stopped me from loving it. If you just want a good story with characters going through hell, body horror, nice art, psychological horror and not having that perfect happy ending you will like this!