Maddies MangaAdabana / 徒花 – Volume Two Manga Review
If you thought volume one was dark… you haven’t seen anything yet.
Scroll to the bottom for a link to sample and buy volume two!
Author
This series was written by NON. You can find their X here.
Genre & Tropes
Psychological horror.
Info about this series (ongoing)
This series is completed in Japanese with three volumes. It is ongoing in English with two volumes currently released.
TL;DR rating
I was rather conflicted with this one. The storytelling, pacing, art, hopeless atmosphere… Everything was amazingly crafted. My only problem with it is that it was so dark that I can only recommend it to a very specific audience.
Trigger warnings
This volume is rather heavy, so please only read if you are comfortable with the following topics being discussed:
- Sexual assault by a family member
- Hidden cameras
- Sexual blackmail
- Exploitation of a minor
My thoughts on this volume (Mild spoilers!)
Volume two kept the same overall dark and depressing tone of volume one, but this time we follow around the disappeared best friend, Mako. I say “disappeared” and not “murdered”, as I refused to believe that she is actually dead until we’re shown either her murder, or her body. Until then, I’m choosing to believe that Mizuki (the would-be murderer / best friend) somehow helped her escape this hell hole. While in volume one we follow the story of Mizuki and the detectives who are looking into the murder, volume two takes us back six months before the arrest.
As I wasn’t the biggest fan of the police storyline in the previous volume—I think this series works better when it tells us the story through the eyes of the girls, not when it follows the police trying to make sense of things—I was very happy with this change of pace! We still get to see some of our potential murderer, Mizuki, but the focus is overwhelmingly on Mako. Because both girls were forced to go through so many traumatic events, I think their perspective is by far the most interesting. I care less about the police members who failed to help them, and who still aren’t doing the best job of figuring out exactly what happened—at least in volume one.
We learn quite a lot about Mako in this volume, and every new thing made me feel more and more sorry for her. Her familial situation is one that no young person should ever have to go though, and then on top of that her creepy uncle… How he hadn’t been caught by the police by this point in the story, I’ll never know. The author did a wonderful job of making him an absolutely disgusting character, and I found myself cheering even more the second time we were shown his eventual death.
Every male character introduced in this series seems to range from incompetent to downright evil. The story focuses more so on the later, as we are shown some truly evil men. This volume focuses a lot on what I would refer to as realistic worst case scenarios. I found it to be so disturbing because while they were clearly amped up for the sake of drama, I could still imagine it happening in real life.
For example, Mako’s seemingly kind saviour-boyfriend slowly growing more and more controlling? That’s something commonly found in abusive relationships, right? Him filming her with his phone without her consent? Again, that’s absolutely something that could happen. Him going out of his way to set up spy cameras so he can still record her without having to hear her complaints? More outlandish, but again, realistically a deranged pervert could do it. And then, when it all blew up, threatening to release the videos should she try to leave him? It really doesn’t feel all that unrealistic.
This particular sequence of events is just one instance of the trauma that poor Mako is forced to endure in this volume. Even after she goes to the police, they aren’t able to do anything besides saying “leave it to us!” Like… Arrest the man who was filming sexually explicit videos of a minor maybe? Look into the home life of said minor, to figure out if she’s being properly taken care of? Do… literally anything??
By the end of the volume, I was ready for it to be over. The horrific situation Mako was in found a way to continue growing worse and worse, with no solution in sight. To comfort myself, I’m choosing to believe that Mizuki was able to help her erase all of the videos taken of her, and sent her away to another country to start a new life. Please, let them have at least a neutral ending…
In the next volume, if that perverted boyfriend doesn’t get what’s coming to him, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to handle it. My opinion on him from volume one to two could not have changed more drastically. While I had been finding him to be a suspicious character, I actually thought it was because he was cheating on Mako with Mizuki in some capacity. I was not ready for what actually happened. I need him in jail in place of Mizuki.
A theory I have: maybe the girls set up things for him to be sent to jail eventually, so Mizuki turned herself in even though she’s innocent, just to make a few allies in jail in anticipation of his arrival. She would tell a prisoner or two to “look out” for the monster, and get released when the police realize she’s innocent. That way she’ll get a little bit of revenge for Mako, and won’t have to endure any jail time for it!
With the depressing tone of the overall story I doubt this is where it’s going… but a girl can dream.
Check out a free sample below!
English (Kindle) Japanese (Grandjump)You can check out volume two of this series for yourself below!
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