17-sai

This collection of four stories is like a mixed bag. You won't find the quality or enjoyment derived out of each story uniform. The art while beautiful and refreshingly clean and happy in the first story consistently declines throughout each story and the 4th story was just a plain torture to get through.

I personally found the first story the best, based around a school setting it's bittersweet and a wee bit angsty. Character development, while a bit convenient for the sake of the story, does occur and you realise your own anxiety is somewhat alleviated when the heroine or hero do or say something vulnerable and how their ensuing relationship blossoms. It's got heart, this first story.

Second story while not groundbreaking in its premise, is still cute. Humorous character development to some extent and you feel sad for the protagonist when she weeps or screams in frustration, so it's definitely engrossing. Art is clever enough in this one that you continue reading even when the plot starts to drag or become mediocre.

But the third and fourth story are completely skippable. The way the third one progresses alone is so annoying to me! There's an almost non consensual incident, after which the perp has the cheek to suggest they "just stay friends" and then gets annoyed at the heroine's interactions with her ex! What Nerve! The Gall! The Gumption!!! It's just a ridiculously annoying and misogynistic tale in my opinion, maybe I'm a little sensitive about it seeing as how he behaves crudely to hide his own feelings and vulnerabilities, but it's not easily digestible, his character or the way the story progresses.

Fourth story's art is very dated and stunted looking and the scanlation or dialogue itself must have been clumsy to begin with. Add to that a poorly thought out storyline and you have the hot mess that it turns out starting page 2. Skip.

Overall, I would highly recommend the first story and the second one to kill time but not the third or the fourth.

17-Sai is a collection of four one shots packed together into one volume. Each story has its own hero and heroine, and none of the stories have any relation to the other.

Talking about each individual story is pointless. The pacing is the same throughout. After reading the manga, one may realize how the degree of development between the hero and the heroine of one chapter is not so different from the others. All of the chapters strictly follow one simple formula: Some problem arises, making the heroine distraught, and the hero always has impeccable timing to save the damsel in distress. And in the end, the problem is resolved.

The art is one of the strongest points of this manga. The "average" boy or girl depicted in this manga look like bishounens or bishoujos. One thing that may bother the reader is how some of the heros look like the other heros presented in previous chapters. This may allow for a slight bit of confusion, but the names and personality are the ultimate factors in differentiating between them so there shouldn't be any problems with figuring out who is who.

One thing to note about this manga is that each chapter forsakes realism for a good, happy conclusion. There were just so many ways things could have turned out differently, but the need for a happy ending seemed so prevalent in all chapters that some of the decisions made by the main characters seemed a bit forced. If the main characters made some realistic approaches to their relationships, it would have left a bittersweet taste but in exchange we would have understood and sympathized with them more.

In short, this manga is worth the time. Each chapter has an average of 60 pages, and I didn't regret reading those chapters. This is a pretty standard shoujo manga; it's not great but not totally bad either. This manga would not be the first on the list to recommend to others if they had something they wanted to read, but it makes for a nice way to pass time.

17-Sai. is a manga which is based off the real life gang-rape murder of Junko Furuta from the 1980's in Japan. It is about a girl who gets kidnapped walking home from school and is held against her will as a sex slave by a group of delinquents. Of course this is a very dramatic mature subject that many readers will not be able to take. There are very graphic scenes that show the girl being raped; I'm saying all this as a warning.

Even though the content of this manga is a horribly disgusting event, the manga itself feels like a tribute to the real life girl. We see many different points of views around the crime and how the events took place. I believe the story is amazing even though it makes me sick. It is very dramatic and compelling which will keep you reading. The art style makes the manga seem more realistic. This allows for stronger emotions from the reader. Even though the characters are horrible beings, there is still a lot of character development and the understanding of the characters comes natural. I very much enjoyed reading this manga. It helped open my eyes to this kind of subject which made me realize how lucky I am. I feel that even though this is a very tragic and depressing manga, it can still shine bright as a tribute to Junko Furuta.

Story:10
Art:7
Character:7
Enjoyment:9
Overall:8

As of now, there's only one review for this manga. When I first found this, that review almost dissuaded me from reading; honestly, I was scared of what I was about to read. It took me a couple of months before I could actually sit down and read the whole thing, so I will leave you my general impression in order to help people with doubts like me decide whether to read it or not.

To keep it spoiler free, I'll just say that the manga is a lot more "vanilla" compared to the actual crime which you can read about on wikipedia, so unless you're very sensitive there's really not a high chance of you puking over this. Having said this, the thing is that it actually sickened me, because it remembered me that in this worlsy there are people far more cruel and disgusting than those depicted on this story.

Story: 7 -> Well written, sometimes one would question the choices made by the characters, but human beings behave different under pressure.

Art: 6 -> Not gore of that's what you wanna know, about the same amount of blood you would see on a "delinquent high schooler brawl", aside from that is pretty much average.

Characters: 8 -> Not much to say, kind of generic but I like to see it as a way to say that these things happen on your everyday neighborhood, no need for a supervillain or damaged antagonist, just normal people.

Enjoyment: 7 -> As I said before, this experience was not saddening than it was exciting, so 7 is just a whim. It deserves it.

Overall: 7 -> Good read, not great though. I can't really put into words who should or shouldn't read this manga, but it is definitely worth a shot.

Thanks for reading.

This is a manga adaption of a novel interpretation of the real life events of Junko Furuta.


Story:
It's hard to say this is enjoyable due to the subject matter, but a good way to describe this is a manga episode of 'Criminal Minds.' The benefit that 17-sai has over virtually every episode of Criminal Minds is that 17-sai wasn't created to capitalize on people's morbid interest in all things evil, but to memorialize an event that should have never taken place. (if 17-sai WAS originally conceived for the sole purpose of making a profit, than damn the original writer, Seiji Fujii)

Morals aside, the actual story follows Hiroki who was roped into Miyamoto's gang. He second guesses very quickly all the actions Miyamoto does and soon enough is tied to the terrible events that take place after Miyamoto abducts a young girl. From them on out we see the terrible atrocities they commit, as well as the girls family work with the police to find out where she's been taken from.

There's nothing particularly revolutionary about this story. There isn't a speck of philosophy used (despite the narrative having enough weight to include it) and the events that unfold aren't astronomical, but the helplessness of the events that take place are very, very real.


Art:
Decent. Nothing special. It's not bad, but it's not super good either. I never felt as though proportions were off, and I also never felt as though the art was trying to shock me (most notably during the abuse). It was tame, which is nice considering the subject matter. Like I mentioned above, this is a memorialization, not glorification. Even still, the art is pretty basic, there aren't overly detailed locals, and most of the events take place inside, so there isn't room for impressive scenery.

That said, the art itself isn't abusive to the reader. It's good to note that the art doesn't glorify the horrific events within these pages. It's careful to expose what's necessary as it takes place. I really appreciated this sense of self-awareness from the artist. It's what kept the Art score from being a 6.


Character:
Some of the things Hiroki does and says are really, really stupid. I found myself questioning why he did them. This is something that a story should never have. It's not a "Woah!" moment where it took me by surprise and I was happy, more of a "What!?" and I was like, "His character showed no signs of this at ALL!" This happened twice.

None of the other characters are all that compelling or have these personal arcs that take place, but the ferocity of the delinquents was terrifying. Considering the topic of this manga, it was surprising that I was continually sickened despite the desensitization that takes place while reading (or perhaps you're already quite desensitized. This will test those limits.)


Enjoyment:
A strange category for this manga, but I can't deny it being a fairly well crafted narrative. Like I've mentioned in other reviews, I can't turn off my critical lense, and it's my critical lense which dictates how enjoyable a work can be. With very little issues (but also, virtually 0 spectacles) I found this to be a devilishly pleasant 7. Not everyone will enjoy this, or handle this, but because the artist took care not to over expose what took place, it was clear that a lot of love was put into not only the narrative but the imagery as well.


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17-sai is based a true story that happened in Japan decades ago. However, when the reality was extremely shocking and violent, this manga only keeps the beginning, meaning the kidnapping of a 17-year old girl.

To quickly summarize the real life event : a group of thugs/delinquents kidnapped a high school girl after her part-time job, brought her to one of the guy's house, raped her, tortured her and eventually murdered her. In this fictionnal story, only the kidnapping & raping elements are kept. To clarifiy things up : no, there is not too much sexual violence (scenes are extremely censored) or physical violence (some characters get beaten up and one eventually finds death).

Here comes my first negative point : I expected a really dark story, giving me some chills making me afraid of human nature. 17-sai did not, or at least, I could read it without having many emotions. To give another example : Metamorphosis/Henshin/Emergence (same manga, different titles) also tells a very hard story, but it gave some real feelings / emotions. For some people, they cry and lie down in their bed, for some other, they unzipped their pants & start fapping or for readers like me, they stop their chapters with a very huge anger and only wish to beat the culprits up.

Sadly, I only felt a bit like "I'd like to do this stuff to these f$cking scumb$gs". It didn't break me or shock me, especially because the number of rape scenes was very low compared to the synopsis. This is obviously a very grave story and I wish it never happens to anyone in our world. If I were to use keywords, hum, disgusting, horrible, terrible should be the ones coming in first, naturally.

What I think was good about this manga, is that it gave a fictional story which could happen in real life. It clearly shows how human nature can variegate : from a regular high school boy looking for some adventure, to a disgusting person who cannot even look himself in a mirror. But eventually, what's terrible, is that none of the culprits in the story (it is not shown but supposed) have any regrets for what they have done. Evilness level is really high, scary on some points.

But 17-sai never truly scared me, as I could not be emotionally involved in the story (it has nothing to do with the fact the victim is a female while I'm a male). The author - in my opinion - fails to attract by force his reader, you only stay as a spectator of a story, instead of breaking the fictional wall and entering the story at 100%.

So my personal recommandation : if you are too sensitive, avoid this manga, it will only give you nightmare. If you are curious, it should be a "decent" introduction to a dark manga with rape thematic.

Reading the reviews here, I realized that this manga was based off of on a true story. After reading the manga, I checked out the real story to see how near to the actual story this manga was and also if the victim was faring well. What I found out was...disturbing. The manga is not even close to the real injustice the victim faced. This, however, does not make the manga bad. In fact, I am glad the manga did not remain true to the actual case because the torture the real victim faced was just horrible. No, it was more than horrible.

This is an important manga to read, in my opinion. It shows how far humans can go in being evil. As a psychology minor, it was easy to understand why some characters did what they did specially in the case of Hiroki. Please keep in mind that doesn't mean I excuse his actions. The author omits alot of the details from the real case but still is able to say the story in a way for us to be able to sympathize and also get our blood boiling. This manga touches upon rape, murder, and just the ugly side of humanity. Definitely a must read if you can stomach the cruelty shown in this manga.

The most hard hitting thing about this manga is that it’s a true story. I read through it and didn’t have much of a reaction because I was assuming it was something someone messed up in the head, or someone trying to bring awareness came up with, but I feel like it would’ve been completely different if I had known it was a true story from the start.

The story was fine for the most part, just a bit generic. I don’t know if that’s the writing itself or just the way things actually unfolded so I gave it two points. Outside of that, it covered every base it needed to. Even without knowing what I was reading was real, I still stayed interested through the whole thing. It drove home the point that peer pressure and fear can do a lot. At the beginning, you think MC is the biggest asshole on earth, but I personally ended up having a bit of sympathy for his situation.

The character development was also pretty great, but I would find myself thinking “no one would have that reaction in real life” or “no one actually says that”, which is a vital flaw when trying to retell someone’s story. Fictional stories sometimes get a pass in that area, but nonfictional titles should be as realistic as possible if the author has to fill in the blanks in some aspects. That being said, it’s easy to see things from most characters’ perspectives. I also liked how she didn’t give the bully some backstory about how his parents beat him or something, trying to make excuses for his actions. That’s not always the reality, and sometimes people are just assholes. I’m glad I’m finally seeing someone not push the narrative that we should pity evil people.


My scores (2=max *story= 3 point max*/ 0=min )
Story Dev-2
Character Dev-1
Art-2
Pacing-2
Overall-7