Now you see, Chi no Wadachi had a wonderful premise. The story was centered around a character study on a very disturbing milf and her son, and the art is what you'd expect from the man who made Flowers of Evil. I read through all 75 released chapters in one sitting, and I was never bored for a single moment.

But there were parts that ticked me off, and it has to do with the psychological characterization of the mother-son dynamic at times. And that's where things get tricky, because there are times where it works, and times where I feel very ambivalent with how the main character recovered from his trauma.

It's clear that the author had to have prior knowledge of certain psychological phenomena, and he tries to portray it with his wonderful art. For example: Falsified memories. Gaslighting. Amnesia. Grooming. But whether he really understands it or just copies and pastes these psychological phenomena like a TV trope?

I get that this is just manga, so hearing someone with a fucking Maki profile pic bring in contemporary lit might sound absolutely pretentious. Sue me, she was my bae back when I was in high school, I got that profile pic a long time ago, I'm 22 now, and I think mentioning this work is useful to my case. Back in the 50s, a guy named Vladimir Nabokov wrote a book about pedophilia called "Lolita". The psychology of Humbert is clearly unlike anything someone has ever scene. It's twisted and full of dark flavor. And Chi no Wadachi is like Lolita, in that they're both character studies in the psychologies of the characters they're studying. Here's the catch: I never realized how fucking complex pedophiles were until I read Lolita, because Humbert is a Subway sandwich LOADED with goodies. I never expected such complexity out of a pedophile, seriously. It defied my expectations, because in my head, I already had a clear cut-out of what pedophiles were like. Humbert was something else.

By contrast, after the 5th or 6th chapter, I already had an expectation of how the mother-son dynamic would unfold. There's something inauthentic about the scene where Osabe's memories are being falsified. It felt like the author went to a pop-psychology seminar and learned about the idea that memories could be falsified, thought, "Haha this might be a good concept to include," and tossed it in. The scene was beautifully drawn, but the content felt a little copy and paste. I was able to identify, "Oh his memories are being falsified", or "Oh, the mom is gaslighting the son," and it felt like I was eating vanilla ice cream because the flavor was something familiar that I've seen in other places. There just wasn't much variation outside my basic monkey-ass understanding of what I've seen in past psychological thrillers. Heck, the copy-and-paste aspect led to confusion on my part, and it might show a lack of understanding on my part. I refer to the most recent chapter at the time of this review, chapter 75. I was honestly shocked that Osabe recovered so quickly from his falsified memory state. Yeah, I get that his mom mentioned to him that he was free from her lies, but I question that Osabe, a young and impressionable 8th grade boy who is EXTREMELY attached to his mom could recover so quickly from a few simple words from the detective giving him a small talk-no-jutsu.

A lot of these scenes feel copy-and-paste and lacks novelty. You have the running away from home scene. You have the gaslighting. In fact, the most interesting part that fascinated me was the stuttering trauma, but the way he did away with his stuttering with the help of his crush was a little cheesy.

It had me, then it lost me. Then it had me again. Then it lost me again. And yet throughout all of this, my eyes never left the screen. I read through all 75 chapters in one sitting, and was VERY hooked. The mom is the obvious crown jewel of this series, largely because in spite of her actions, you can't really get a grip around her. Still, there is a logic and reason to her actions. Her manipulation, her anger, her twisted acting--it all has a reason that we'll likely never get to learn. And I don't think we should learn it, either. The mom is a mystery, and a really morbid, fascinating mystery at that.

Ultimately, 7/10 seems fitting. I can't help but feel that there's something inauthentic about the author's understanding of a toxic relationship, something that he must have grabbed from other television shows, books, and what not. But the ART. Oh man, the art is fantastic and draws you in. It's wonderful. I would definitely recommend. It's a morbid, fun read.