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Happiness is a horror manga series by Shuzo Oshimi. It began serialization in the February 2015 issue of Shonen Monthly, Bessatsu Shonen Magazine and presently has nine volumes.
Famed “Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure” creator, Hirohiko Araki stated in his novel “Manga in Theory and Practice” that a mangaka really only has the first page to grip the audience. I won’t be so stringent as to explicitly apply that standard in this review series, but I will start even earlier. Much like a house can have “curb appeal”, I’d posit that manga has “shelf appeal”. In other words, what does the cover’s presentation add to the appeal and the audience’s understanding of the work inside?
Shuzo Oshimi, creator of “Flowers of Evil” – The only bit of their previous work catalogue I have any familiarity with IS “Flowers of Evil”, so this works out nicely in one sense and not so much in another. To me this telegraphs a “reality grounded tale of guilt and shame. Likely a psychological horror affair”
Title and Illustration – The cover illustration is a painting of a purple haired girl gazing towards the reader with red smeared around her mouth. Perhaps it’s lipstick, food of some kind or blood. Paired with the title (“Happiness”) and the genre (horror), the latter is likely it. Speaking of the title, “Happiness” is an odd choice. It’s a feeling one doesn’t expect to be prominent in a horror property, so it explicitly being the name of the property does put the focus squarely upon the emotional and psychological being of its characters.
So the cover has us primed for some kind of horror story centering around consumption and emotional anguish. And, HOO BOY, does Happiness deliver.
Happiness follows Okazaki, a first year student at Hokusei High School. High School, being what it is, is a rather lackluster, if not somewhat painful, experience for our protagonist. There are the quiet signs of bullying, the weight of expectation to be like his brother and the ever present nuisance of teenage hormonal lust. The icing on the cake, though is the night he gets attacked and practically mauled by some weird girl in an alley. Of course, this just causes his family to fret over him and it’s more ammunition for his tormentors at school. No matter how much he tries to assure the former that he is indeed fine and gloss over it with the latter, Okazaki is most definitely NOT fine. Light bothers him, he gets bouts of extreme thirst, loses his appetite and develops a sensitivity to blood. So what exactly is happening to poor Okazaki and what will become of his life as he presently knows it?
Okazaki – High school freshman. Feeling the teenage blues. Gets attacked in an alley and has felt periodically awful since.
Nunota – Okazaki’s friend at the beginning of the story. He was the bullies’ previous target.
Yuuki – The ringleader of the bullies. He usually orders Okazaki to buy him and his friends lunch.
Nao – Yuuki’s girlfriend and part of the group. Likely never acknowledged Okazaki before. Asks Okazaki for help, though, when Yuuki starts acting weird.
Yukiko – Finds Okazaki during one of his dizzy spells in the hallway and tries to help. A humorous misunderstanding takes place that sets the tone for the friendship that grows out of it. The two hang out during lunch.
Although this is a horror manga, I can’t say that I found myself all that scared or unnerved – though there’s more than enough time and narrative space for that to happen later. It’s more of a slow burn, electing to focus on the main characters anguish instead of a tangible monstrosity. The real source of “drama” here isn’t even the physical changes and ailments he’s undergoing but, rather, what all of this is doing to his demeanor. He laments that “This isn’t me” a few times in volume 1 and it’s misunderstandings or uncharacteristic behaviour that drives the plot. It’s him punching Yuuki in the face that puts Yuuki in his funk or Yukiko mistaking his desire to turn her into a literal snack for him trying to turn her into a proverbial one that kickstarts their friendship.
It’s inevitable, I suppose, that our protagonists changes do seem like an veiled allegory for puberty. Most drastic physical and psychological changes of this kind in teenagers can codify that way. I don’t know if this is intentional but, furthermore, there are sexual undertones to Okazaki’s changes. It’s not so much “violence is sexy” like Witchblade, so much as it’s “sexuality in it’s primal state is aggressive, if not somewhat predatory”. When he’s being attacked, the girl straddles, then bites and licks Okazaki’s neck. When Okazaki loses it and nearly does the same to Yukiko, she interprets it as a sexual advance. But what really sells it is the fact that now that Okazaki’s olfactory senses are heightened many of the girls’ scents (seemingly from, ahem, below the belt) are quite distracting to him. There’s a strong undercurrent of vampirism at play so make of that what you will, but I’d like to think that it’s just open enough that it may just be pheromones.
But moving on, Okazaki is a curious fella. For a manga titled “Happiness”, he sure seems unfulfilled – and these new changes aren’t helping. Part of this, however, may be because he has a subtle habit of non-confrontation. He, nor Nunota, stand up to Yuuki and tell him no, Yukiko pegs him as wishy washy and a push over and when he is asked by his attacker “Do you want to die like this or do you want to be like me?” he says “I don’t want to die”. Now that last one may sound like nitpicking to you. It isn’t that his response isn’t understandable, but when placed next to the rest of his behaviors it’s easier to see it as the non-committal response it is. This comes back to bite him (no pun intended, I swear) later when Nao asks him to help Yuuki and he answers with essentially “I feel bad; I didn’t mean for any of this to happen: I’m not sure I can”. She takes his implicit refusal and translates it to an explicit answer: “So you won’t help us”. He relents and does so, but it’s still paradoxically more of the same non-confrontational stuff from before. He may be entering a physical confrontation, but he still doesn’t have the emotional fortitude to just say no.
I’m not necessarily throwing him under the bus (completely). A level of passivity is banged into your skull by that age. You’re conditioned to seek the guidance of authority figures in your life and many problems can seem bigger than you. Safely breaking through that, thus building confidence to take more and more control of your life, is a vital part of growing up. Despite how adverse he may be to the situation as a whole, it’s good that Okazaki now has people in his life that will challenge him in these ways, even if he isn’t ready to do the same to them yet. I really do foresee a situation similar to the Misfile webcomic where Okazaki goes through some character development and, when a chance arises down the line to undo these changes his attack put him through, he has to grapple with the very real prospect that he might lose the good things he’s acquired during the way.
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