Confidential Confessions: Deai 2

This was quite simply one of the most disturbing and upsetting volumes of manga I’ve ever read.  When I described the events to my horror-manga-loving roommate, he desperately wanted to read it.  The thing about it is, this is supposed to be based in reality, and I think that’s what upset me most.

As I said, the Peace gang began going in a rather unsettling direction at the end of last volume, particularly when they discovered the million-yen tab and the boys got violent.  The violence towards the old men continues, which turned my stomach enough, but then the old men began seeking revenge.

One of the boys got tied up in a batting cage and was pelted with balls from the pitching machine, and perhaps beaten with bats.  One of the girls got pushed down the stairs and broke her collarbone.  One of the girls was raped.  One of the girls was hanged.  A lot more stuff happened, but I don’t want to give away too much, and a lot of stuff happened that either contradicted or counterbalanced what I already stated, so I didn’t really offer up too much of a spoiler, but all the stuff is pretty… rough, to say the least.  There is just a TON of violence here, and because it’s easy to imagine in a real-life setting, it just upset me.

I didn’t really want to read this volume because I knew it would make me sad, but I figured it was only a two-volume series and I might as well be done with it.  It did upset me a lot though.  It WAS well-written, good manga … but definitely not for those with weak stomachs.

Confidential Confessions: Deai 1

This was extremely sinister, and I’m glad it’s only two volumes long. Not that it was BAD, but much like the first Confidential Confessions, it makes me feel bad reading it because there’s so much wrong in the stories. Plus my mom read the second volume of the first series and was rather disturbed by it, so I always think of my mom’s reactions when reading any Confidential Confessions volume.

I don’t like any plots about prostitution in Japan because the nuances and problems of that always make me feel really uncomfortable… mostly because it seems so huge and so many young girls are involved… and because it seems like a legitimate problem, or so manga would have me believe. I didn’t like that the girl wanted to make money doing it, I didn’t like that she engineered a whole thing to keep it safe and got other girls involved in it, and I didn’t like the ugly direction it took. Bleagh. I don’t know that it will have a happy ending, either.

What I did like was the girl who got so fat from eating all the meals the men bought her.