Bitter Virgin

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*sobs*

Sometimes if you need a good cry you need not to read grand tragedies where millions of lives are at stake or a deeply philosophical narrative, but just to remind yourself of such a terribly common evil, with the added baggage of it mostly being done by men to women (and the misogyny that abounds because it's natural to blame women for everything). A very personal evil, as it also concerns how we come into existence. Maybe, no, it is certain that one of your ancestors felt like their child was a parasite, a topic this manga will not shy away from. All of this ... is just much to sad to think of, all that suffering throughout the millennia, that readers might be eager to cast out judgement and have narrow expectations, both for the narrative and the characters. But this manga sets its tone and its usage of tropes from the beginning, everything you need to expect from it is laid bare. There can be tropes that one may feel are "inappropriate" for a manga with this subject matter. However, this tonal dichotomy was established since the very beginning with all the contrived situations to reach the confession at the church and Hinako conveniently believing that Daisuke was a priest, and this tropey-tropeyness continues to the very end. And this didn't detract from the experience for me, in fact, it added to it. It made those tropes more precious. Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood had the same "problem," so if you were fond of the tone in that animanga, then this should be a fine read for you as well. As for the characters, they did their role well. They all have personality, even Hinako-- she does have a personality, it's just not one you might like. Her struggles and demeanor are indeed "informed by her trauma" but everyone is informed by something. We don't all live in a vacuum, and that's something this manga illustrates well. And more than that, other people suffer in different ways, and the way the manga expands on this through the side characters and their conflicts and how Hinako learns about this and reflects on herself does make her a compelling character.

This manga is still not without some glaring issues. For one, the author seems to aware of how tropey everything is, and sometimes her attempts to make them more meaningful are filler at best and backfire in an insulting way at worst.
There's an instance where the protagonist protects Hinako from a guy who's confessing to her, as she is very scared and runs to him for comfort. A couple dozen chapters later, the guy who was about to confess appears and harasses her, grabbing her fucking wrists against a wall, and now it's all about how his feelings got hurt because he felt like a predator :( :( :( shut the fuck up. There's being hurt by being rejected to, that's understandable, and there's getting so angry about it to the point of borderline assault and the narrative bending over backwards for this unnamed guy, and for what? Just to add some forced complexity to how Hinako relates to others?

Despite some issues in trope execution, if you're going to read this, just have an open mind.

I've been thinking a bit about this story and what it's trying to convey through Aikawa. As I've read the review of
another user specifically critiquing Aikawa's lack of character or rather her character being defined too much by trauma
which she has suffered, I began to wonder whenever it's morally right.
Is it morally correct to accuse a person (or fictional character) of being defined too much by their trauma ? How could
they not be ? After all trauma is something incredibly haunting that keeps it's fangs deeply
within you until you wither away or decide to do something about it.
Aikawa is a character that was ... not too uncommon in the 2000s. With her big round bug eyes, bangs over forehead and a shy
kind response that you saw coming from miles away. In other words....boring. We don't know what she likes to do in her
free time, we don't know what aspirations she has for the future, we don't know anything that would make her "dynamic".
Precisely therein I believe lies the problem. Has her lack of "living" been imposed upon her by trauma or simply
bad writing ? Only thing that adds "spice" to Aikawa is her terrible abuse which she has suffered under her stepfather.
The only thing that is disrupting this story and refusing to let it be just another harem manga in mid-2000s.
She may not be doing anything in her free time that we would describe as a hobby. But she is doing something.
By endlessly being forced to think about her past and being held a hostage by it, Aikawa's boring character ends up
being a result of something disruptive happening within her life. As if the story perhaps subconsciously acknowledges
that such a cliché protagonist can only exist as a byproduct of something terrible. And suddently the archetype of this
shallow, shy, tame girl recieves a backstory and a purpose for its existence. In Bitter virgin, this archetype can only
exist under these circumstances. It turns her from archetype into an original. Unique. Her shyness, shallowness are a
sign of trauma. Her kindness and cheerfullness are a sign of resistance to said trauma. The unavoidable effect of
trauma comes into play. It both forms and deforms her. Ultimatelly, this is a story not about overcoming trauma but
making the first step to do so. And the first step is realising and accepting that you are a deserving of love.
That you are worthy of it. The potential of Aikawa's character can only be realised once she overcomes her past. After
which she will no longer be defined by the horror of trauma but rather the journey she took to overcome it. Journey
filled with love and support that will help her blossom and find her "true character".


Of course the more realistic interpretation is that mangaka added the horror of rape onto the archetype of Aikawa and
it simply did not change her that much. The archetype remained the same. Only "spice" was added to hide its unoriginallity.
Most other characters act as narrative tools to get our protagonists where they need to be. With the exception of
Daisuke's sister that I genuinely liked. She complimented Aikawa's and Daisuke's stories while remaining her own person
throughout. Ibuse Kazuki on the other hand only existed to prolong the story by 20 chapters. It is when I remember
Kazuki's character I realise that my "positive" interpretation of Aikawa is futile. Much like her, Kazuki too is an
archetype. So is Daisuke and pretty much everyone else besides Suwa Izumi, Daisuke's sister. Hints of potential
uniqueness that could have been added into their characters end up being nothing more than my own schizophrenic
delusions. The writing relies too much on coincidences and drawn out repetitive dialogue.

Prehaps it was precisely this cliché world of harem that mangaka was aiming for. Maybe she wanted to explore these
themes with archetypes that most of us are familiar with. The idea that rape or miscarriege can happen to anyone.
People around that you are familiar with just like these archetypes or even to you.

I'll start off by saying maybe my expectations were a little too high. I wanted to read it as it looked similar to Onani Master Kurosawa which got better with each volume to end up as one of my favorites.
As I read Bitter Virgin, the beginning was just mediocre but I gave it a second chance and kept reading it until the very last panel. [Btw I thought there'll be a few more chapters after that, so a weak ending like that managed to make the aftertaste feel ever worse somehow.]
I could sum up whole plot development with "random bull***t go" meme, that was the ... only reaction I was getting far often for manga that has just 30 chapters.
It's sad that it wanted to tell something to readers but eventually nothing came out of it, it kept juggling between carefree school romance and trying to get people feel empathetic for Hinako. While it tried to squeeze as much as possible from this tragedy it failed to show empathy itself. I just couldn't believe that you can make such insensitive lines and act like it was the right move and the same thing happened more than once. I don't want to blame the author too much, maybe this was a bad case of translation barrier, but even if that's the main cause of my perception of dialogues in this manga, the original version can't be that much better so it's mediocre at best.
In summary I could easily forgive it if it happened once or twice but multiple plot developments just felt forced and didn't really add anything which later snowballed into the whole story not conveying anything at all. Which also made dialogues worse as they had to fix past errors and make more unrealistic jumps to push things forward all while not being empathetic enough which is the worst thing you could do when trying to deal with traumatic events.
Sidenote: about another thing that happened too many times... first her father then her step father [multiple times] and then that guy on the street... Like I said you can't make people feel more emapthetic just by adding numbers to rape count. That was the final straw that made me know it won’t get better.