Becchin to Mandara
Velveteen & Mandala

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Velveteen & Mandala is absolutely messed up to it's core but in the right way. It feels like a B Grade Japanese Psychological Experimental film more than a conventional seinen manga. The art is a bit hazy and the manga has a tendency of using weird angles to focus on the characters. This adds to the whole vibe of how the main characters are messed up in the head due to their upbringing in this dystopian Tokyo that is midst of a war.

The story centers around two highschool girls, Velveteen and Mandala who lives inside a tank on the riverside just outside the city. ... They are tasked by a certain powerful group to exterminate Zombie like creatures that are being dropped by huge airplanes on the riverside where they live. The main two characters aren't friends, they are not really enemies either. For the most part Velveteen loves to hate Mandala but they seem to always fall back to this weird state where they keep on working and living together.

This manga isn't for everyone. I mean it's filled with every messed up shenanigans you can think of. I mean this manga has gore, profanity, necrophilia, attempted gangrape?.....I don't know what you can call that. so you get that you need a strong stomach to digest these. This manga is laced with quirky and sharp dark humor with inappropriate but chuckle generating comments on our lifestyle and the downward spiral of humanity under such conditions of dystopia. This manga is pretty pretentious and for the most part the themes are all over the place when put into a context of a complete story but it's the type of pretentiousness that actually helps the manga to standout.

One of the things that I genuinely love about this manga is how brilliantly this manga can change it's tone from inappropriate jokes to such messed up reality with sharp turns that makes you go like that's quite funny to Fu** that's messed up!

It's not a manga that's perfect and a lot of it is up for interpretation so definitely people will have different opinions. If someone comes out and says that it's a pretentious gibberish dumpster fire, I won't really complain. It's upto the individual reader to decide what they take from this manga. I myself absolutely loved the entire thing despite it's shortcoming and although the themes individually can be very intriguing, they start falling apart when placed under a larger picture. Reading the manga made me feel the same feelings as I did when I had first watched Eraserhead and it's a damn good feeling atleast for me. It's only one volume that's just 14 chapters so maybe give it a shot.

Becchin to Mandara is best described as a psychological slice of life. Set in a ruined, post-war Japan, the manga shows the bizarre day-to-day lives of two girls, Becchin and Mandara. However, unlike other stories with a post-apocalyptic setting, Becchin to Mandara isn’t a story about survival or adventure. Instead, it completely defies the genre’s conventions by being utterly abstract. Constantly shifting tones between twisted humour, disturbing imagery, and zombie-killing action, Becchin to Mandara will have the reader wrapping his head around its story (mainly, lack thereof) in the most unpleasant fashion possible. The manga is grounded (or ungrounded) by the twisted interactions between Becchin, ... Mandara, and the anomalies (namely, swarms of ladybugs, large, flying insects, and fully sentient corpses) surrounding their countryside abode. To give you a little taste of the manga, here’s a description of its two main characters:

Mandara is as batshit crazy as a girl can get. Energetic and always referring to herself in the third person, she constantly shows sporadic behavior and thoughts. Of this behavior, she seems to be fond of imitating things – hillbillies, animals, and “crabvaders”? She also has a peculiar obsession with tape recorders, whereas any mention of this specific object leads to Mandara flailing her arms and breaking out into hysterical, tear-filled fits. If her dialogue doesn’t consist of incomprehensible rabble or delusional ranting, then it probably has something to do with the repetition of the words “tape recorder”. Like a broken tape recorder herself, another quirk in Mandara’s speech is that she tends to speak in loops, repeating her thoughts endlessly until interrupted.

“Who is Bill Gates?”
“The first man who succeeded in reaching the South Pole.”

Although a bit more mentally sound than her schizophrenic friend, Becchin suffers from a mild case of paranoia. She’s shown to hallucinate, and have conversations with herself on a regular basis. It’s through these hallucinations that we also see glimpses of Becchin’s pre-war life, as fragmented and far in-between as they may be. Although she takes pills to mitigate her hallucinations, the reader is left to wonder how much of the manga’s world has been distorted by Becchin’s mind, as we see it as Becchin does… Floating pianos, swarms of ladybugs, and all.

At first glance, Becchin to Mandara has all of the makings of a subtle, anti-war allegory – a post-apocalyptic setting, the defense of a dried out riverbed against “invaders”, and socially dejected, mentally unstable main characters. However, a complete lack of narrative, a scatter-brained introduction and conclusion, and failure to maintain a consistent plot made the manga almost incomprehensible, let alone able to convey any sort of message. Even the tidbit of social commentary introduced towards the ending seemed arbitrary, given the incoherent nature of the manga. Well, where does that leave the reader? What were the intentions of the author when writing Becchin to Mandara, if the story itself lacks any meaning or coherency?

Welcome to the twisted world of Jiro Matsumoto.

Ever wondered what it’s like to peer into the mind of a potentially insane mangaka? Well, Matsumoto’s stories will take you beyond the fine line of dementia and lunacy. Like all of his manga, Matsumoto doesn’t hold back on disturbing and graphic scenes. This is a man who will pull out all the stops for the sake of shocking readers, and he’s as unflinching as he is… Imaginative. On the milder side, the girls are often shown nude, or having vivid chats about sexuality and sexual acts. Or, in the middle of a conversation, another character will suddenly reveal a fully drawn, flaccid phallus. However, at its most brutal moments, the author doesn’t even bat an eye at, say, a teenaged girl wearing a school uniform, laughing maniacally while getting violated by a hoard of zombies in a horrific scat orgie.

… What? Yeah. Unfortunately, this is just senseless shock value. There’s little context behind these acts, and they exist simply to appall readers.

Becchin to Mandara isn’t without its black humour though. Throughout the manga, Matsumoto throws around not-so-subtle allusions to popular anime: Princess Mononoke, Evangelion, Gundam, My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaa, and even Full Metal Panic. There are also comedic elements in the manga’s styling, such as the use of a game’s inventory system when one of the characters was taking stock of her belongings, or the appearance of a JRPG battle menu when the same character later encounters a zombie.

Like all of Jiro Matsumoto’s manga, Becchin to Mandara’s artwork is… Unique, to say the least. The artist manages to make each panel highly detailed, yet crude at the same time. Matsumoto makes great use of etching, but these details create two effects. At its best, and quite often, these etchings create diverse facial expressions and highly intricate environments with fantastic shading. On a few rare occasions though, Matsumoto’s etchings can make for overly clustered panels.

Overall, Becchin to Mandara left me disappointed with a half-realized story, poor flow of narrative, and thoughtless imagery. Nonetheless, don’t let this manga deter you from reading Matsumoto’s other works. I was lead to Becchin to Mandara by Freesia (which is fairly underrated, yet highly praised by some), and Yuretsuzukeru, one of the few erotic works that isn’t overtly smut. It’s a dark collection of short stories that deals with psychology – what Becchin to Mandara could have and should have been with a little more care and restraint.

ʚ . . . Tape recorder . . . Tape recorder . . . Tape recorder ɞ

Did I have any expectations for this manga ? No , I was drawn to this manga because it was on the horror tag && the cover art looked nice . Reading this felt like a fever dream , it was super weird && all over the place , I feel like this could have some analyzing potential with symbolism && the frequent hallucinations becchin experiences && the overall themes of this manga . Anyways . . . Onto the review


ʚ overall 4/10 ɞ
This is going to be such ... a low score because this , Like i said , feels like a fever dream . It ' s so random && all over the place , making it hard to understand what is left && what is right . The dislikes outweigh the likes a bit for me on this one , I really tried to wrap my head around this one but I just couldn ' t . I ' m not really a fan of how this manga was executed , && I couldn ' t tell if this was a parody or some sort of comedic ploy . It goes from psychological moments with the two main characters && onto some random scene of shitting I guess . . .

ʚ Story 3/10 ɞ
I can ' t tell what the story is , If i ' m honest , if it could sum it up it ' s " bombings happen in city , there are bugs in the bodies so you have to get rid of them also they ' re zombies . " , Nothing that hasn ' t been done before . Just your regular post apocalyptic zombie story .

ʚ Characters 6/10 ɞ
This is probably going to be the highest score for this manga , I really focused on mandara for this story . She ' s a really interesting character out of all of the characters . Mandara ( in my opinion ) showcases a highschool girl battling with disorders that stemmed from sexual trauma ( As we were told ) . I believe mandara has a case of Dissociative identity disorder , DID for short . DID is a disorder that is caused by trauma at a young age , this disorder makes you have multiple " personalities " ( better known as alters , so therefore i ' m going to be calling it that . ) , this was showcased by mandara ' s different ways of talking which was shown , her loss of memory && thinking she ' s supposed to be doing something else that she ' s not supposed to . Though they all respond to mandara , which is quite common with people who have DID . I just thought that was interesting because people with DID are mostly shown as " good side " vs . " evil axe murderer " . Anyways , for the rest of the characters they ' re interesting but not in the way mandara is , I wanted to know so much more about mandara compared to becchin or the caretaker .

ʚ Art 5/10 ɞ
Cute artstyle I personally enjoyed the look of , the artstyle really fits the two main characters , I feel like if anyone else had drawn it , it just wouldn ' t have worked . . . Nice settings , interesting angles && panels . Not much to say here , I liked it , not the best but it ' s still good .

ʚ Enjoyment 5/10 ɞ
I disliked reading this but i also liked reading this . I wanted to know more about the characters ( specifically mandara as stated ) , but it was really difficult because of the way it ' s executed . This could really have potential if i ' m honest , but in a way I kinda liked how it made your brain feel like it was about to explode from trying to understand what is going on in it .

Do it recommend it ? No , unless you want to see interesting relationships between two highschool girls battling mental disorders , then maybe , but overall ? no .