Becchin to Mandara
Velveteen & Mandala

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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.

It happens again. I think that I’ve already read enough of Jiro Matsumoto and I am completely desensitized, then I pick something by him up and it gets to me. Damn you, Jiro Matsumoto, I am disturbed and impressed again! Surprisingly, what you see here is one of his deeper manga, one, which is especially interesting in the context of his other works. And I wouldn’t recommend it as an entry point for those unfamiliar.

I didn’t want to bother with this text, and I hate to be the person who argues with the way others read, but the reviews here bug me a bit. I’ve ... seen the same complaints about Freesia, and yet again I don’t understand some of them. The first being that the manga lacks plot, the second is the lack of social commentary.

While I agree that many plotlines here stay unresolved (namely the plotlines of individual characters remain tangles of hints and suppressed memories until and past the end), the main progression is pretty clear and is, more importantly, explained by the characters themselves. What we see here is sort of a shift change in the local purgatory – the place where the dead transition to the otherworld. Perhaps the main storyline can even be considered simple, though it is loaded with psychological complications, non-linear episodes and surreal trips. And Becchin and Mandara is not centered about social stuff, nor did it ever intend to be, from what I see, although it does contain some jabs on current society. Yeah, there is war, but a background war is present in most of Jiro Matsumoto’s works.

Nor only do the events take place in the crossing place and some of the characters cross lines, it seems to me that this manga is sort of transitory for the mangaka too – a brief feverish return to Freesia and the subsequent shift to the warring shoolgirls period simultaneously. After all we see a character, that looks and acts like Hiroshi Kano (the protagonist of Freesia, who, here, talks about the author directly as if he had an experience of playing his part before), passing the relay baton to the mad schoolgirl Becchin. I wonder, if Jiro Matsumoto’s worlds altogether moved closer to hell after this, since the warring schoolgirls settings (in Houkago no Hiroko, Zenryou naru Itan no Machi, Joshi Kouhei) are so inhuman and bloody, and he is working on “Alice in Hell”… For some reason I find Bacchin to Mandara heart-wrenchingly sad. Oh, and btw, the 4th wall is broken a lot in this series – it’s filled to the brim with references to anime culture, mainly Gundam and Ghibly.

I don’t think I overanalyze it. When reading, mind it (if you don’t already) that Jiro Matsumoto’s manga tends to be built like a good literary work – besides the layer of the characters’ actions there’re motifs, composition, imagery that add an additional level. What character do isn’t necessary the very point of the work they inhabit. Things that seem random at first return and play important parts. But, yeah, sometimes its’ not easy to keep track, and not everything is connected in the end, unfortunately. Personally I felt a sense of conclusion, even though I couldn't understand everything.

The art is the usual gritty, graphical and overdetailed mess. The characteristic pitch-black humor is there. The gore is overabundant – if somebody isn’t raped, then somebody is killed or people talk nuts, usually all of this happens at once. Though in the end I ponder not why I read a manga with a schoolgirl shitting and retching at once, but the ecology of death. It was interesting to have a glimpse in Jiro Matsumoto’s cosmology too, he doesn’t focus on it often.

It’s a fine read for anyone familiar or ready for Jiro Matsumoto’s storytelling (forgive me for mentioning his name so many times, but it’s all so typical), but it may take effort to parse. If you fit these criteria, don’t be discouraged by the low rating. It’s rough but impactful.

Becchin to Mandara is a story about two girls living in an abandoned battle tank at a dry Riverbed that spend their days exterminating zombies along-side a pantless man that lives in a small house nearby.
There isn't much to it other than that, though Becchin to Mandara does the whole zombie thing quite differently from what people are used to seeing, zombies actually talk and think, almost as normally, to the story's standards, as any other character there, so much so that it often feels like they are just slaughtering humans rather than zombies. Other than killing zombies, the story focuses on the main ... characters state of mind, their relationship, and how they met.

Story: 5/10
Unfortunately, the manga is a bit confusing, you'll often wonder what the characters are talking about since there are various sudden changes of subject, and most of the main points of the story are badly covered, with little to no backstory to help understand how stuff turned out how it is, stuff such as the origin of the zombies, the strange skull kids, the pantless man, and other supposedly important aspects, they are all left almost unspoken of, almost assuming the reader already knows what and how everything is. It doesn't help that the dialog is often confusing or sometimes completely unnecessary, which makes it quite tedious to read through.
You'll also find some somewhat disturbing scenes in later chapters, such as characters "taking a dumb" outdoors, the pantless mans penis, and a zombie raping scene, each of these quite explicitly illustrated, so be careful if you dislike that kind of thing, and to be honest, they don't really add anything to the manga, they seem added just for the sake of shock.

Characters: 3/10
There aren't much characters in Becchin to Mandara, you could say there are only three of them in total, and each character has a far-from-believable personality, Becchin may seem inhuman at times and Mandara is just plain stupid at times. Another aspect in their personalities are that none are very well established, Becchin is as often nice as she is incredibly mean, and Mandara is also as often stupid as she is not-as stupid.

Art: 4/10
The artwork has a very sketchy look to it, at first you may enjoy it if you're into sketchy looks, but it'll quickly wear-off on you and you'll realize it's just actually poorly drawn. The artwork is very inconsistent though, at times the backgrounds don't look too bad, and in others they look extremely cluttered and poorly drawn. The characters faces look very awkward more times than not, though they're not extremely bad.

Enjoyment: 3/10
Becchin to Mandara ends up being a quite tedious read and you might have to force yourself to read through the whole thing. That added with the subpar artwork, really leaves little to get out of reading it.

Overall: 4/10

I love a story that will make me think. I love to question reality, even the reality of a fictional universe. If I need to watch or read something several times to understand it, then it is almost a guarantee that it will go in my closet full of wonderfully strange and complicated things. Velveteen & Mandala is not such a thing. It had the potential to be, but the presentation or lack of information and sheer intense strangeness of the story muddles this up.

The art is different, to say the least. It is very sketchy, while remaining quite detailed. I think this adds to ... the story considerably, almost speaking to state of the title character’s minds. This being said, I am not familiar with Jiro Matsumoto’s work, and as such don’t know if this is intentional or a fluke. I was able to see the emotions on every character’s face quite plainly, though, from the variety of annoyances that cross Velveteen to the sheer emptiness of Mandala’s head, everything is quite clear.

The book itself does not know what it wants to be. It jumps from a cute black comedy focusing on the relationship between two mentally disturbed girls to disgusting rape/scat porn with the change of a chapter. This is interesting when handled well, but this was not handled well. Everything seems to come together in the end, but is too scattered in the beginning for that to really matter. I believe that Matsumoto had a concept in mind and just did not know where to start or how to get his points across.

Velveteen & Mandala is not nearly everything it could be. I was thoroughly intrigued by the world the characters lived in, but I feel as though it required a considerably larger amount of thought and story before it would have been able to reach its full potential.

For more of my reviews, go to tuesdaysdusk.tumblr.com/tagged/review

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.

This story got me wrapped around its dirty little fingers. I don't know how and why, but as I continue to read each part... I feel as if I'm being dragged somewhere darker and surreal. I couldn't get out. I haven't finished reading the story yet, but it made me write my comment here. It also made me challenge my imagination and way of thinking. (It's as if I'm in a different dimension once I read every page. I feel like I'm inside my dream again.) As for the characters in the story, I love how they introduced themselves gradually. They sure have a life ... on their own. I love it.

I know that some of the readers won't like this as much as I do. Well, that's okay. :)

*Disclaimer*
Just personal scratch.
Advised, possible spoilers.
Opinion & Informal

Art: 6/10 It had its moments. The two page spreads were decent but few and far between for the surreal vibe this manga was trying to go for. The character designs were... okay though very rough at times. The art too could get very rough and unappealing at times.

Panel Progression: 4/10 A mess. Jiro, the author, didn't seem like he knew what he wanted to do with the story or narrative. The panel progression left a lot of questions and just ended up making a lot of things more confusing that they should have been. The panel progression ... and structure never really added substance or information to the story and only really detracted from it. The panel progression would often leave me double-taking on what just happened or if there was something I missed or was supposed to infer.

Characters: 4/10 The character development was abysmal. The characters weren't memorable or appealing in any sort of way and Jiro, the author, did nothing to bring out any sympathy, pity or any emotions in particular for any of the characters. I don't feel like this manga did a very good job in connecting any of the characters to the reader, me, emotionally and it was often the case where I felt disgusted, annoyed or bored with characters. Mandara was annoying. Becchin was annoying and uninteresting and the Caretaker was annoying and stupid.

Plot: 4/10 Jiro probably had something like a story or concept in mind but didn't have any idea as to how he would convey it. It really feels like had had no idea what kind of direction he wanted to take this story in; constantly bouncing around between a decent emotionally thoughtful relationship between two scarred girls setup, a social commentary on war, conflict and the real struggles two adolescent girls would face, to some out-of-left-field scat/vomit/rape fetish book.

Development: 4/10 The story was everywhere. Character relationships weren't properly setup or built. Plot development flip-flopped around and genres of this work often changed. Stupid plot points were introduced and decent ones were dropped or led in odd directions.

Conclusion: 4/10 What conclusion?

Overall: 4/10 Bleh. Honestly feels like a scat/vomit/rape fetish book under the guise of a surreal and artsy manga.

This one is wierd to say the least.

Story: 4; honestly... I have mixed opinions about the story. The concept seems cool but it doesn't explain itself very well and they do a 360 turn around at the end. Do not read this before going to bed.

Art: 5; to be honest it looks like a rough sketch. It's a cool stylistic choice and I feel like it fits the setting, but after a while it starts to hurt your eyes.

Charicters: 5; besides the main girl they don't go in to it charicters. Or at least they don't go in to them well. Besides most ... charicters phisical appreciate there is nothing really to remember them by.

Enjoyment: 2; this is the kind of manga you will find at a used bookstore for 3 dollars. (Wich is how I got it and now I know why) you read it once, want to forget it but can't and get it out of your life by selling it. There is unnecessary vilence and sex. I know you aren't supposed to feel comfortable while reading this but it more gross then uncomfortable.

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 .