17-sai.

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I personally feel that this manga gets a lot of hate from people who feel like it's not adapting Junko Furuta's case the right way and to that I ask. What is the right way? Is it to completly tear away all form of hope and just paint bleakness at every corner? Cause to that I would argue that the manga does so and that it truly does capture the self destructive behavior of the criminals.

People are allow to find this as a subpar read or even a very inneffective tribute but it is none the less a tribute that I don't believe is ... worthless or void of any sentement to the real case.

The overall story presents a really bleak but overall hopeful outlook that people should never give up on trying to right wrongs and find justice even when justice might not be able to be served to the fullest.

And as the story itself, I find it to be a rather good crime thriller with lots of moments that drag morality to the peak of between dark and grey and tests your will to stomach characters who will disapoint and struggle thoughtout with not a ton of hope in sight.

Overall I would say give this story a read and if you find yourself mad then that is fine but I would reccomend to try and vent your anger to the true criminals the story is based on then the author for their attempts to try and show Junko as a very brave individual who deserves to be seen more as a tragic hero who fought hard and deserved better.

17-sai is based a true story that happened in Japan decades ago. However, when the reality was extremely shocking and violent, this manga only keeps the beginning, meaning the kidnapping of a 17-year old girl.

To quickly summarize the real life event : a group of thugs/delinquents kidnapped a high school girl after her part-time job, brought her to one of the guy's house, raped her, tortured her and eventually murdered her. In this fictionnal story, only the kidnapping & raping elements are kept. To clarifiy things up : no, there is not too much sexual violence (scenes are extremely censored) or physical violence (some characters ... get beaten up and one eventually finds death).

Here comes my first negative point : I expected a really dark story, giving me some chills making me afraid of human nature. 17-sai did not, or at least, I could read it without having many emotions. To give another example : Metamorphosis/Henshin/Emergence (same manga, different titles) also tells a very hard story, but it gave some real feelings / emotions. For some people, they cry and lie down in their bed, for some other, they unzipped their pants & start fapping or for readers like me, they stop their chapters with a very huge anger and only wish to beat the culprits up.

Sadly, I only felt a bit like "I'd like to do this stuff to these f$cking scumb$gs". It didn't break me or shock me, especially because the number of rape scenes was very low compared to the synopsis. This is obviously a very grave story and I wish it never happens to anyone in our world. If I were to use keywords, hum, disgusting, horrible, terrible should be the ones coming in first, naturally.

What I think was good about this manga, is that it gave a fictional story which could happen in real life. It clearly shows how human nature can variegate : from a regular high school boy looking for some adventure, to a disgusting person who cannot even look himself in a mirror. But eventually, what's terrible, is that none of the culprits in the story (it is not shown but supposed) have any regrets for what they have done. Evilness level is really high, scary on some points.

But 17-sai never truly scared me, as I could not be emotionally involved in the story (it has nothing to do with the fact the victim is a female while I'm a male). The author - in my opinion - fails to attract by force his reader, you only stay as a spectator of a story, instead of breaking the fictional wall and entering the story at 100%.

So my personal recommandation : if you are too sensitive, avoid this manga, it will only give you nightmare. If you are curious, it should be a "decent" introduction to a dark manga with rape thematic.

At first, I was surprised that there were no negative reviews for this on MAL, considering the nature of the manga. After some thinking, my surprise waned. I mean, most people would look at the case this is inspired by and immediately decide not to touch it; Those who don't are the kind of people who would likely enjoy this by comparison (I do not mean this to slant fans of this, I merely mean that they would be more accepting of upsetting subject matter). And those who find the concept questionable (such as me) would likely assume that the reasons this work fails speak ... for themselves. Honestly, that may be the most offensive part of this manga; It's just not really interesting. Would anyone actually care about this if it was removed from the tragic death of Junko Furuta? Maybe, but I assume that far less people would.

But let's start from the top. '17 Years' is a manga inspired by the murder of Junko Furuta, which occurred about 15 years before this manga was created. If you are not familiar with this event, I would suggest reading about it first, although keep in mind that it was an extremely evil murder and the details are upsetting on every level. Even at its best, such a concept for a manga is dubious. There are examples of stories like this working, but '17 Years' doesn't, and even if it did, I would still question why such a manga needed to be made in the first place. Many people have claimed that the manga excuses the actions of the protagonist (and by extension the actual killers), but to give the manga credit this does not seem to be the intent. However, it is still a very strange decision to take an infamous murder case and focus far more on one of the criminals than the actual victim, especially in such a sympathetic way. The lack of characterization for Sachiko (Who is analogous to Junko) is by far the biggest flaw of this manga (along with how boring it is). We don't see her life before she's kidnapped, and the majority of her panel time is spent being tortured. She is essentially a plot device. This would be bad in any manga, but considering the context this is honestly quite awful.

The ending is by far the most confusing element of this manga. Sachiko doesn't die, she is rescued. ...Why? So she has a happy ending? If the idea was to make a story with a happy ending, why even base it on this case? Was it so people would be more likely to sympathize with the protagonist, knowing that his actions did not lead to murder? What was the point? Was there a point? Why did this manga need to be written? I assume it was to show how a group of boys could be led to do such things, but the message was "Most of this evil murder was spearheaded by one particularly bad guy". Ok, that *could* be a fine story, but is that actually what happened in this case? Well, this certainly wasn't an accurate depiction of events on any level. I really can't think of a reason why this manga needed to exist. It's not good independent of its context, and it's even worse attached to it. At the end of the day it feels cheap. I do not recommend this manga. If you want a non-fiction narrative about delinquent kids' struggles to be better, read 'Bakuon Rettou'.