Feb 16, 2023
I know this is bad readership, but if I hadn’t been so taken by the beautiful, painterly cover art for this manga, I might never have read it; that would have been my loss. The irony is that Waka Hirako’s artstyle in this manga is quite different from the cover, and her cartoonish art is also why I love this manga.
“My Broken Mariko” is a dark but straightforward story with a tone and pacing that turns comedic with surprising frequency. It features rather flat characters who are nonetheless given satisfactory depth and lifelikeness through Waka sensei’s incredible art. The premise is simple and the story
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is brief: Tomoyo Shiino mourns her friend Mariko’s suicide through a self-endangering adventure and (SPOILER ALERT /JOKE) learns something about herself and about grief. But Waka sensei’s art—with its exagerated facial expressions and explosive poses—elevates the story’s tone, evoking the absurdity of human desperation in the face of death and the unknown. The horrors of domestic violence, rape, and suicide are not downplayed, but neither are they mobilized solely to manipulate the reader into sympathy. This manga tugged at my heartstrings, but not in the cheap ways one might expect. Instead of trying to develop its characters by depicting their trauma (as it may well be accused of doing), it treats trauma as an unfortunate but constant part of life, and uses its consistently over-the-top art to depict how human lives proceed in response to it.
I’ve glanced at other reviews and noticed the relatively low score at the time of posting this, so I feel that this manga must be widely misunderstood. I’m not here to argue, but since I do recommend this work, I will say that I don’t believe it romanticizes or trivializes suicide, rape, or abuse. If you want a long complex story about that stuff, read Oyasumi Punpun*. My Broken Mariko is more comparable in many ways to Tatsuki Fujimoto’s works (particularly Chainsaw Man and Look Back): It features simple characters with surprising moments of depth, extreme poses, comedically paced dialogue despite its serious and heavy overtones.
TLDR; GOOD WRITING, GREAT ART, NOT TO BE JUDGED BY ITS COVER OR SYNOPSIS.
*For the record, I love Inio Asano and I think he’s capable of the things I praise Fujimoto sensei and Waka sensei for here.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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