A Lollypop or A Bullet

A Lollypop or A Bullet is a short psychological manga about two middle school girls. The mc, Nagisa, wants to join the military right after middle school because her life kind of sucks. Her dad died, her elder brother is a shut-in and her mom has to work enough to support all three of them. She wants to help her mother, and support her brother, but she is definitely miserable. The mysterious transfer student, Mokuzu, who happens to be the daughter of an ex-famous musician is a girl that loves telling outrageous lies in order to hide the abuse she suffers under the hands of her father.

Mokuzu really wants to be Nagisa's friend, but Nagisa finds her annoying. Slowly she warms up to her because of her "candy bullets" as Nagisa calls them, aka desparate attention-seeking and cries for help.

The ending is tragic and sad and a kind of "we shouldn't have ignored the signs" type of ending. I think the manga was way too short for me to develop any connection to the characters. I usually like short psychological manga but this one was a miss for me. All of the characters kind of annoyed me, and I don't think that was really the intention. The MC, with her bullet monologues (maybe it was the translation, but it sounded like the author was trying to come across as deep and kind of missing the mark with the whole bullets analogy), the teacher who didn't get developed enough so his superman talk came out of nowhere, the mother who let Nagisa hang out with Mokuzu despite knowing her father was abusing her and not doing anything about it (?), the waste of space brother who just lets his sister run away from home. The plot was predictable. A couple extra chapters could have improved this I think.

One good thing about this show is the portrayal of someone in an extremely abusive situation. Nobody wants to help them, despite their frequent and severe cries for help. Really tragic but also quite common.