Chi no Wadachi
I've had this manga on my radar since.. 2019 or so. It's really exactly the type of stuff I'm into, but as I stated so many times before (I'm a broken record I'm sorry) I can't deal with reading unfinished manga because I easily start forgetting about the work, postponing reading on time and then just completely abandoning it all together. Anyway I am SO GLAD I could read this in one sitting because it works perfectly as a whole, and I completely understand people saying the manga was boring or dragging things out since they were reading it as it was coming out. Anything important for the plot will be spoiled.
I honestly think this manga was perfect. I don't really say this often, although I'm saying this by putting some other stuff the author did to the side (like his more AGP tier stuff like Inside Mari, or Aku no Hana which was too teen edge for me). I didn't think I'd enjoy this manga to such a high degree but ughhh it was so good, start to finish. As I'm writing this review I'm checking out what others had to say about the manga, and it seems like many people didn't like the last third, which I'll get to in the end. But FIRST let me get all of my sperging out of the system.
Chi no Wadachi (also known as Blood on the Tracks, frankly both names are equally popular - I usually just title my review with whatever is more prevalent (subjective)) is a psychological, suspense, almost horror* manga that started coming out in 2017. It's actually quite popular in any circle that likes to discuss seinen manga and I've seen it get talked about so, so much over the years while I stood in my little corner. Still since I avoided all possible discussions on it I hope I'll say something that hasn't been said a million times before lmfao.
The storyline is frankly something that doesn't get explored in this way (usually this theme is often reserved for porn innit), where we have a young boy with a mother that's a tad too close to him. A narc boy mom engaging in emotional incest, treating her child as an extension of herself. The suspense in the first third of the story is exhilarating, the second third gets more chaotic, confusing and suffocating while the last third significantly mellows out and ends with a satisfying catharsis. The pace and theme changes were imo very perfectly coinciding with the age and mental state of the main character, and if the work was completely suspense packed start to finish I don't think it would have hit as hard, nor would it have impressed me this much.
The mother, Seiko, is an incredibly written character, and and incredibly written FEMALE character (RARE ALERT RARE ALERT). It's pretty rare to see insanity of this kind on display in this way. From when we first encounter her, her presence is overbearing, all enveloping and suffocating. She humiliates the main character, Seiichi, in a gentle and hardly noticeable way. She doesn't have to vocalize anything, yet she still gets exactly what she wants from him. At first she is incredibly scary because of the empty smile we see, and the lack of knowledge we get as readers. We don't know what she's capable of, and we don't know exactly how calculating and evil she is. This is why I'd say the first third functions incredibly well as pure horror and suspense.
My descriptions of the mom, son and dad in the hidden paragraphs. Heavy spoilers in here.
After she pushes Shigeru off the cliff, her facade slowly starts to wear off. She isn't cold and calculating, she's self destructive. She keeps saying she wants one thing, but does another. She still keeps her grip on Seiichi and successfully manipulates him but she seems to be more trapped than anyone else. She has successfully trapped herself by having a child she didn't seem to want, and is now using that child to soothe her sorrows in life. Soon enough we find out she had tried to kill Seiichi in the past but has failed.
Through the second third which I described as chaotic and confusing we get to see how her and Seiichi deal with getting processed for the crimes they both committed. Seiko gets what she wants and manages to escape getting sentenced, while her son gets the short end of the stick and gets imprisoned. In this part we start to focus more on Seiichi's perception of his mother, him coming to terms with his mother being abusive, then struggling to see himself as his own person and separating himself from his mother. We see him going back and forth and we realize he's going to end up just as messed up as his mother.
In the final part, after the timeskip we finally get to see why Seiko is the way she is. She has lived her life chronically detached from herself and others, never realizing herself as a person. Her family abused and neglected her in favor of her younger sickly sister. She wanted to be an actress, but instead she gets married to a man that takes her out of Tokyo and she becomes a wife. As Ichirou's (the dad) wife she gets humiliated by his sister, who seemingly sees right through her detachment. She once again finds herself in an environment where she is neglected. She gets pressured into having a child and starts hoping the child would cure her from this lack of attachment to anything, but it doesn't. She's extremely unhappy and she feels like her life never got a chance to start. Through multiple occurrences in the story we get to hear this sentence "now my life could finally begin". Even though she was so excited to quit being a mother after Seiichi got imprisoned, she never actually "did" anything with her life outside of her odd jobs. We see that sadly, her life never really "began", and it ends with her and Seiichi reconciling on neutral terms, and her dying next to him as a weak old woman that has given up.
I think Seiko's backstory is phenomenal. It's not bombastic, and it doesn't justify her actions, but it perfectly explains her as a person. I think it's just such a "this is life" situation that you can't even blame one particular person. She's stifled by her parents, but at the same time their indifference was the thing that gave her freedom in trying to become an actress. She's stifled by conventions of a traditional society, by deciding to follow her husband and give up on her dream - as he had to give up on his dream and follow in his fathers footsteps by inheriting his family business. She's stifled once again by family, society, whatever you want to call it, and gets pressured into being a mother which ends up causing her the most grief of all. Her personality is such that she could never fully realize herself, and she ends up stifling herself in the end. She wants to use a tragedy, a "happening" and an "event" as a way out instead of getting out on her own terms, even if it ends in incredible humiliation. Her child is used as a mobile extension of her immobile self to syphon all of her suffering and do something terrible to act as a catalyst for her to break free. Instead of just walking away and leaving she wants some great tragedy to make her leave, because most of all, she's stifled by herself.
It's so stupid and irrational in a way that makes it perfectly realistic lmfao. And I don't mean it's just Seiko that's stupid and irrational, it's everything around her too. Life is so ridiculous, shame and embarrassment can feel all encompassing for some people that desire to break the mold but don't have the guts to do it. It's crazy.
Her husband Ichiro on the other hand, doesn't get much attention in the story at all. His function is to kind of be useless and supportive to such a small degree that he can barely be considered helpful in any way. I think whatever Seiko wanted in a husband, she couldn't get with Ichiro, and a part of that probably transferred to her son. I think his impotence also might come from the fact that he wasn't satisfied with his life. We don't get to see a vulnerable side of him compared to Seiko, but he wanted to be a poet, yet we never saw anything more from him than an "overworked salaryman". He's miserable in his own right, and he resigned from being a proper parent in his own way. Both him and Seiko were dealing with a bad case of "I don't want to be a parent" in different ways. However, after Seiko decided she wouldn't be a mother anymore (after Seiichi got sentenced), Ichiro stepped up, at least a bit. He helped Seiichi throughout high school, and he even wanted him to work in his accounting firm, although Seiichi ended up declining. He even paid off a massive debt to his own sister that came from Seiichi killing his own cousin (how and in which way this debt had occurred we're not really familiar with in the story, suing? perhaps? unfamiliar with japanese law lmao).
Lastly, Seiichi. I think I mostly covered his struggles through my earlier text, but I wanted to end on a positive note. He ended up breaking free and kind of ending the cycle. I think it's great that he ended up declining his fathers offer to come work for him, successfully avoiding his fathers fate. He was, probably, too broken to have a partner and reproduce so he never had a child, successfully avoiding his mothers fate. After both of his parents died, he was set free in a way, and has resigned to living a quiet life reading books. Frankly, I think the ending is nice. It's sad in the way that he's going to be lonely and it's sad that that's the fate that awaits someone who got severely damaged by people he should have trusted the most, but it's happy in the way that he managed to break the cycle of abuse people so often perpetuate. Sometimes, you just shouldn't have children!
Now to talk about more meta stuff regarding the manga. Earlier I called this an almost horror, because thing is - the first part is incredibly scary and creepy, the facial expressions will often get into straight up Junji Ito territory, and not to mention the pure SUSPENSE, but above all this is a psychological manga. If you're truly into it solely for the horror aspect, you're going to be disappointed by basically the whole second half so I wouldn't recommend it. Unless you're the type to find the crushing, cold, hard reality of a sad life horror, like me, in which case GO FOR IT. I think this is why so many people rated it low and had weirdly negative opinions about, everyone says the second half is boring, disappointing... but like... it's actually quite realistic and in a good way? I loved the fact that it's so confined within the realms of possibility IRL, besides the hallucination parts of course, but even that works. What I mean by that is, no crime goes unpunished, Seiichi doesn't miraculously run away with his GF he had his first sexual experience with, there's no melodrama and stupid misunderstandings, it's just so simple and to the point in regards to like what would usually happen to real people in these situations. I think your average reader expected something more bombastic, some spooky crazy twist or something. But, and this is also something I've seen echoed, this seems to be an incredibly personal work for the author, so it makes sense it's so grounded (and the ending could be pure copium because the mangaka did end up having kids irl, much to think about).
Anyway, it's been a long time since I read a manga that I enjoyed so much. Seiko and Seiichi's relationship was done incredibly well, I think the first parts horror aspect perfectly captures this unsettling feeling that comes from mundane, seemingly loving and caring motherly actions. The first third crafted a perfect creepy boymom who kills her sons ego, and then later humanized her and gave us more context which made her character so so perfect. I'm actually very impressed the relationship never seemed to delve too much into physical incest and kept it at a purely mother + baby level, it was such a good move. I also really loved the last third with how mellow it got. I know real life examples of children abused by their parents just quietly reconciling in their older age, simply because they can't care anymore. It's not like they completely forgave their parents, but their heart hardens and they become indifferent. Maybe they even lost the power of strong resentment when seeing a previously imposing figure as weak and powerless. It's a complex feeling that often doesn't get conveyed well in media because media tends to focus on the fantasy, on our venting, our burning hatred and just revenge.
