DESCRIPTION

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

• 

  ladyfreyja

  90/100
  On Innocence's horror.

  

  Saint Rosalind (聖ロザリンド) is a suspense/horror shōjo manga by Masako Watanabe, published in 1973 inside the magazine Shōjo Friend. It is nowadays a classic of the genre.

  The manga is about a cute and innocent little girl called Rosalind, who murders dozens of people in quite gruesome ways. And it is glorious.

  The manga was republished numerous times: for this review I base myself on the 2017 edition, which contains a "chapter 0" specifically written for the edition, 44 years after the original edition.

  Context

  ---

  At the time of writing Saint Rosalind, Watanabe was an experimented author, since she started her career in 1949 and is among the pioneers of horror manga with Aoi Kitsune Honō (青いきつね火) in 1967.

  In the 1960s decade and a little after, it wasn't uncommon for shōjo manga to be based on movies. It is the case of Saint Rosalind, which is clearly inspired by The Bad Seed, a psychological-horror novel written in 1954 by William March, which in turns is adapted into a Broadway play the same year, then the play is itself adapted into an Hollywood movie in 1956 by Mervyn LeRoy.
  I haven't read the novel, but I watched the movie, and if the movie and the manga are vastly different works, they share striking similarities on major plot-points and little details.

  _Rhoda, from_ The Bad Seed.

  Now it isn't the first time that The Bad Seed inspired a manga, for example Inōe Satoshi wrote Akuma no Otoshigo (悪魔の落とし子) in 1958, and the concept of murderous children was explored in earlier works, like Kawaisō na Mama (かわいそうなママ) by Moto Hagio in 1971.

  Akuma no Otoshigo.

  Story

  ---

  Saint Rosalind doesn't have much of a plot, you simply follow the main character, Rosalind, murdering people after people. But the manga isn't episodic either as the events are directly connected to each other.

  The manga is divided into 17 chapters of approximately 20 pages. Most chapters follow a similar construction and work as would do a scene in a play with one chapter equal a place and a set of characters. This way is very similar to The Bad Seed's movie, as it was adapted from the Broadway play.

  Thus in each chapter Rosalind enters an new place (in Greece, England and France), meets new characters, get a reason to kill a character or more, then kill them. There is of course some exceptions to this schema, notably when you follow Rosalind's entourage or the police trying to catch the devilish child, and of course the final chapter concludes the story and thus follows a different schema.

  _Hello, I am Rosalind._

  As for the characters the only notable one is Rosalind herself. There is over 30 characters, but most of them are background characters or don't survive long. The only recurring characters worth mentioning are the direct entourage of Rosalind: Alfred the butler, Hathaway the father, and Mycenae the mother, but they stay quite simple. In the end Rosalind is the only complex character, she was made as an enigma, she is the "monster" after all, and the goal is to understand the monster. The other characters don't need to be really developed.

  To focus on Rosalind, she is a 8 years old girl who "looks like an angel" but "is the child of devil".
  My first reaction about her was "she is probably a sociopath, she doesn't feel any compassion nor empathy". But she isn't, as she genuinely cry when people around her are suffering (albeit, never for very long). But nonetheless something is wrong with her, as she understand what death is but still kill people, some times with the goal to help them!

  _Rosalind being sad for Liza._

  From my understanding, in Rosalind's eyes, going into paradise is a good thing, thus dying isn't bad.
  The first few murders are driven by greed: Rosalind wants an item in possession of someone else. So Rosalind manage to get them make a promise about giving her the item after their death, then she kill them. As they kept their promise, they are able to enter paradise. At least I think that's the reasoning behind those first murders, since she is pretty adamant about "liars aren't able to go to heaven" during all the story.

  After few murders her reasons for killing start to vary: for vengeance, by accident or worse: to help people!
  This is the disturbing thing with the murders, they are never done out of malevolence. And this is the real difference with The Bad Seed, where the girl is mean, cruel and doesn't feel any empathy but put a smiling face before her family members. Meanwhile Rosalind is innocent and nice, she is just amoral: the best example of this is probably when a girl get into an accident and is losing a lot of blood. Rosalind is both fascinated and amused by all this blood, but is also willing to help saving the girl (and as you can guess, will only makes the situation worse :p).

  _"Look, your daughter's ring, pretty isn't it ? … But what's wrong?"_ _Is she simply naive or cruel?._

  But I am writing all of this based on assumptions: shōjo manga are well-known for their internal monologues where you have access to the mind of the protagonist. Internal monologues are usually quite central in horror shōjo manga.
  In Saint Rosalind however you don't have access to Rosalind's internal monologues, you can't really know what she is thinking, you can only guess. But Rosalind speaks out loud to herself. Maybe we don't need to have access to her internal monologues, because she seems to say everything that comes to her mind without any filter. This trait can only reinforce the impression of innocence that she is giving.

  Art

  ---

  Before entering into details of the art, I have to say that the "chapter 0" at the beginning of the book was drawn 44 years after the rest of the manga, and it shows. If Watanabe managed to keep the flow of the panels coherent between the bonus chapter and the rest, I can't say the same about the character designs, which changed quite a lot, with a strong influence of her redikomi style that she nowadays use: the face structure is more sharp, the eyes are more light, the hairs are less fluffy.

  _From the chapter 0._

  Now onto the original manga, Watanabe is at the prime of her shōjo style: she opens her panels and use the whole set of the visual techniques developed during the 1960s decade by shōjo mangaka, with extensive decorations and layered paneling, some side artworks and three-row overlay style pictures.

  _My favorite panels sequence._

  Overall the author gives a Gothic style to her manga: the story take place in European countries, the side artworks are full of flowers and blood and you find here and there Christian and angelic symbols. In the visual atmosphere everything is done to underline the ambiguity between Rosalind the angel and Rosalind the devil, between good and bad.

  _Hathaway watching the church tower._

  Rosalind is most of the time portrayed with either a great smile on her face, or in the other hand she shows sadness or is crying. She is really cute and innocent looking, pure and naive. But there is few panels, very few of them, which suggest that Rosalind may not be an angel.

  First are the blank eyes. Rosalind makes them in two situations: when she feels a particularly strong emotion, usually sadness or anger, but they are not the ones that are interesting here. It is in the second situation, a very ominous one. I'm under the impression that Watanabe drew them not for showing a particular emotion, but rather to show that Rosalind is a monster, that she is doing a pretty bad thing:

  

  In the same way, in two situations, where she is killing someone, Rosalind makes a pretty ecstatic expression, like she is enjoying herself:

  

  These faces are really making us doubt the fact that Rosalind is innocent and naive…

  Conclusion

  ---

  The Bad Seed, as implied by its name, features a character that is inherently evil, thus it choose to focus on the mother character, who is the protagonist, and asks the question "what would you do if your cute child is in fact a serial killer?". The movie, unlike the novel and the play, don't let any doubt here, as the girl meet a divine punishment at the end of the story.

  Saint Rosalind takes the opposite route, and it is again implied by its name, "saint". You can't help but to ask yourself "is this child is an angel or a devil?". And the manga gives the answer at the end of the story, since it seems that Rosalind meets a form of redemption, unlike the girl from the movie who is punished by God, Rosalind enters into the grace of God.
  But still, what she is doing is far too horrible, and you can't help but to doubt: why did she meets redemption?

  Continue on AniList
• 

  Sardinyas

  80/100
  "Such an angelic girl... She was the Devil's child."

  Saint Rosalind is a Horror Shoujo. It takes place in a European setting with Christian symbolism which are thematically tied to the messages and philosophies in the narrative. All these factors are mixed to depict the Devil’s temptation - charming on the surface, harmful in the interior – represented in the duality between Shoujo's cuteness and Horror’s gruesomeness.

  As for its reading experience, it’s the type of story that can easily trick the reader. Most of the time I caught myself thinking “is this for real? Or am I also falling into the trap?”, because despite being only 17 chapters long, it brings you to theorize about the protagonist all the time and other external things as well, like the character-narrator and the conclusion the story must take.

  __SPOILER ZONE__ Rosalind killings can be divided in three groups which I’d like to refer as “selfish”, “selfless”, and “punitive”, which no matter the intention, all of them which result in the same product: death. By accompanying her throughout her journey, we are brought to reflect not only on Rosalind but also on all sorts of people – the best and the worse - who interact with her. At the end, we finally come to understand the character of “Rosalind the Devil’s Child”. In the selfish killings, Rosalind is driven by motivations such as greed, lust and envy. Rosalind firstly establishes a deal – mostly as a form of memento – which is an interesting part of her personality as the “Devil”, she usually takes something from someone when the people agree with her (there is one exception to that, though). After the promise is made, Rosalind then strikes which the sole intention of filling her chest with treasures (from objects to living beings). It is worth noting that all her selfish killings were done to people who were doing nothing wrong, but innocently fell into her charm and accepted her terms. That side of the story shows us how a little slip-up (indecisiveness, negligence, persuasion) might bring ruin to a person. The selfless killing is kind of the opposite, Rosalind does it as a form of “retribution” rather than gaining something (that’s shown in the lack of a material deal). Her intention is born from empathy and the goal is usually helping someone (curing or avenging people). Despite being the “good intended” murder, the selfless killing has an even worse effect since it involves other people and not only the one Rosalind wants to “help”. Those people are usually in a relationship issue with their families, and because of that they end up letting the “Devil” join their households to bring destruction. And the last kind, the “punitive”, is the one that happens when people supposedly lie to Rosalind and are killed for that. I see that aspect of Rosalind as the Devil’s desire to take the position of God, thus applying His judgment on his own. Of course, the Devil is not a fair judge so not all the supposed lies were in fact lies. The Devil perception of a lie is not just the opposite of truth, but a “lie” can also be a reality he refuses to accept, and that’s why this is a conflicting trait who leads to perdition. All these sides dwells between Rosalind’s devil and human natures and they are presented not by her thoughts, but by her actions, interactions and expressions. While she is described as a “Devil” and derivatives of that in the story, she’s attached to some characters such as her mother, her butler and her father; to the point of crying for them, getting happy around them and so on while still being somewhat sociopath towards other humans in general. I was really troubled about her being a Devil depiction while reading it. I mean, the Devil is the father of lies while Rosalind hates lies; the Devil always acts for his own while Rosalind also acts for others, despite having her selfish drives as well; and the most important point, the Devil is not redeemable. By the end of the story, I came to conclusion that she is not the Devil itself but is certainly a “Devil’s child” - a byproduct of the Devil, but not totally compatible with him – as the author herself described her as a “young girl who can’t tell right from wrong”. Rosalind has emphasized throughout the story that most of her cruel killing methods were learned from other places, in other words, she absorbs “evilness” from the world and reproduces it without distinction of good or evil. It may end in a sad way, but I like that she achieved redemption by the end (since she is not the Devil, but someone under his influence). Some may say it was a “Deus Ex-Machine" but this is the type of person that no matter how much you try, only a “divine intervention” can change their petrified heart, and that’s what happened. In the end, she is just an innocent young girl who absorbed all kinds of humanity bad traits until she became a “Devil’s child”.
  Continue on AniList

SIMILAR MANGAS YOU MAY LIKE

• MANGA

  HorrorSenrei
• ONE SHOT

  DramaKawaisou na Mama
• MANGA

  HorrorBlack Angel Sincera