紅い霧の中から

AKAI KIRI NO NAKA KARA

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
5
RELEASE
July 15, 2022
CHAPTERS
25

DESCRIPTION

England at the end of the nineteenth century. A string of gruesome incidents all lead back to a single boy who was born into a world where chaos, order, wealth, and poverty are all deeply intertwined.

(Source: Anime News Network)

CAST

Ruwanda Bailey
Ivan
Macaro
Midwinter
May Glickman
Miranda
Kevin Glickman
Will

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

SpikeWasAlreadyTaken
12/100
Mom, is it my turn to be edgy yet? A showcase of wasted potential with too much edge and far too many plot threads
Spoiler warning: though they should be covered by spoiler bars, I'll be discussing the entire series, plot twists included.
Trigger warnings: implications of rape, prostitution, and if the "Red Fog" in the title and stereotypical slasher movie splattered red on the title didn't give it away, murder and gore. Lots of it. I sincerely hope that anyone who cares to read this review would have an idea of that already, but if you didn't, well, yay, blood.

From the Red Fog is the story of Rwanda, a boy being raised in the basement of his mass-murdering mother. When their home is attacked, Rwanda runs away, taking two things burning in his heart: an obsessive urge to prove his murdering skills to mother dearest bordering on an Oedipus complex, and (narrator voice) a hole that can only be filled... with murder. Bwahahaha. What follows is, at least in theory, an examination of Rwanda growing as a person while satisfying his murderous desires and finding his identity despite being a criminal.

Examination of what makes criminals tick is one of the most widely explored and well-received concepts in literature. Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" and Mario Puzo's "The Godfather" are some of the best selling novels of all time, while Dostoevsy's "Crime and Punishment" is one of the most highly regarded. In manga, series such as Gamon Sakurai's "Ajin" or Ohba and Obata's "Death Note" are exceedingly popular and beloved. Combine this fundamental idea with edgelord Oliver Twist and you've got yourself a great manga, right?
Unfortunately, no. Rwanda is nowhere near as interesting a character as it takes to make such a series work, and even if the manga didn't dedicate significant time to making him as sick and twisted and oh, baby, look how EDGY I am as possible, the sheer amount it tries to weave into a fairly short period just leads to a convoluted mess. Even if the manga had been more than 5 volumes, it would have been a feat to follow even half of its plot threads to a satisfactory conclusion- and every volume just keeps throwing in new ones.

First off, the good parts. From the Red Fog has great art, even though it dropped a bit in quality towards the end of its serialization. The characters are distinct without having too weird of designs, the scenery feels natural, and the action is choreographed exceedingly well. The depiction of a sort of 1800s gothic England is by far the best part of the manga, and the atmosphere of each scene is surprisingly strong. The characters that are less edgy, such as Ivan, are also decent, with Ivan in particular having dialogue that fits the whole ruffian-boy character to a tee. In short, the author does have talent, but the pursuit of that deep, edgy teen boy vibe and profound meaning combined with way too many plot threads leaves all of the good by the wayside. I'd like to see them try some sort of more typical battle shonen or perhaps a sports series, something that showcases those pluses, but unfortunately From the Red Fog is not it.

The first volume is basically a mediocre slasher film crossed with Oliver Twist. A potentially fun premise in theory, but in practice it's just watching Rwanda slaughter his way through an orphanage and grin creepily while saying stuff like "dead bodies are my friends!" and talking about the murdering filling the hole in his heart and making him feel happy and alive and all those other canned lines you get from bad slasher films. There are constant scenes of him thinking about how much he wants to kill people just cause, some of which are almost played as humor, in case you don't understand how SICK AND TWISTED HE IS, BECAUSE THAT'S RIGHT, HE'S SICK AND TWISTED. GET IT? GET IT? The mangaka doesn't seem to trust the readers to figure out what kinda person Rwanda is at any given moment, and so it's spelled out, repeatedly. Also, I'm pretty sure that within a couple chapters there're implications of sexual assault that just kinda get ignored until a random scene in the final few chapters where Rwanda thinks back to it.
In short, the beginning is gross, badly done, and sets the stage for the fact that nothing Rwanda does is deep or meaningful. It's also really dumb to me that conveniently, nobody decides to go looking for missing children or ever look round the orphanage property, or do basically anything that would prevent a bunch of children from being murdered. I guess that sort of brainless slasher is for some people, but I personally expect that if a series is edgy and gory it makes the main character at least somewhat interesting or able to be sympathized with. Needless to say, From the Red Fog doesn't.

Then the next few volumes just kind of toss plot threads on top of each other while doing absolutely nothing to fix the problems it has at the start. Rwanda joins the band of pickpockets from Oliver Twist if they were assassins for hire and had a psychopath as their director, sees a happy family, tries to murder the child but gets stopped by the father, who lets Rwanda off for reasons unbeknownst to man, and spends lost of time ruminating on how he wants to kill more but oh no, he can't carelessly commit mass murder. I guess it's supposed to be developing Rwanda as something more than an edgy psycho, but it just doesn't. If anything, he becomes less likable, which is a feat in and of itself. Fast forward a bit, to when I assume the author learned they were getting cancelled, and despite that there could've been a relatively easy conclusion by having Rwanda die, slaughter his way out of the organization, or come to any sort of self-aware conclusion, there's a bunch of info dumped into the story at once instead. Whatever "bombshells" the author wanted to drop later (organization psycho director being his dad, mom being alive, Rwanda being descended from an assassin family where little Rwanda-mom was just like him, yadda yadda) feel extremely contrived and crammed in. Despite the part where Ivan stumbles across the human experimentation hospital and the collapse of the organization running it, all the series says on the matter is that Ivan went back and rescued a girl from there. Okay, thanks for the complete lack of resolution on a major plot point.
Everything with Rwanda comes to a head in the way that offers him as little character growth as possible. Rather than any sort of realization with family or bonds that could've come from his mother telling him she loved him and Rwanda even admitting that it fills the hole in his heart and whatnot, Rwanda throws a slasher boy temper tantrum and then Dad/Midwinter/some dude in a garden has his backstory and death crammed into a couple chapters and Rwanda's mom being a former assassin who faked baby Rwanda's death and Rwanda's mom dying to save his life and Rwanda learns nothing from that and now Rwanda is lost and aimless and isn't happy murdering anymore! And then, and then...

Then the final volume, rather than being used to conclude the massive amount the author dumped into the story in any satisfactory way... timeskips to a time where Rwanda is no longer an edgy teen and the only explanation for why he changed is apparently that sex with a prostitute was just that good and filled the hole in his heart that well the whole time. Oh, and the story makes a point of said prostitute looking like a child for no apparent reason. Yuck. Oh, but don't you worry, Rwanda still thinks mass murder is better, so he starts tracking serial killers because that's obviously going to help him reawaken the euphoria of killing that apparently is achieved equally well by sleeping with a prostitute.

So, yeah. Overall, interesting concept with great art and a particularly good job of creating the setting and atmosphere. Bad job... pretty much everywhere else. There's way too much going on in the story, the characters are either bland murder targets or psychos, the plot twists are abrupt and don't add to the story, any look at the psychology of Rwanda the killer- which I'm fairly sure is what the author wanted to do, make it deep and meaningful and all- is an utter failure, and the ending doesn't do anything besides create more loose ends and hammer home how awful Rwanda's character arc is- and, well, that's all, folks. Bad slasher that's trying to be too much to salvage whatever crumbs of good stuff are left. That may be fun for some, but all I got out of it was the impression of a bloody mess.
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