DESCRIPTION

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

• 

  TheGruesomeGoblin

  25/100
  Clearly just wanted to do a yandere harem manga but instead made this awful and incoherent mess that's full of torture.

  Black Kanojo is a mistake manga by Masahiko Yoshihara. Straight up, there’s no way I’m going to be able to explain this thing without delving far, far into spoilers. So, before we get started, I’m just going to give you my overall thoughts on whether or not I would recommend it to various groups of people.

  Would I recommend this to horror fans? No.
  Would I recommend this to romance fans? No.
  Would I recommend this to mystery fans? No.
  Would I recommend this to people who love reading just absolute and utter trash? Maybe, but honestly I'm still kind of leaning towards no.

  

  This review is going to be a full spoilers review and also this manga is primarily about bullying and physical abuse, so if you're not into series like that, you should probably skedaddle as this manga is not for you.

  With the spoilers and content warning out of the way, let's get started.

  

  ---

  The Neverending Search for the Next Dumpster Fire

  Every single genre this manga is listed under, it fails at being. The closest it probably aligns with is horror but even then it's just... ugh. Look, I'm not going to deny that there's a lot of horror out there that is primarily just awful and terrible things either happening or being done to characters. But the thing is, even that specific type of horror has requirements for it to be enjoyable.

  

  If I'm viewing a torture porn horror, the main character that's getting all this punishment inflicted on them has to be just right. They have to be likable to the point where I actually want to root for them to get out of the situation they find themselves in... or, they should be the opposite. I should hate them as then I would want to see them suffer worse and thus for the horror to keep going. You should go for either one of these sides.

  Bland and generic male high school student character isn't going to cut it. I'm sorry, but it just isn't. I'm so goddamned tired of this character. Please... can I just have one notable character trait... hell, I'll settle for a just like a scar on his face. It'd even make sense given what the plot of this manga ends up being.

  

  Just give me something that differentiates him from all these other goddamned cut and paste male high schooler horror protagonist characters. I beg of you.

  AFTER I WROTE THE ENTIRE REVIEW NOTE: Not like it matters, but they actually ARE middle schoolers. I forgot, and then because so many of these sort of manga take place in high school, I just kind of automatically assumed this one wasn't any different. Oops.

  So if horror is in fact the primarily genre

  and since the whole point of the manga is watching the protagonist getting abused and tortured, it definitely is

  

  what about the other genres? I guess romance would be the secondary genre considering by the end of the manga he basically has his own harem he plays strip old maid with. It's actually just supposed to general punishment game but other girl rigged it to be specifically about stripping.

  Forget the fact that this comes almost immediately after protagonist almost getting beaten to death in a judo match with one of them until main crazy girl came in and said "hey stop it. I'm not to do violent shit anymore because protagonist asked me not to but still, you should stop." And then crazy judo girl who is obsessed with psycho girl got pissed and started to choke her to death. Then protagonist who is beaten to shit kind of shrugs his shoulders and goes "I guess self defense should be allowed so you don't get choked to death right now."

  *literally the next chapter:*

  What a fucking tonal nightmare this entire manga is.

  And I know every single person that the protagonist knows is basically out of their fucking mind but it's still crazy how immediately at ease he is with people who have almost previously murdered him or at the very least stabbed him or did some other form of physical harm to him.

  "Hey serial killer teacher who likes stabbing people in their eyes, I know me, you, and my psychotic girlfriend had a bit of a tussle earlier and she kind of buried your daughter alive and then you stabbed me to try and force her to tell us where she buried her but let's peacefully coexist with each other! You have a daughter and you yourself said you don't want to stab people in the eyes anymore so I'm not at any point going to go to the police and say HEY MY TEACHER LIKES STABBING PEOPLE IN THEIR EYES. AND HE'S ACTUALLY THE SERIAL KILLER ON THE LOOSE THAT A BUNCH OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT RECENTLY."

  

  But if we're being honest, there's barely any romance in this. Like our protagonist loves the nice side of the main girl, but the main girl really is only the main focus for the first volume. At that point, the manga starts going "look, here's another girl" and then that girl ends up also being fucking crazy and the situation becomes that protagonist getting tortured or fucked with by her but then the main girl pops up and goes "no, he's my prey, fuck off."

  

  And that's pretty much the rest of the manga. While this repetition of adding new psycho girls to the mix continues, the mystery of the manga is gradually unraveled. Although, that's maybe giving it too much credit. Because did I mention that our main male character also has amnesia?

  Because he does. And everybody knows amnesia = instantly good writing and storytelling. That's sarcasm by the way.

  

  If this manga was just a harem manga but all the girls were yandere, I wouldn't have a single problem with it. I mean, there's gore, there's fanservice, and the girls are pretty batshit crazy. Like there's a girl who rather than romantically pursuing the protagonist simply wants a replacement for her dog who has the same name as him so when he lies to her about his preferences, she chops her long hair off and dumps like a thing of bleach on her head???

  

  ...Why not just have her be blond from the start and skip her dousing her head in bleach? You could build her up as a love rival to psycho girl and then spring the twist that bleach girl is also fucking insane. Like protagonist acts horrified to her doing this, and then his mom is like "wow, I respect your moxie in how far you willing to go! Takes real guts to almost blind yourself with bleach!"

  Also, I'm... I've obviously never bleached my hair, but I doubt it'd just all be perfectly blond? Immediately? And also even if none of the bleach got into her eyes, she'd still probably have to go to the hospital? She dumped a whole bottle on her head...

  

  But anyways, since this isn't just a mindless fun yandere harem manga but actually has a story, my focus is drawn to that instead but it's incomprehensible and turns the main girl from likable batshit insane yandere girl to... awful.

  ---

  Black Kanojo

  

  So from the start of the manga we're led to believe that the main girl has an alternate personality. Or at the very least, there's two sides of her. A nice normal girl and just a complete batshit psycho. Except... that's just a lie.

  

  There's no alternate personality, there's no two different sides.

  In actuality, I guess that's just what the main character ended up interpreting it as. The primary reason why she sometimes acted nice to him was probably so that he would come back to her. Because his entire reason for loving her is that she's kind to him sometimes. And horribly cruel to him all other times.

  

  It's the classic carrot and the stick approach you see. You lure them in with the carrot and then you beat the absolute shit out of them with the stick.

  Or you rip out all of his baby teeth, save them, and then put them in cookies you give to him years later after his mind tried its absolute best to block out all the time he spent with you in kindergarten specifically when you were abusing him and ripping out his teeth for fun.

  

  Was that how the saying went? I'm pretty sure that's how it went. Anyways, this is fucking stupid. It's not like he knew her in kindergarten and she did all this fucked up shit to them and then years later his middle school class got a new transfer student and oh look, it's her again.

  No, they've been going to school and interacting with each other in the meantime.

  

  So he just got super extremely selective amnesia and forgot all the shit crazy girl did to him and others in kindergarten and nothing else. And crazy girl just bided her time until they were in middle school... why, exactly? It's not like her crazy personality just happened to resurface one day randomly like how the manga frames it in the beginning, so why did she bother waiting all this time to start doing all this crazy shit to him again?

  

  Like she even says in the final confrontation that like all the other crazy girls were like going to be a replacement of her for the protagonist but then her intervening between them was... because she wanted to kill the protagonist herself? What? But then rather than shooting the protagonist she just shoots herself? What? So was that supposed to be her being conflicted and choosing to try and kill herself rather than killing the protagonist because if that's what that was supposed to be getting conveyed there, I didn't get that at all.

  

  The moment the main girl's alternate personality is revealed to not even exist (or maybe it actually does and she was lying about lying? I have no fucking idea), that immediately caused me to think, "oh she's just straight up and irredeemably evil and awful person." The only reason the boy's been going through all of this shit is because he thought Miichan and Amamiya were two different sides. He liked the good side, the side that was kind to him and didn't regularly torment him. But that good side doesn't exist? Or rather the good side also likes hurting him???

  

  Even then when he learns the ultimate truth about their past, he doesn't turn on her. It's not like him turning against her would have fixed the manga, but I could have given it some props for being logical. Instead no, he still likes her even though everything he previously thought was a lie and she's IRREDEEMABLE.

  When they were in kindergarten, they were the outcasts of their class. The girl was an outcast because she was fucking weird and would go into the woods and kill snakes for fun.

  

  The boy was a loner. That's it.

  Weirdly, it really comes off like the manga's saying they're both the same level of social outcast?

  

  So, the boy gets bullied, and the bullies purposely fuck something up in the classroom and then blame it on the boy. The only one who backs him up is psycho girl so the teacher, either believing the bullies or turning a blind eye, throws the boy under the bus.

  At some point between burying him alive and ripping out his baby teeth, psycho girl gave the boy like request slips that would let him ask her to do something for him.

  

  So on this day that he was feeling really bad, he gave a request to the psycho girl that was along the lines of "I don't want to go to school anymore." The psycho girl, being crazy, interprets this as lock everyone in the building during a school play and set it on fire.

  

  Not a single person other than the victim girl saw this girl who set the building on fire literally dancing in front of the flames. Even though it was in the middle of the day, during a festival... and probably given that a building was on fire, it would probably gather attention from others outside. "Oh shit, that building is on fire! Wait, why is there a girl dancing in front of it in front of a burned girl who looks like she has a bunch of bones broken from getting thrown through one of the windows???"

  After this, the bullied boy was obviously upset because what he meant wasn't that he wanted everyone to die. So apparently not learning his lesson, he used his second request. His second request for being the psycho girl to "disappear." Of course, psycho girl interprets this as take a pair of scissors and try to drive it deep into her own chest. I assume that this is what finally pushed the boy into his VERY SELECTIVE AMNESIA.

  

  But like... how many people died? I would assume it would be quite a bunch? So amnesia or not, wouldn't the boy... eventually find out about it in some way that doesn't involve meeting the psycho girl's crazy side again years later? I mean, his dad even died in the fire. Wouldn't his mom eventually tell him the truth? Or did she think well, maybe him having amnesia is a good thing.

  "Your dad kind of died in a fire with a bunch of other kids from your class and your teacher and a bunch of the other parents. Some psycho just set the entire building on fire and locked them inside. You just happened to not be there during the school play so you survived! Oh, uh... uh I mean your father died in an accident!"

  

  And also who the fuck saved psycho girl when she tried to kill herself with scissors? I'm assuming that incident happened real soon after the fire, so did nobody question why a one of the few survivors of the kindergarten tried to kill herself like right after the kindergarten was burned to the ground?

  This manga's complete nonsense. "It had to be this way so another kid who survived the fire could come back and confront psycho girl and loner boy for their involvement in the fire!"

  

  But then victim girl who basically immediately becomes the best character in the manga because she's pretty much the only sane character there is (she's just revenge driven) just drops the ball entirely because she agrees to play a game of Russian roulette with psycho girl. And also for like a half second she offers to join protagonist's harem replace the crazy girl as long as he helps her kill her and also kisses him. Which was real weird and completely unnecessary... considering two minutes later she's holding a knife to his back and going "I GUESS YOU'RE AN ENEMY AFTER ALL!"

  

  The whole manga has shown that agreeing to humor the psycho girl and play her "games" is a terrible fucking idea and as expected, victim girl just gets fucking gunned down by crazy girl.

  I felt bad for victim girl but the moment she gave psycho girl the revolver, I knew she was toast.

  

  And even though psycho girl shoots herself afterward... the ending of the manga is the protagonist reaffirming his love for psycho girl as he walks over carrying her on his back as she assumingly bleeds to death. MEANWHILE, THE ONLY NON-CRAZY NON-SERIAL KILLER CHARACTER OF THE WHOLE MANGA IS JUST LEFT BEHIND SHOT DEAD. HER ONLY MOTIVE WAS BEING GRUMPY THAT SOMEONE TRAPPED HER PARENTS AND A BUNCH OF OTHER PEOPLE IN A BUILDING AND BURNED THEM ALIVE AND SHE JUST GETS SHOT DEAD.

  And psycho girl's all like, "I wasn't going out until everyone who bothered you was dead (including me)."

  

  ...SHE WAS BOTHERING HIM BECAUSE OF YOUR ACTIONS. HELL, YOU YOURSELF IMPLIED THAT YOU WERE SOMEHOW INVOLVED IN THE PROTAGONIST MEETING ALL THE OTHER PSYCHO GIRLS

  And the manga just ends. IT JUST ENDS.

  

  No... no timeskip, no scene showing that the protagonist is gonna be alright because now he's got more crazy girls buzzing around him now, nothing. Even if I didn't think the protagonist should be celebrating psycho girl's death, I just couldn't stop thinking about victim girl's corpse just lying there.

  That's another thing! When psycho girl shoots herself, the protagonist is like "oh my gosh! I don't have my phone on me! I know, I'll get victim girl's phone and use it to call for help for you and only you! Victim girl might not even be dead yet, let me rifle through her pockets to try and find her phone!"

  

  ...IT'S NOT LIKE VICTIM GIRL WAS ABOUT TO KILL THE PROTAGONIST. Actually, I take that back. She might have given her gun away like a stupid idiot but she does still have a pretty sizable knife to threaten the protagonist with. PSYCHO GIRL WAS LIKE "WE'VE PROBABLY GOTTEN TO THE BULLET BY NOW" AND JUST BLEW HER THE FUCK AWAY IN COLD BLOOD. Also putting aside the fact the Russian roulette thing is a "cool moment", for what fucking reason did she have to just not immediately shoot the victim girl right away? Like victim girl was the one who had the magnum first but why didn't psycho girl just immediately gun her down the moment she handed her the gun?

  "I don't trust you enough to play this game of yours."
  "Okay, then I guess you should just shoot me!"
  "Okay fine, let's play your game then. Here's my gun. Wait, didn't I just say I don't trust you? Why did I give you my gun oh FUCK--"

  

  If you want to play devil's advocate you could say that on the first pull of the trigger, victim girl could have just stabbed the protagonist on realizing psycho girl was just going to gun her down but... it's not like that would have even been the first time the protagonist got stabbed! Hell, he's got the protagonist status! He could totally survive another stabbing!

  It's just so mind-numbingly stupid to me that in any scenario victim girl would give up the gun? She's supposedly been stalking psycho girl and protagonist since the fire... but no, here you go psycho girl I saw dancing in front of a burning kindergarten! Here's my gun!

  

  ---

  extra

  I didn't even talk about the crazy fake cop arc.

  

  There's a lady cop who seems oddly into seeing people suffer and die and I don't even remember how this came about but protagonist ends up going to her apartment and she starts showing him some grisly traffic accident footage that's just on Youtube.

  Perfectly normal behavior for an adult. That's also a cop. "Hey underaged boy, want to come hang out at my apartment? Youtube's got some wild shit on it if you know where to look!"

  

  But before she brought him to her apartment she also kidnapped some of his classmates for some reason? And she has another empty apartment that is just filled to the brim with poisonous snakes. Like it's not filled to the brim where the floor is literally covered in them, but if you take like three steps, chances are a poisonous snake's gonna fly up out of nowhere and bite you.

  

  So after cop lady falls asleep and protagonist discovers holy shit this dangerous adult is kidnapping minors, putting them in her snake apartment, and then streaming it, the cop wakes back up and adds him to the snake apartment forcing him to try and save his classmates but I think it just ends like every other event in this manga ends, with psycho girl conveniently showing up and saving the day. The protagonist almost actually manages to best the crazy cop on his own which would have been cool and actually demonstrated he's actually getting better at dealing with these terrible situations he ends up being in but... he ends up falling for the oldest trick in the book.

  Crazy cop literally goes "hey that crazy girl you're obsessed with is behind you!"

  

  But the point is later after this event, the fake cop shows up again at a festival the protagonist is at. She's still kind of on the run because news is out about her kidnapping and torturing minors for her (and others) enjoyment, but she reappears before the protagonist to warn him that some other girl is following him.

  No matter what she said, the protagonist should have just immediately screamed for help. But again... everybody the protagonist knows is fucking insane or a serial killer so he just instantly forgives her, I guess.

  

  ...I remember particularly liking the crazy cop's section of the manga with the crazy snake jumpscare apartment but... it's not enough. It's just not enough. I hate this manga.

  ---

  Conclusion

  This should have just been a yandere harem manga. Straight up. That's clearly what the mangaka really wanted to do, otherwise they wouldn't have started drawing and adding more and more crazy girls into the mix. It really just needed the one. They did the first volume with the yandere girl fighting the serial killer teacher and then went... "well, what now? Guess I could just add another girl..."

  

  If you're going to have a harem just jettison the stupid incomprehensible story, and just have the gore and fanservice. That's what the people who will end up reading this manga want anyhow. Hell, that's what I wanted! Or rather, I wanted a good story about a crazy psycho girl that made sense. She could have still been crazy but also had a motive that made sense for a crazy character.

  As it is though, the manga should have ended with the protagonist dancing on her corpse. Instead no, he goes "I want to stay with you even though you've (and the other girls you apparently had a hand in me meeting) made my life a neverending nightmare."

  ...I give Black Kanojo a 2.5 out of 10 or a 25 out of 100 and I do NOT recommend it. There are better dumpster fires out there than this.

  
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