骨が腐るまで

HONE GA KUSARU MADE

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
7
RELEASE
February 11, 2018
CHAPTERS
98

DESCRIPTION

The summer they were eleven, they killed a man and buried his body in a cave. Since then, every year, one summer night has marked a ritual: a ritual never to forget, and never to betray. Five years have passed. Their sixteenth summer. The body, now a skeleton. Unraveled lies. A faceless blackmailer. The phone rings and a life is torn apart. The bones, like their crime: never rotting, never fading away. Now, a living hell begins.

(Source: Kodansha USA)

CAST

Tsubaki Toyoshima
Shintarou Nakamura
Haruka Nagase
Ryuu Nimaidou
Akira Kanzaki

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

LordShen
80/100
No matter how you look at it, its bad to kill other people
[Minor Spoilers]
This manga in the beginning i didn't had much expectations from it. The story was that of a group of friends who kill a man when they were in middle school. That man was the father of our protagonist shintaro and since his father use to beat him daily they decided to kill him and make a pact that they will visit the place where they buried his remains every year. One day the remains gets stolen and a blackmailer puts them through hell. Well in situations like this usually protagonist comes up with some awesome plans but that didn't happened here. All the group were broken and their bonds were tested. But there was a twist that I was not expecting and that's the surprise element of this manga.

Story- I will give it a 7 out of 10, It gets little boring for a while but since its not that long manga i didn't mind that much. But it got a different approach and that mysterious vibe to it. The protagonist actually struggles before he could figure out the entire truth. The story got betrayal, sacrifice, emotions and all other horror elements that should keep the readers entertained.

Art- Its a 5 out of 10. Art in this manga was kinda meh, i mean they would have done it better. Some scenes were drawn good but some lacked the total depth. If only they would have drawn it little better this manga would not have been a little more popular.

Characters- There are 5 people in total, shintaro our MC, tsubaki she is not what she looks like and she likes shintaro, there is akira who is tsubaki's boyfriend you will learn more when u read, Then there is haruka that second girl who always craves for MC but never gets him and in the end there is Ryuu our smart looking guy but he loses his temper easily. As i said earlier their friendship was weird to begin with and most of the character development is done after they kill MC's dad. So unfortunately you will never learn what they were like in their elementary school days or what their families are like and what kind of importance their friendship holds. This one is another bad things of this manga.

This manga deserves more attention and it got the potential. The sacrifices the characters makes to keep their friendship safe and how they shoulder the burden of murdering someone.

In the end i recommend this manga to you if you like reading mystery and psychological stuffs.
Continue on AniList
TheGruesomeGoblin
20/100
Don't know about my bones, but my brain definitely has rotted reading this rotten manga.
I... I just... I just can't even... process what I just read.

THIS REVIEW IS GOING TO BE A FULL SPOILERS REVIEW. THIS MANGA IS RIFE WITH BOTH GORE AND MOST LIKELY UPSETTING CONTENT. I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF I LIKE IT OR NOT. I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF IT MAKES SENSE OR NOT. PLEASE ASSIST ME IN LOCATING THE NEAREST INSANE ASYLUM. I NEED HELP.

Everything is Rotting

Until Your Bones Rot is a horror... psychological... thriller... mystery manga by Yae Utsumi. It's about five high schoolers and their super deep friendship! They are the best of friends!

And all of them are happy and this is a happy manga and that is the end!

...No, just kidding. Their friendship and bond is continued to be upheld because they all kind of played a role in murdering one of their dads. He was abusive, made his son crossdress because it would remind the father of the kid's mother who died, but he was still sometimes capable of being a good dad.

Except wait, did I just hear you talking shit about me to your little shit friends?

IT'S TIME FOR ANOTHER BEATING.

So basically, the protagonist's friends arrived at a certain conclusion. They needed to murder the protagonist's batshit crazy and abusive father. To be fair to them, they did attempt trying to go to their parents but they of course just told them to stay away from that fucking weird kid and his batshit crazy father.

Wouldn't be a horror/whatever manga if the adults weren't fucking useless!

And what a surprise, they actually manage to pull it off. With a meaty thwack with a hammer to the skull, the dad is successfully murdered. GOOD JOB TEAM, NOW I HAVE NO PARENTS.

But the truth is all the friends are completely fucking rattled by the fact they all just kind of committed a murder. Main protagonist kid just sorta blurts out

"we should come back every year and dig up my dead dad and look at him and see how much he's rotted each year and we can have a blood pact and everything. It's not a real friendship unless we have a blood pact!"

And like right out of the gate as some giant asshole who likes to nitpick every single plot detail that happens to nag at me, I have immediate and intense problems with this. Do you really want to tempt fate like this? I mean I've heard that criminals return to the scene of the crime, but this is ridiculous! Like I'm just now thinking about it and... they go to the cave with the dad corpse, dig it up, look at it, like reconfirm that they're still friends and are gonna keep doing this, and then put the corpse back.

They murdered him at a festival.

Like granted, they led him off into the wilderness away from everybody and then when he was dead they dragged him into that cave but... people saw him at the festival. Hell, he bumped into a guy!

There wasn't a search? You know, around the area? Five kids dragged the corpse of an adult off into some fucking random cave. Oh, I don't know, he just disappeared!

That's just what happens! Kid goes to the festival with his dad and.... his dad just disappears. Just like that! Whoops! Okay kid, since your dad's gone, you can just live on your own...? ~~There's like a timeline following one of the volumes and it says he went to live with one of his grandparents but he did just eventually end up living on his own.~~

Anyways, like five years in doing this stupid ritual of visiting dad, things go wrong. Somebody's found the bone cave. The mystery person has absconded with the skeleton left a phone behind to be able to call the group and threaten them into doing something for them.

Namely cutting up a corpse. Fun! And also pretty rude.

You murder one person and then people come up to you and start asking hey man can you please do me a solid and dissect this corpse for me? Doing something once doesn't make it a hobby!

They freak out a little bit but then they do calm down and get their priorities straight. Going to jail sounds pretty fucking bad, so of course they chop up the body--

Wait, no hold on. But why? At the end of the manga, the time most of them get is two years in juvie. TWO YEARS. And this is what they got, AFTER, they started dissecting corpses!

Like over and over again the idea of turning themselves in pops up, and the characters always end up shooting it down. But honestly they should absolutely turn themselves in. Two years is a pretty fucking light sentence when you take in consideration that the weight of the murder is really starting to wear away at them.

Especially one character, who, eventually, is so desperate to get out of the situation that he tries some bullshit and it leads to him...

...you guessed it...

GETTING MURDERED AND HAVING HIS REMAINS CHOPPED UP BY HIS OWN FRIENDS.

And also at one point, phone guy who straight up just officially gets named by the characters themselves as "Telephone Guy" has them all come over to the apartment where he had them dissect the first body and just straight up tells them all to strip and immediately I am just like oh for fuck sake

GOTTA INCLUDE THE REQUIRED HORROR MANGA NUDITY

And honestly I was already getting real bad vibes from this manga as it was.

As there's a flashback scene where one of the girl characters comes over to the main protagonist's house while it's raining and she... ends up having sex with him and afterward he tells her verbatim that he's never going to have sex with her ever again.

Okay, first of all, why would you say it like that?

Secondly, why? Everything about the main protagonist's character has indicated that he strongly likes this girl and also she killed your dad for you. Took a hammer to his skull and became a murderer for you.

And like later on after one of the largest and worst revelations of the series that I immediately predicted, he says some shit like "oh I actually said that because I felt bad because the only reason I slept with you was because I was lonely."

...I fucking hate this protagonist.

But speaking of unfortunate sexual content, there's also this random homeless woman who somehow becomes a major player in the plot of this manga.

And her price for giving the group for information is... kissing the... main protagonist. A high schooler. He is underaged. She is an adult homeless woman who later in the manga is shown to have been prostituting herself to the rest of her homeless community.

Even when the group's dealings with this woman are concluded, she straight up floats out the offer that if the protagonist ever wants to have sex with her he can always just stop back by whenever he wants.

Nothing wrong with this.

Nothing wrong with this. Nothing wrong with this. Nothing wrong with this. Nothing wrong with this at allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll.

Also, when she had them tied up with like bondage rope while she was verifying the somewhat false information the group gave her about one of her homeless friend who they dissected, a couple of other homeless guys materialized from the darkness because they saw two female characters tied up and you already know where this is going.

Yep. Had a whole extended scene with these assholes verbally confirming whether or not the girls are virgins and basically threatening them that if they don't earnestly request to be raped they'll just beat the male characters to death.

Thankfully, the batshit insane homeless woman character returns and has the would be rapists executed offscreen.

Literally.

Even insults their dying screams. You would of course hope, that this would be it for... the unfortunate sexual content. Following the almost rape, the other female character shows up at the protagonist's house. You know, the last time a female character showed up at the protagonist's house alone she--oh god no.

How many times am I going to have to say it?

How many times?
___DON'T___ ___FOLLOW UP___ ___AN ATTEMPTED RAPE___ ___WITH THIS.___
Like sure she already clearly liked the protagonist before this point, but no. No to every single thing about this scene. This is awful. But apparently the author doesn't think it's awful enough because when the protagonist refuses, she pressures him into doing it by saying she'll turn herself in for the original murder from five years ago.

Because she's rightfully tired of dissecting corpses, having to shoulder that original murder, and also she was almost raped by homeless men earlier.

Maybe the protagonist is going to talk with her? Point out that this isn't a good idea to be doing right now and try to comfort her in a different--nope he just straight up has sex with her.

Okay, so he's had sex with both female characters. One he liked but had a ~~fake~~ boyfriend and then rejected, and then one he straight up just did not like but he didn't want her to get arrested and face up to

TWO YEARS OF JUVIE

and I'm not even shitting you, after this, her entire character basically becomes, at least temporarily, "I want to have more sex with the protagonist." This could be excused because she herself straight up said she's using it to forget about their current situation which is understandable. All of them are a bit stressed and
___the protagonist has his dad skull out and he's having a conversation with it.___ ___he's talking to his dad skull.___
She came over to try and have sex with him again and HE'S TALKING TO THE SKULL OF HIS DEAD FATHER THAT THEY MURDERED. SHE SHOULD BE CONCERNED WITH HIS CURRENT MENTAL STATE, INSTEAD, SHE'S ONLY TEMPORARILY SURPRISED AND THEN REMINDS HIM THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE SEX.

And he very angrily points out that he was in the middle of a conversation with his father WHO IS A SKULL and then

oh for fuck sake

...Everything I've described to this point so far is pretty bad, right? Well, what if I told you that there is also... like there's a point where their investigation or whatever the fuck it's supposed leads them to a teacher they had when they were in elementary school. He's hanging from the ceiling dead but that doesn't even matter. What does matter is that in his apartment, they find photographs...

A photograph... of one of the female characters... when they were still elementary students... and plenty more...

NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. NOPE.

I didn't even go into the ending of the manga. How obvious who the culprit was. Didn't talk about how pointlessly convoluted their scheme is and how their goal is completely opposite of what they end up achieving but yet in the end they get everything they ever wanted anyways after serving FOUR AND A HALF YEARS OF PRISON TIME for everything they did...

Hey, they were supposed to have eight to thirteen years. They got let out so early because of good behavior and a willingness to atone. You know. For multiple murders and also having others literally dismember corpses.

Doesn't matter. Doesn't fucking matter. I liked the gore, I liked when the characters were beginning to crack and become broken, and this genuinely worked for me as a "page turner"...

But you know... when I saw that photograph. I just immediately fucking knew exactly where this was headed. I was just struck with an immediate sense of dread and as it turns out, I was right to be.

...Let's just say I did not feel that aspect of the plot was handled appropriately nor was it fucking necessary. It was already convoluted as it was. This entire manga was supposed to be about the original murder of their friend's father but it so quickly becomes the least of anyone's concerns. Hell, when the culprit gets caught, when asked where the rest of the goddamned bones (aka what they've been scrambling around to try and get back pretty much the whole manga) were, they just nonchalantly go

"oh well I just kind of threw him back into the cave. You know, where they were the whole time before all this shit started."

be warned! the following image gives away who the culprit is!

Are you fucking kidding me?

Conclusion

When I first finished reading this manga and before I immediately started writing this review, I set this series as an 8 out of 10.

Upon thinking longer than a second about the series I just read, I had to ponder if I myself had suffered someone hitting me in the back of the skull with a hammer without me noticing it prior to the act of writing this review.

Like just because it was a page turner does not mean it's good. And I think in the absolute bewilderment this series left me in, I temporarily forgot that. Again, I did genuinely like some parts of this series and some of the scenes (specifically the protagonist talking with his dad but he's just a skull) were cool. Everything else though? Absolute trash fire and I hate pretty much everything about it.

The maximum level of growth that any of these characters receive is that realization that pretty much everything they've done in this entire manga is probably illegal or at the very least wrong. And this is an exact quote directly from the culprit after having redeemed themselves via FOUR AND A HALF YEARS: "You really shouldn't kill anyone, after all."

...After four and a half years, that's all you got? YOU DID WAY MORE THAN JUST KILL SOMEONE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU

...I give this manga a 2 out of 10 with a disclaimer of I could probably see myself putting it even lower than that.

It's a roaring trash fire and now that I've used it to warm myself, I'm leaving it behind, and I hope I never think of it ever again. Would I recommend it? Yes, but only if you like trash fires.

Continue on AniList
torterra
20/100
A good thriller must always make you want to read the next page. This manga made me want to quit reading entirely.
As with all books I read, I first browse the plot summary. This was interesting enough - a group of (murderer) childhood friends being blackmailed into committing the dirty works of another murderer. At first, I honestly thought it was decent, but the more I read, the more I hated it. There's a number of reasons.

First, the premise itself. The thing that got me reading in the first place was actually a scam. I read the manga expecting that they were going to show a flashback on how these kids got away with it and how they would do it all over again because of the blackmailer. Jokes on me, this did not happen. I have no idea how those kids even managed to get away with the first murder. The murder was straight and simple and done by literal kids. Was no one able to pick up any clues? Yes, this isn't the main murder we should be invested in. But I can't help it, it's the whole starting point of the series yet it doesn't completely make sense! It's all very hand wavey. They should have fleshed it out more.

Second, the characters. The only character I kinda liked here was Ryuu. The rest fell flat. I get that most of these kids are supposed to not "act right" but nah. Doesn't work. The girls especially are one-sided. Even now I do not understand what is going on with Tsubaki. Also, are there no competent adults investigating these cases except that one detective? Even then, that dude was literally plot magic. The feeling I got was that this detective was supposed to be the cool and calculating trope that everyone would adore. For me, he just felt cheap.

Third, the plot progression. It's linear. Really linear. Since this is a murder mystery, I was expecting for some foreshadowing to be involved somehow. Kind of like Detective Conan, pointing out this random thing this one random character did, which was how Conan knew that that character was the killer. I expected too damn much. We get one clue, we hop over to the next clue, onto the next clue, etc. Boring. It would have been way more interesting if it turned out that the blackmailer was one of the five kids. But nope, the killer was literally introduced near the end of the series. It wasn't satisfying at all. Just a "huh" moment.

Fourth, unneccessary sex scenes. I was annoyed already. But if anything, the thing that really got me the most with this manga is the sheer amount of sex/near-sex scenes. I'm no prude. I enjoy myself some ecchi once in a while. Yet the way it was approached here is just plain tacky. It's one of the reasons why the chapters are so dragged out - there's a near sex scene in what seems like every scene change and add nothing substantial at all. There are two girls in the squad, and both are lusting over our protagonist. How typical! I suppose these scenes were added to add a bit more flair to the story, make it more "messed up" with near rape scenes and toxic relationships, but I just really hated it. Remove half of the scenes and nothing would change. Of course that goes with probably most manga but there are such few pages in each chapter. Which means pages actually count more and the mangaka just wasted them all. Maybe if they replaced all these scenes with actually developing the characters, the story would have been better.

Fifth and last, the message. When I read series like these, dealing with murder and morality and what not, I expect some kind of dramatic revelation done by the character. Some kind of cheesy quote if you will. Here? It's literally "You really shouldn't kill people after all." NO SHIT!

It wasn't all bad though. The art is pleasant to look at with crisp linework. I love these kinds of art styles. Another thing is that it's a fast read. As I stated earlier, there are only a few pages per chapter. I just took way too long to read it because I WAS SO BORED.

To sum up my thoughts: this manga took way too long to get to its climax and even then the climax was just boring. Interesting premise, infuriating execution. I don't recommend it at all.
Continue on AniList