30 March 2011

Manga Review: Ibitsu

Ibitsu, literally means 'Twisted' in Japanese is a psychological-horror manga in all it's truth. It's based on a (fictional) urban legend in Japan that goes like this:

There's a legend that goes around in Japan. It involves a girl dressed in Loli outfit sitting near dump sites holding an umbrella and a plush toy. She would have a dirty appearence as if she hadn't bathed in days. If you find her sitting near dump sites when you are about to throw your trash at night...by all means DO NOT SPEAK TO HER. She would often target young men and ask them a question 'Do you have a sister?'. If you answered yes, she will become your sister against your will. If you said no, she will still become your sister*. So the trick is...DONT SPEAK WITH HER. Ignore her competely and in time she will leave to find someone else.

*In Japanese 'watashi imouto iru kara' means I have a sister. It can be read as both ways: one, I have a sister. Two, I need a sister. If you answered 'watashi imouto inai yo' which mean I dont have a sister. So she will become your sister too because SHE decides you needs a sister. So whatever you asnwer is, you're still fucked.

By the way, this is her:

  It must be a Monday.

This is the apparition you would see in dump sites should you decide to throw the trash at night. Alone. Any other normal person would turn back and decide to throw it the next morning during their routine morning jog. But no...characters in this manga would still throw their trash in the night with a creepy girl in white Loli clothes asking you if you have a sister. Meanwhile in Japan.

So her cycle is pretty much consistent. She finds a guy regardless of whether or not he has a sister. She stalkes you and behaves like a 'sister'. She cleans your room, she visits you at night for 'sibling' chat and if you dont entertain her...BE QUICK TO RUN THE HELL OUT. Dont forget your little dog. Nothing happens really, she just kills you in the most horrifyingway possible.

As the manga progresses, you get a glimpse of a hypothetical past of her. She is shown to be in a mental hospital where a kind psychiatrist had taken her under his wing. She was freshly taken away from her 'family' where her brother had supposedly killed the whole family and she was the sole survivor. Only then we remember she might have a name.
As the compassionate shrink tries his best to treat her, he manage to dig out the truth about her and became insane in the process.

You see, you will notice in the manga that she cuts herself regularly and intentionally bleeds herself. She also eats inedible food like makeup creams, lipsticks, lotions and paper and pukes a putrid black stuff.

Extremely violent and cruel, unpredictable psychopath, everything about her is beyond the normal human comprehension. Nobody knows how a living creature can be so fucked up. Perhaps, she is not alive at all, she's a vengeful ghost going a killing spree until she's satisfied.

To say she's alive is debatable, to say she's dead is also plausible.

A) Why it would make sense if she's dead

     No normal human being would survive after eating garbage their whole life. No normal human being would still survive after so much of blood loss. No normal human being can carry a 100kg hammer/chainsaw at a small frame of 40kg. She also cuts up her victims into pieces when they are alive and awake like beef steaks.
She drove her shrink to insanity and he ended up killing everyone in the hospital because he couldn't take up the guilt. It can be assumed that he managed to kill her as well.

B) Why it would make sense if said she was still alive

      Others can see her. If you're a ghost, people can see you only if you let them. Even random people in the road can see her. She leaves a bloody mess after her murder episodes and she leaves trails behind as the 'missing person'. Enough people have seen her for her to be an urban legend. The cuts and bruises can be explained. People with severe mental illness have high pain threshold. No matter how much they are hurt physically, they wont feel pain that much. Bipolar people report feeling numb when they inflict self-injury. They dont feel the pain. She is severely depressed, suffering from severe apathy that she perhaps cut herself to make herself feel 'alive'. Am I making any sense to you?

What happened to this fucked up bitch, really? Why is she doing this?

There is only ONE explanation I found after much thought.

She was abused by her brother. She was made to eat garbage when she 'misbehaves'. She was burned with an iron box when her brother is in his 'moods'. She was forced to dress up like a Lolitha maybe to satiate her brothers own perverted fantasy(ever heard if loli-con fetish and younger sister fetish? Google it). She was also shut in her home-particularly in her closet. Her brother 'trained' her though this abuse so she could become the 'ideal' sister. She did keep it secret from her family until she couldnt take it anymore and snapped.  She has since been living in that 'snapped' mode.

I strongly suggest to read this manga. So far, this is the only manga I read that made me check my bedside to see if anyone is standing there. I also occasionally looked back to see if she was standing there with a hammer asking me if I have a sister. Good God I would die right then and there without her having to kill me.

Rating: 10\10

8 comments:

sankoi said...

Woooo~!!! I just read it yesterday out of a lucky random manga suggestion generator in a manga scans site. I was just plainly looking for a manga and kept clicking the "Surprise me" button when Ibitsu came in one of those clicks. Dang... the girl's too twisted. At first, I thought I could sympathize to the girl somehow and I kept getting mad at the guy who's always shooing her away a lot whenever the girl's getting "sober" but she's way too unpredictable. After being sober, she goes on a killing spree again. It's like there was no other choice for the guy but death. He's dancing on the girl's hands. I loved the story. It always had me thinking about how the story made it to 13 chapters whenever Kazuki seems to be in a DEAD END in the first few chapters. It's like "Whoah... this guy's gonna undergo too much torture just to live...LONGER."hahaha. . .I somehow got the gut feeling that he's gonna die anyway. Somehow I was hoping he's gonna survive. I somehow get the feeling that the girl's no longer human herself or she might be some zombieish entity. hahahaha >.<"

Anonymous said...

This manga it's great I like it a lot.
I tried to figure out two thinks but I couldn't... at least on internet, how the lolita kills hikari and who the lolita really is? I mean her real name or origins, the autor actually said nothing about this...

Anonymous said...

those two things weren't reveled, probably for the reasons that i will specify... the reason why you never find out who this lolita is because many people fear the unknown making her more scary. the reasons why u dont find out how hikari dies are, firstly, it leaves this one up to your own, sadistic imagination, because there are an infinite amount of grim ways for her to die and secondly, maybe for censoring purposes because hikari undoubtedly had the most horrifying death and it may have been too gruesome to display

atsuko said...

this is great manga, I cant sleep after read this manga.

but actually, i want Kazuki survive and find the way to defeat that 'crazy girl'. after answer her question.....
it's not fear if that crazy girl always win....(sssttt.... i hope that girl doesnt read this...)

Anonymous said...

In my opinion, Hikari was the person stuffed in the duffle bag in the asylum. I base it off the fact, that you see the loli removing painted fingernails (and applying them to her hand) off of a hand sticking out of the bag.

Unknown said...

Its 11.30 pm and I am stuck up between choosing to read Ibitsu or Uzumaki. After reading this post its settled that I am going for Ibitsu. It take something much more extreme to scare me. I hope Ibitsu stands upto what you guys mentioned here.





Anonymous said...

I'm sorry. I did not read the rules, and I apologies. I will reflect on my actions.

Anonymous said...

One of the better horror manga I've read too be sure. She clearly was not alive though as some have said. While she wasn't a 'ghost' per say she was some form of supernatural creature or zombie.

Some of the evidence to this comes in the variety of
-unexplained phenomena like phones not working while having a signal and electrical equipment going haywire
-pulling the spiderman on the ceiling and bathroom stalls
-her being able to be in several locations at once like in the asylum or having her voice appear to be everywhere at once
-wounds that would clearly be fatal on anyone else, slicing her arm open nearly to the bone for example

My guess is she is some kind of super strong demon and that she had been doing this a lot longer than the urban legend had been around.

Anyway loved the manga

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