Blood on the Tracks, Volume 1

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Seichi Osabe is a young boy living in a rural Japanese town. He lives a normal life — friends at school, a Precocious Crush, and a loving mother and father that care for him. In particular, he has a very strong relationship with his mother Seiko, who dotes on him excessively and is very overprotective.

As for the second half of the story, Seiichi's development has good ideas, but are ultimately half-assed. He goes from killing his cousin, and attempting to kill his mother in the courtroom, to becoming a depressed, hollow, shell of what he once was. I think this 180 in personality is an interesting idea that has a lot of potential, but one that needs more explanation as to how he got to this point. The only real info available as to how he got there is that he got put into an asylum and then let out, but we never get to learn what actually happened in the asylum, and are instead discouraged from thinking about it too much, because it's never brought up again. This level of blind acceptance was never asked of the reader before Shigeru's death. Anyway, with this version of Seiichi, the plot becomes very slow paced and depressing rather than tense and anxiety inducing, which isn't inherently a bad thing. It's making us really feel what a drag life is for the poor guy, but the conflicting messages scattered throughout the timeskip make it feel more like the author's stalling for time while he comes up with ideas on how to end it. I'll talk about these conflicting messages nowLaser-Guided Amnesia: Brain damage for Shigeru doesn't mean he's unable to recognize his own attempted killer, subverting the usual amnesia by injury drama expectations. Asshole Victim: The Osabes' relatives aren't the most pleasant people to be around, with the aunt being kind of pushy and rude to Seiko and Shigeru is annoyingly close to Seiichi. However, their being obnoxious doesn't warrant Seiko ruining their family forever by harming Shigeru. Hope Spot: There is hope that Seichi will recover from the trauma inflicted by his mother after she is taken into custody. That hope comes crashing down hard when Seichi himself succumbs to madness and pushes Shigeru off of the same cliff, this time resulting in Shigeru's death.

a b Clinton Heylin (April 1, 2011). Behind the Shades: The 20th Anniversary Edition. Faber & Faber. pp.368–369. ISBN 9780571272419.Bell, Ian (2012). Once Upon a Time: The Lives of Bob Dylan. Mainstream Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78057-573-5. Broken Smile: Seiichi's aunt gives one of these when she comes across her son on the trail after he was pushed off the cliff. She keeps smiling a creepy smile while assuring herself and those around her that the injuries will heal. Time Skip: Between vols. 12 and 13, there's a 20-year gap. Seiichi, after leaving juvenile detention, moved to Tokyo and works a menial line job at a bakery, basically just existing and not really living. Bob Dylan — Matt Damsker interview. 1978. Hotel room. 1 PM in afternoon before the start of the tour , retrieved May 24, 2022

This manga is it's own entity, the level of manipulation and psychologically breaking someone down is conveyed perfectly in this work. It will be a story remembered long after it's finished by those who dare to read it. Heller, Nathaniel (October 8, 2018). "Luca Guadagnino's Cinema of Desire". The New Yorker . Retrieved February 8, 2023. Faux Affably Evil: While Seiko is very obviously mentally unwell, she's incredibly charismatic and everyone in the family still loves her. She's so good at hiding her dangerous nature that the only one who knows about her insanity is Seichi himself, and that's only because he was there to witness her going off the deep end.

Gray, Michael (2006). The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. Continuum International. ISBN 0-8264-6933-7. Archived from the original on September 9, 2019 . Retrieved August 6, 2019. A few chapters later, you realise that not only did she try to kill Seiichi as a toddler, but the reason why she had thrown Shigeru off of the cliff was because she saw Seiichi's face instead of Shigeru's and that was why she had shoved him.

Bob Dylan". Salon.com. May 5, 2001. Archived from the original on October 28, 2012 . Retrieved May 13, 2013. Despite her face never contorting into anything physically hideous, Seiko gets a lot of these thanks to the manga's uncanny shading. After a hiking trip gone wrong in which Seiko pushes her nephew off of a cliff in the middle of the woods, simply for playing a prank on his cousin, Seichi slowly becomes horrified of his mother's dangerously overprotective nature, and seeks to branch out from her. Unfortunately for him, she has other plans, and wants to keep her son under her thumb forever...The Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. November 1, 2003. Archived from the original on April 16, 2012 . Retrieved March 22, 2007. Seiko tossing her own nephew off the cliff, before turning around with a pleased smile on her face, as if to say "I did this for you". The artists knows how to scene things and what moments to focus on to make the reader feel suspense and the lead characters inner turmoil Oh, Crap!: Seiko's nephew, despite the brain damage, still has enough energy to nonverbally reveal to his mother that his own aunt is the one who pushed him off the cliff. Naturally, his mother is horrified and Seiko immediately becomes afraid. The mother becomes even more horrified when Seichi defends her! behavior in front of him. So, nobody is safe in this story, not even us as audiences. I know some of us will end up thinking too much about the manga and start becoming crazy trying to figure out a way to put the pieces of the manga together in our minds.