[Manga] Mini Review – Iyagatteru Kimi ga Suki (Vol.1)

Iyagatteru Kimi ga Suki is a comic/manga initially published online at Ruelle Comics (where you can read the first chapter and latest chapter) and now has been published into a bounded manga. Art and story is by Mizuki Oniyama, you can find their pixiv but if you look into their art logs you’ll prolly get spoiled on what they have in mind for the series.

The art style Oniyama uses is reminiscent of 80’s manga, while the visuals they use are kinda macabre and really leaves an impression on you. Gonna say this outright, this isn’t a shoujo manga, actually I’m not even sure what audience this is for, but I’m gonna have to say it’s for adults or for those with mature minds. If you’re easily squeamish at either gore, vomiting, piss etc then I wouldn’t recommend you to read this 😆

It’s definitely dark but the dark comedy makes it less grim than what it should be, but guaranteed it does have it’s dark moments where it’s not joking around. Even if it is about an abusive relationship, I still find it interesting at how the manga explores the human workings of the two characters as well as their paraphilic tendencies. You’re free to call me out on being an asshole or a sick fuck for liking this manga. Also, just a heads up but this post will be discussing some stuff that may not sit well with some people and might be a bit NSFW.

I also got a bonus illustrated gift from purchasing it from Animate:

The context of this pic is explained in later chapters, don’t worry. Anyway, this is just a glimpse on how abnormal the manga can get.

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——Discussion on Story & Characters

Note: I will say some spoilers but hopefully nothing too big

Mikoto

Makoto

So our main characters are Mikoto and Makoto. Both of them are very flawed humans and this manga explores their relationship as well as their character.

Makoto is an ok-looking guy who has a bit of a mystery about his true self, he confesses his love to Mikoto and asks her to go out with him, which to Mikoto’s disdain, he isn’t her type but for the sake of bragging to her friends that she has a boyfriend, she agrees to go out with him. Mikoto has a lot of pride despite not being the best looking girl and has never had a boyfriend ever, she still wants to one up her friends.

After having Makoto invited over (she still doesn’t know his name by this point), she soon discovers how messed up he is when they start watching a DVD she thought would be a romance movie–turns out it was a gorey horror film and he forces her to watch it, like physically restrains her head. Things get worse when she notices he’s got a boner over all this and yep… things go downhill from here. He goes on to describe how he’ll take out his dick and start masturbating while licking her face and eating her snot or something and ejaculate onto her, talk about your average movie night date, amirite? 😏

The reason why he does this is not exactly clear, throughout the story he says he prefers her when she’s grossed out or hates him (as reference to the title) and would rather her not forming romantic feelings for him. You might also be asking “why doesn’t Mikoto just dump his ass?”, well, mainly because she has a huge amount of pride and she’s already bragged it to her friends and she doesn’t want her bragging privilege taken away when she doesn’t have a boyfriend anymore… But I think there might be another reason, which is purely based on my theory, but looking into Oniyama’s pixiv logs, they label Mikoto as a “Autassassinophilia”–someone who either gets sexual pleasure or arousal over the thought of being killed–which slowly becomes apparent in later chapters. Maybe unconsciously she wants to stay because of wanting to have that feeling of being at the brink of death, then again, she only develops a mild case of autassassinophilia as the manga goes on. For me, I’d like to continue reading this to see how twisted/corrupted the characters can go and its proving to deliver so far.

Makoto being happy to hear that Mikoto hates him

On the subject of characters, I seem to have some sort of pity for the both of them. For Makoto, there’s a reason why he’s doing this sort of stuff (which is sort of explained in the pixiv logs of Oniyama) but the shit he does can get too far. There are a few points where he’s cute, like when Mikoto tells him she hates him which gets him a bit flustered, or the time when he tried to express his affection by saying that “I want to be reborn in your placenta” or something and actually seemingly affectionate/normal (despite the weird shit he said and calling her “Mama”), not to mention being flustered after Mikoto asked him to kill her (what she meant was kill the cockroaches). There does seem to be points where he’s a bit jealous of the other guy, Shuichi (who seems to have a crush on Mikoto and is seemingly normal), to the point where he sabotages Mikoto and Shuichi’s study date by having her accidentally piss herself in front of Shuichi, leaving Mikoto all to himself… which is still fucked up. It’s kinda hard to discern what he’s thinking/feeling towards Mikoto, though I’m on the fence on whether they should be together or not. He seems to be a sick pup, but there’s something pitiful about him that makes you wonder why did he turn out the way he is.

Mikoto is also pitiful in the way she’s being treated by Makoto and humiliated into doing some stuff, as well as seeing her being corrupted a bit by Makoto’s influence. But at the same time, we may not seem to form sympathy towards her (in a different way to how at times you can’t sympathized with Makoto with all the shit he does) because of her flawed attitude, the way she’s using Makoto as an accessory to show off to her friends–which Makoto can clearly see and acknowledges–and the fact that she doesn’t just ditch his ass like some of us would think we would do in that situation. Also, the eyes. The clever thing the artist did when designing Mikoto and Makoto was that Mikoto’s pupils/iris are really small while Makoto’s are big. Taking a page from Disney’s book, characters with big eyes usually help in portraying them as cute and innocent–if you switched Mikoto’s and Makoto’s eye size, Makoto will look like a total creep because of the small irises and Mikoto will look innocent and seem more like a victim. With Mikoto having small irises, you seem to lose the connection of her being innocent/cute and kinda makes it hard to sympathize with her because you think she’s up to something. Tho in the end I kinda do anyway despite her personality lol.

Both Mikoto and Makoto seem like victims to me and its interesting as to how the story unfolds to give you a better understanding of them. It’s also interesting to see how fucked up things can go with the imagery used, sadly most of the good imagery so far is not in the first volume. The first volume is just a toe dip into this deep swimming pool of depravity.

——Art style

I love the art style. The 80’s style is executed really well which makes it feel quite authentic. There’s been actually no panels where I thought that it was a bit iffy/inconsistent with the style, you can tell that the artist has been well practiced in the style and if you had seen their style in older pixiv logs from a year back you would be surprised at how much they’ve honed their art style. There has been a lot of resurgence of old style manga, I remember a friend recommended me a BL/Shounen-ai manga “Ganbare! Nakamura-kun!!” which is also a modern day manga drawn in an 80’s style which is executed nicely too. I’d prolly suggest that to you if you’d rather a more light-hearted manga with an 80’s art style.

Some of the stuff I appreciate is Mikoto’s random but disturbing imagination panels, well it doesn’t just happen to Mikoto only, it happens to other characters such as Makoto and surprisingly the only normal guy Shuichi as well, where their darkest/grimmest thoughts are displayed visually either as a separate panel/page that is there for just the readers to see or incorporated somewhere in their reality–like in a dream/daydream. One of Mikoto’s disturbing imagination segments that stuck to me was when she was given a collar from Makoto and all of a sudden there’s an image of her chained up, on all fours, naked and barking behind her as she imagines what he means by this gift—all in a comedic fashion.

Another thing I love is the ambiguity in some panels and the use of silence. Sometimes in chill mangas or shoujo mangas that don’t have substance, you rarely get a page of panels with no dialogue going on but the imagery speaks volumes. It’s this kind of stuff in this manga that tells you “ok, this is some serious and alarming shit going on” and helps keep that impression of that page burned into your mind. Also, back to the ambiguity, sometimes I find myself wondering “wait… what happened? did they do something?” because the scene doesn’t linger on too long that will tell you what happened, it would sometimes end at a point so you’re left trying to fill in the details between the scenes. This page shows a good combination of both ambiguity and the use of silence:

btw, that liquid substance on her thighs is piss

You’re wondering what the hell is happening and what will happen next but by the next scene, Mikoto is cut off from her flashback so you’ll never really know if they went that far or not. It still leaves an impression on you and keeps you wondering what the hell just happened. It just keeps you thinking, kinda haunts you too. Plus how it’s not mentioned directly again, you’re still like ???

——Overall thoughts

If it wasn’t for the dark comedy then this would’ve been a dark and dreary manga that makes you feel depressed as hell, and maybe even too edgy. Then again, the comedy used here is subjective to person to person, if you’re used to dark comedy or have a dark sense of humor then you’d prolly chuckle a bit or smile at some of it (I know I did, and I don’t even know why I laughed at a few parts). If you’re the type of person who is really sensitive or don’t get dark comedy then it’d prolly fall flat on you and the experience of reading it might be more grimmer than my experience because I enjoyed reading it and found all the messed up stuff interesting to explore.

It’s like a train wreck or a car crash, you know it’s horrific but you can’t look away. I remember reading it the first time with some of the chapters online and I’d get so impatient for it to update because I couldn’t get enough of it and I always kept thinking about it for a day. It’s interesting to see depraved characters being explored in this kind of story, though it doesn’t mean I’m depraved myself, I’m just interested in seeing different human behaviors. Ya kinda get sick of reading about normal people doing average things that it gets kinda dull. That’s just how I feel.

As for story wise, I love how I can’t predict what kind of ending it’ll be. There’s still so many things the author is hiding from the audience that anything can happen and I love those type of stories. If I can already predict what the ending is then what’s the point in reading, right?

Overall I love it, the only fault I can say is that the dust cover for the manga is paper rather than plastic/whatever because I have to be very delicate not to rip the cover or sweat heavily during summer and destroy the paper cover with water or sweat. Also the monthly chapter updates online makes it harder for me to wait for the second bounded volume to come out.

If all of this sounds interesting to you then I’d recommend you to read it and experience it for yourself. If this review grossed you out and you’re still reading this, then I am awfully sorry.

Thanks for reading! Enjoy Makoto judging you while he sits on the toilet.