Blood on the Tracks - book.itmens

5.5 x 0.68 x 7.5 inches, 216 pages

English language

Published Feb. 25, 2020 by Vertical Comics.

ISBN:: 978-1-949980-13-4

(1 review)

Blood on the Tracks (Japanese: 血の轍, Hepburn: Chi no Wadachi) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Shūzō Oshimi. It was serialized in Shogakukan's seinen manga magazine Big Comic Superior from February 2017 to September 2023, with its chapters collected into 17 tankōbon volumes. The story follows a middle school student, Seiichi Osabe, and his relationship with his overprotective mother, who after a certain event, begins to show a darker and horrifying side towards her son.

The series is licensed for an English release in North America by Vertical, who started releasing the volumes in print in February 2020, and it is also digitally published by Kodansha USA since August of the same year.

By January 2023, Blood on the Tracks had over 2.2 million copies in circulation.

1 edition

gesang reviewed Blood on the Tracks by Shuzo Oshimi

Brilliantly complex investigation of human psychology

5 stars

As is the case of Aku no Hana, Shuzo Oshimi doesn't understand his main characters, but he depicts and captures the atmosphere, the "mana" that these characters emanate so accurately, that the truths flow seamlessly from the expressionistic lines he draws. He doesn't understand, but he knows he doesn't, so he won't even try to explain, but simply becomes one with the characters and sees the world in their utterly subjective mode. Factually, there are some psychiatrists in the manga that express the opinions and understanding of the author regarding human psychology, but it is plainly observable that they're all but one facet of a deeply complex and nuanced subject from what is drawn so vividly by the author, and from the script. The manga literally strips your soul from your body and forces it to be the subjects of the main characters, to the point that from time …

As is the case of Aku no Hana, Shuzo Oshimi doesn't understand his main characters, but he depicts and captures the atmosphere, the "mana" that these characters emanate so accurately, that the truths flow seamlessly from the expressionistic lines he draws. He doesn't understand, but he knows he doesn't, so he won't even try to explain, but simply becomes one with the characters and sees the world in their utterly subjective mode. Factually, there are some psychiatrists in the manga that express the opinions and understanding of the author regarding human psychology, but it is plainly observable that they're all but one facet of a deeply complex and nuanced subject from what is drawn so vividly by the author, and from the script. The manga literally strips your soul from your body and forces it to be the subjects of the main characters, to the point that from time to time the sense of reality becomes hazy. The manga is only to be experienced, not to be understood, and I suspect that when Oshimi was working on this one, he, too, only experienced the manga, never understood what he was really creating.

Subjects

Manga