My Two Cents: MY DEAREST SELF WITH MALICE AFORETHOUGHT (manga)

It's not every day that I write a review on 11 books simultaneously. With manga series, it makes it a little easier, but with a complex story like the one in "My Dearest Self with Malice Aforethought," written by Hajime Inoryu and illustrated by Shota Ito, it's still a daunting task. This psychological thriller series is filled with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing at every page. The central characters are all unreliable, including the narrator himself, a college-aged Japanese boy named Eiji Urashima.

When the story opens, he's introduced as a socially inept and awkward youth, one whose life consists of hanging out with his buddies, playing video games, and dreaming from afar of one day nabbing a hot chick for a girlfriend. Thus when Eiji wakes one morning after a night of drinking and carousing with the gang, he's stunned to find himself sharing his bed with Kyouka Yukimura, a beautiful young woman he's never laid eyes on. Even more, shocking, several days seem to have passed by with Eiji completely unaware. He has no memory of anything that's come to pass, and learns secondhand that he somehow managed to beat the crap out of one of the biggest bullies on campus, snagging himself Kyouka as a girlfriend in the process.

Eiji eventually discovers that his life is not his own. Suffering from dissociative identity disorder, he has a second personality he'd been previously unaware of, a whole other side that periodically takes control without his knowledge or consent. Through his investigation, he learns this split personality -- whom he dubs "B1" -- has fallen in with a dangerous criminal element, a gang of thugs called Skall operating an underground prostitution ring that targets and traps hapless young women.

Eiji, however, has secrets of his own, and a dark past he's reluctant to share with anyone. His father was a notorious and sadistic serial killer known only as "LL" who killed himself 15 years earlier rather than be captured by the police. LL's signature was to keep his victims captive for days, if not weeks, before killing them, subjecting them to grisly torture and leaving their bodies gruesomely mutilated.

With such a pedigree, it's no wonder Eiji tries to keep it a secret, but his alter ago, B1, has apparently used it to establish himself among the ranks of the Skall gang. Eiji is terrified that this association will threaten his newfound happiness with Kyouka, as well as put his adoptive family at risk. The deeper he digs into B1's past -- and his own -- the greater that danger becomes, leaving Eiji unable to put his trust in anyone, including himself.

Like I said, there are tons of plot twists along the way, and a huge cast of secondary characters serving as both friends as well as foes (and sometimes both) to Eiji and B1. The mystery behind Eiji's past, and the truth about not just B1 but the killer, LL, grows deeper and deeper, and it's impossible to predict just where the story will lead next.

While primarily a psychological thriller, there are elements of horror here, too, especially in the depictions of LL's victims once they're discovered by the police. The artwork is fantastic, rendered in incredible detail, with every character visually distinct and often damn near photorealistic. The use of shading and textures were phenomenal, and I especially loved the way artist Shota Ito distinguishes between Eiji and B1. They're two separate personalities inhabiting the same body, and when Eiji's in control, he's drawn with playful abandon, his expressions childlike and comedic. With B1, there's a shift toward heavier shadows, a cold severity that's unmistakable.

"My Dearest Self With Malice Aforethought" was originally published in serialized form in Japan, and is available in 12-volume tankobon, or collected, format in both paperback and ebook. Several, but not all of the volumes are available through Kindle Unlimited, which is kind of strange, but hey, it saves a little money in the end. The story arc is complete, so don't expect any loose ends or upcoming sequels. It gets a little convoluted in places, and there are several points at which I felt the exposition dragged on a little too long, but that could be a translation issue more than anything. Overall, it was a fantastic mystery -- or rather, a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, as Winston Churchill might have said.

"My Dearest Self With Malice Aforethought" is available here.