clown's manga / #short(22)

interesting concept but poor execution a priest is framed for the rape and murder of a child and is locked away for 15 years. story begins when he gets out and attempts to live a normal life under an alias, but he's continuously found out until he turns to suicide. the current priest finds him and prevents him from going through with it and shows him kindness despite knowing of his crime, causing akitaka (ex-priest) to become attached to him. he eventually finds out that kiba (current priest) is the real perpetrator, but forgives kiba for framing him and committing the crime. it's revealed that kiba was groomed and raped by his father as a young boy, twisting his definition of love. as he grew older and his father moved onto another young boy, kiba became insanely jealous and raped and murdered the child in question. in present time, a young girl hears the story and the truth comes out. after a short runaway stint, kiba tells akitaka to wait for him before he turns himself in and serves jail time. i'm not against stories exploring fucked up themes, however i believe extra care and immense attention should be given to how said themes are portrayed. honestly, i had no qualms about the story even when akitaka developed feelings for kiba. i feel that it went downhill after he forgave him because... what, he's a follower of god? i understand forgiving someone so you can move on, but he's not moving on. he's forgiving kiba just so he can feel better about having feelings and staying with him. perhaps its meant to be a critique on religion and specifically christianity which preaches the whole love thy neighbor thing and hate the sin, love the sinner, however if so it's not clear at all and instead comes off as weird and lazy. if the intention was to show two fucked up people falling in love à la misery loves company, then i could excuse it. but in that case it wasn't SHOWN that way. for all intents and purposes, akitaka is just some poor fucking guy that got framed and for some reason fell in love with the dude that framed him and also COMMITTED CHILD RAPE AND MURDER BY THE WAY. i feel more effort should've been put into exploring akitaka's personal motives and WHY he's forgiving him outside of "oh well... he was nice to me (even though he was actively deceiving me and admitted he thought of killing me if things didn't turn out his way.)" additionally, i think kiba's backstory was in poor taste. yes, you can have characters go through traumatic events. i have plenty of my own and have read plenty other stories with such backstories. however i think it's extremely unnecessary to show in graphic detail the assault of a child, or ANYONE for that matter. in no way would it have taken away from the story if they showed the events leading up to it and then cut to black/panned away to imply what happened. they actually did that in the scene showing kiba murdering the child, though even then i think some panels were unnecessary. if you are going to add a scene, ask yourself this question: does showing this scene in detail add anything to the story other than shock value? nine times out of ten i guarantee it doesn't. by leaving in everything, you're just disgusting your readers and turning them off to the story you're trying to tell. i will only remember this as that one fucked up story that showed a child getting raped by his father in graphic detail. if there are things in the setting of the scene that are important, pan to those details instead. there is no reason why you should be drawing a //tw father giving his child oral and vice versa. shock value almost always detracts from the story. don't do it. it ruined any good part of this story.

decent yet somewhat mediocre. doesn't actually involve SA but the top uses it as like... a joke? a scare tactic? he equates it to watching a horror movie with a girl and then being nice to them after. DONT do that? this had potential to be a pretty okay fluffy plot with slight angst but the unnecessary SA & forcefulness from the top + too fast pacing kinda screwed it up