"The Abyss of Youth" Long Review - Portrayal of Those Who Have Experienced Darkness#
This review is based on chapters 1-132 of the work.
This review will try to avoid spoilers.
Review Statement#
"Once a literary work is published, the right to interpret it no longer belongs solely to the author."
However, as an ordinary reader, the thoughts and evaluations I make can only represent my personal thinking and do not have an exclusive evaluation of the author or other readers' opinions.
Keywords of the Work#
"So I thought it would be interesting to combine the feeling of being trapped in one's heart and place, and the sense of confinement within a family."
Minezaki Ryo, the author, has three keywords for his work:
"Heart," "Place," and "Sense of confinement within a family."
"Every person who has thought of dying can find their own shadow within it."
-- maxx0304 Thoughts and Recommendations on "The Abyss of Youth"
To understand the main theme of the work, we need to pay attention to the title of the work - "Shounen no Abyss" (The Abyss of Youth). The key word in it is "Abyss." This word may not be so familiar, so let's take a look at the definition in the dictionary:
Abyss
noun
a deep or seemingly bottomless chasm.
In particular, "Abyss" in this work refers to what? The so-called "Abyss" refers to the difference between the self created by one's own intimate relationships and the self one expects. In this work, the latter mainly refers to the influence of the family on the individual.
However, this "Abyss" created by one's own intimate relationships is woven from the familiar and comfortable lifestyle and interpersonal relationships that one is familiar with and feels at ease with. Once you leave this comfort zone, you will feel suffocated. Leaving behind the people who love you, the people you love, and leaving behind this familiar past, this is the price you must pay and the challenge you must face to escape the Abyss.
"Drowning" and "Suffocation"
That tropical fish, being kept in a small tank by humans, might one day die due to human negligence;
However, if a fisherman insists on "rescuing" this poor tropical fish from the tank, the fish will suffocate and die the moment it regains its freedom.
Main Theme of the Work#
In this world, the impact of family on individuals is different: some individuals benefit from their families, some families harm individuals; most relationships between families and individuals are a mixture of beauty and pain, difficult to separate.
In this work, the protagonist "Reiji" and the other characters around him are all trapped in the Abyss caused by their families for various reasons. By a creative coincidence, all the main characters in this work are more or less harmed by their families and environment, struggling to live in the gap between wanting to escape but fearing suffocation. The setting of the work is in a remote and closed "place" town [2], which geographically manifests the Abyss in the characters' hearts. The physical boundaries make the option of "escape" even more costly. The characters face the pain of reality and their inner selves, but are bound by the "Abyss" and cannot escape to the dreamlike "Tokyo." So their only choice for self-liberation is in their "hearts" - suicide with a touch of romance, which may be easier to do or not.
As the characters in the work grow in the Abyss, they each become aware of their true selves and the mismatch between their true selves and the Abyss. Driven by this growing contradiction, each character uses their own methods to fight against the Abyss, resulting in different outcomes. Some characters die in battle, some characters bide their time, more characters choose self-exile in time or space, and some characters even choose to shatter their "true selves" and merge with the Abyss. With such diverse choices and outcomes, the work provides readers with a variety of emotional resonances. If a reader has experienced similar life dilemmas, they will surely find a moment of themselves in this work. Of course, it may be difficult for someone who has lived their whole life under the sunshine to truly understand the emotions of the characters in the work, because this work is a story about "how people in the darkness deal with the darkness."
Why Use the Romantic Element of "Heart"?#
When people encounter setbacks and pain in reality, they often want to escape, and this emotion develops to the extreme as suicide. However, death is painful and contradicts the instinctual survival desire of humans at the genetic level. The survival desire of humans in extreme states is infinite. This often leads to "suicide attempts" rather than actual suicide. Here is some knowledge that may not be suitable for outsiders:
- "Surviving a suicide attempt" is more painful than the event that initially triggered the "suicide."
To avoid this greater pain, or to avoid "failed attempts," suicide victims need to give meaning to this act beyond "escaping." Some people use responsibility and love - "If I die, xx will definitely have a better life"; some people use anger and revenge - "My death is all because of you, you wait to suffer."
In this work, when the characters reach the point of wanting to end themselves, they use the romantic element of "heart" to give suicide additional meaning. To achieve the romantic formula of "heart," sometimes they have to resort to "unreasonable coercion" in their hearts. Because everyone wants to make their life shine. Even for those whose real life is so dim that it is suffocating, they want to embellish their lives with a splendid death. For certain characters in the work, it is this glimmer of life that drives them to embrace death.
The author chose the romantic death formula of "heart" as the characters' fixed last wish, which not only enhances the interaction between the characters and develops the plot, but also meets the true psychological needs of the desperate.
What a manga artist hasn't experienced, they can't draw.
- Akasaka Aka
Only Courage Can Overcome Darkness#
The tropical fish in the tank must leap out of the tank, cross the river, and reach the salty sea to truly obtain freedom.
To some extent, this work is devoid of sunlight. So far, no matter where the characters try to escape to, they cannot escape the bondage of the Abyss, as if they can never escape the rivers where the flowers bloom on the other side. However, the work actually mentions a character who successfully escapes the Abyss - he is Reiji's uncle and Yuuko's brother.
Yuuko's brother was able to escape the Abyss and obtain true freedom, and the only thing he relied on was "courage." As the foundation and only core of all human virtues, "courage" is once again praised in this work.
Appendix#
[1]: "Heart" is the translation of "shinju" in Chinese. It is a cultural image in Japanese culture, referring to an agreement between people with intimate relationships to go to the afterlife together to fulfill many eternal things that cannot be achieved in this life. Representative works with the theme of "heart" include ("shinju mono"):
- Ningyo Joruri Sonezaki Shinju by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, 1703
- Ningyo Joruri "Shinju Nimaie Sugoroku" by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, 1703
- Ukiyo-zoshi "Shinju Daikan"
- Rakugo Shinagawa Shinju
[2]: The real prototype of the setting of this work is Hita City, Oita Prefecture, Kyushu Island, which is the farthest city in Kyushu from the sea. By the way, the author, Minezaki Ryo, is from the nearby Fukuoka Prefecture:
