フリージア

FREESIA

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
12
RELEASE
August 25, 2009
CHAPTERS
84

DESCRIPTION

Freesia is set in an alternative Japanese society that is at war, and has passed a law legalizing retaliatory killings. If somebody kills your loved one, you are legally sanctioned to kill, or hire someone to kill, the victimizer. The manga is set around a character who works for a firm that specializes in these retaliatory killings.

(Source: OneManga)

CAST

Hiroshi Kano
Mariko Higuchi
Masaki Mizoguchi
Ichiro Yamada
Hisae Iwao
Keita Tanaka
Keiko
Toshio Iwasaki
Ide
Kotomi
Shibazaki
Bobby
Terashima
Nobuko Imaichi

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

MasterCrash
90/100
If you're into psychological stuff you're going to be highly entertained by this work.
Have I ever told you the definition of insanity?

Freesia is written by Matsumoto Jiro, a man that makes manga that are pretty hard to figure out if they are art or simply ramblings by the mind of an insane person. Freesia, his longest work as of date, is the manga that made me realize that its simply both. Honestly, all the other manga that I read from him, Wendy, Netsutai no Citron and Benchin no Madala, were all manga that, even though I enjoyed, I wasn't that big of a fan, but I continued to read mostly out of curiosity, because it was so different than any other mangaka that I had found so far.
Freesia as most of Jiro's staples in it, the weird art, the weird characters, the sexual themes, and the dark atmosphere, while at the same time being more stable and taking more time to really establish the story, settings and characters, that's why Freesia is the first manga of his that I really put among my all time favorites.
There's something about Freesia. You know those works that really makes you hate humanity? Those movies, books or anime that just show the worst in people, that every character is made for you to hate?
That's what Freesia is. a story about horrible, insane people, that ultimately are human.
The manga starts with our main character talking to a imaginary friend, in a coffee shop. Eventually a woman that looks like the imaginary friend comes and convinces Kano to join a organization that is supposed to execute ex-cons if a relative of the person the ex-con killed wishes to. Everything is approved by the government so that the people forget the war that's going on.
This war is never explored much, it just exists in the background, there lingering and creating tension.
If you think this story is about why the woman looks like the imaginary friend, it's not. That plot is revealed pretty early on, and in the words of Kano: "Oh, that's all there is? I thought it was something important." This manga is full of those moments. Things that seem important to us, and to the people around Kano, ultimately end up being nothing in his mind, of course, his mind is a mess. There's a scene where he doesn't kill a man because: "He felt like the man didn't want it", even though that's his job. It's almost like he's a child thrown in that environment and is just going with the flow.
But Kano isn't the only one in this state. A lot of the main characters have some kind of delusions and hallucinations going on. The fine line between reality and hallucination is never fully revealed until it's too late.
In the end everything falls together. It's not like we get every explanation to every question spoon fed us, but it connects very well and what needs to be explained is explained. It's a manga that feels much like the movie Fight Club, Filth or Memento and has the same kind of surreal feel to it.
The only bad point I can find is the art, which either you like it or you don't. It's unique and it works well with the atmosphere, but I can see how a lot of people would be put off by the messy lines and horrible faces.
All in all, this is a great manga and if you're into psychological stuff you're going to be highly entertained by this work.
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Munhozmib
100/100
The violence and the art style might make you want to stop reading - survive those and you'll read a true masterpiece.
In the beginning, you can't really guess what a masterpiece is about to unfold. But it might incite you to keep on reading. Perhaps a little bit too violent in the first few chapters, but soon enough we're all adapted to the alternate Japan in which Freesia takes place. Don't get me wrong, the violence will still be there, but in a way that you'll simply get used to it. It won't be a shock anymore.

The story starts with a main character, Kano, and his imaginary friends. Quite a delusional character, you see. A little mind-bugged, but a functional citizen. As the story unfolds, it gets further from the main character and focus on what Freesia truly is. A place where you can make vengeance with your own hands, authorized by law - or hire somebody to do it for you. This concept is spectacularly well developed in the manga. If you had a family member or a loved one killed, you can set up a vengeance act: you are allowed to have a certain number of killers to do the job to you, on a specific day, for a specific number of hours. And the "victim" (the one who killed your family member) will get a notice beforehand, and will be able to hire his own bodyguards, with the same rules. Basically, a legal fight to death.

Deep down, it's all about getting the right clues to what exactly is going on. A well written story full of paranoia and delirium, and you can never really trust what you see. You'll get tricked into believing in some things that didn't really happen. It will happen, no matter how aware you are. And it will happen to you at least more than once. And when you go back to certain chapters, you'll pick up clues you didn't see... Because you'll know exactly what to look for. You'll find hints everywhere, all the time. But on the first ride, you'll miss a big portion of those. You can only start connecting the dots after finishing it.

The art itself is something that might make you think about not reading it entirely. Some believe the art is wonderful. To me, personally, it's plain too ugly / sketched. But it suits perfectly the concept of the plot itself, so it seems like it was drawn that way on purpose. Many characters look alike, which might give you quite a confusion at certain times. But even in this particular art style, you'll still find all the hints you need.

You might have to think a lot after you finish it. You might have to discuss it with others. You might have to find people who've read it and share your thoughts. That's art in its purest concept. You can consume it again and it might give you a totally different understanding. You'll find out you were wrong at first, at many things. There are plot twists, but there are subtle turns of events that seem insignificant to the main story - but are they? And the theories about that ending... Oh, you'll find so little of those!

That's what art is all about: the discussions, the excitement, the thoughts, the brain put to work, the multiple views you can have. The hidden details and the shown ones. The subtle hints you receive. And Freesia reaches it in great style.
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Dookie047
100/100
Freesia- Out of the Shadows and Into the Phantasm
THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR FREESIA

Freesia, created by Jiro Matsumoto, began serialization in 2001, and although it never quite got successful enough to get an official translation, it has certainly become one of the most fascinating series to come out of the 2000s. Its downright repulsive art coupled with an equally revolting story sets a unique vibe that will probably turn most sane minded people off, but looking past it and jumping headfirst into it will allow you to go through the most thought provoking experience you can possibly have with manga.

So, what is it that makes such a seemingly excessive and edgy series so special? The best comparison I can make may seem a little strange at first, but it is ultimately incredibly fitting. Think of The Matrix. Think about how that franchise sort of lured a general audience in with its bombastic action and unique world building to then hit them with a one-two of the most thought provoking philosophy in blockbuster history. Freesia similarly starts off with a very tempting premise. It sets up a gritty, violence ridden world similar to something like Psycho Pass. It is confident about its tone from the get go and pushes its hyper interesting ideas to their very limits before completely breaking them down in the finale.

This aforementioned tone may very well be what has enticed so many readers to actually get through some of the stranger elements. It is a wonderfully sadistic concoction of disturbing, violent thriller and some truly messed up dark humor. Despite what some of the more pseudo intellectual fans will have you think, this series is really just one big comedy. Kano’s constant strange behavior constantly got a laugh out of me before it uplifted me. The series is definitely playing a juggling act, balancing all the elements I’ve mentioned together, but I feel as though it works wonders and is a huge part of the reason why this series speaks to me so much.
Enough about the technicalities of the series, though; it’s time to sink our teeth into its meaty meal. In the broadest sense, Freesia is about how our worlds distinctly affect our psychologies and what happens when those ideals or morals snap in front of us. It is almost an exhibition of flawed and sometimes twisted people trying to get by in a cruel world, lying to themselves with codes and rules to try to ease the pain, only to see it all crash down. Instead of facing the terror of reality, we hide ourselves under heavy coats of denial and hallucination until we simply go crazy. It is not a story of happy endings, in fact, most parables here end with either death or complete psychotic breaks, but to really understand it, we must simply dig in.

One of the simplest displays of the series’ main idea comes from the minor character of Hisae Iwao. Her past with her father was assumed to have changed her in a way that she never recovered from. Her built up anger and trauma caused her to indulge in a downward spiral of violence and murder, trying to let all of it out despite only encouraging it. Through all of this destruction, she convinces herself she does it purely out of interest, and when this explanation is refuted, she has her father to blame. Just as Ide tells her, her dad isn’t the one making her do all this, she is. When the job fails and she’s forced to confront this head on, she completely breaks, figuratively and literally. She destroys her entire office, and she imagines the ground itself turning to sky under her feet. What can she do now?

Her character sets a nice basis for what the rest of the manga is really trying to say, but she’s just off to the side for the most part. When we’re looking at the three main characters, they each exhibit these core ideas in independently unique ways. We will first look at arguably the most psychotic, demented, violent, loathable, and nauseating person in the entire series: Masaki Mizoguchi.

Mizoguchi has a unique arc among the series, as his world view doesn’t just get broken but completely flipped on its head. He bases his entire life around the concept of the hunter and the prey. He got hurt once, and he mustn’t let it happen again. He must rise above those he views as weak. He is stronger, better. He is the lion among the zebras. That is what he must be. Even if it means he has to kill and hurt whoever happens to be even the most minor of inconveniences to him. What really shakes up this ideology for him is the presence of Kano. His mere presence questions the reality that Mizoguchi has built for himself. He is simultaneously the culmination of all dull, blent in zebras while simultaneously being the apex predator. To Mizoguchi, he is nothing but a threat to his view of life, and it eventually drives him insane. He needs to murder him because this confirms his “difference” from the crowd. In the process, he ironically has the exact same effect to placebo as everyone else who took it. He is not different. He is just another prey, and he falls like prey. Under the knife of a teenage girl.

Going in a completely different, although eerily similar direction, we have Ichiro Yamada. Instead of guarding himself from reality with violence, he does so with morals. A strict set of rules that will keep him grounded in humanity as long as they remain unbroken. However, these laws he set in place for himself are constantly clashing with his own personal hatred towards the cruelty of the world. He constantly has to stop himself from executing corrupt bodyguards simply because the rules dictate so. It all comes to a head when he accidentally kills an innocent civilian, putting him in a moral rock bottom of sorts, which breaks his will completely. He chooses to ignore his responsibility as a proxy agent and puts the entire job behind him to try to move on from the painful truth of his failure, but it will never truly go away.

So what’s the point at the end? Is Freesia just a collection of overly cruel sob stories meant to show how fucked up the world is without any rhyme or reason, or can you learn something within its dark, grimy confines? Can you really dig through all the filth and find... “something?” What is “something?” Is finding “something” the central journey of the entire series? After each character suffers that traumatic moment, they desperately search for “something” to ease it, but the only person who really seems to find it is Toshio, who dies soon after. This mortal encounter with Toshio puzzles Kano into really, truly undergoing change.

Before looking at Kano’s journey of self-growth, though, we should examine Keita Tanaka, the closest thing Freesia has to a main antagonist and the polar antithesis of Kano’s conclusion. They start off at the exact same spot, having undergone a wildly scarring series of events that led them to practically break completely. They suffer partial memory loss, having replaced memories with something completely different to soothe the trauma. They are both unhealthily obsessed with the past and paralyzingly afraid of the future. They have to take initiative for the responsibility of the present, but they can never act for themselves to do so. In the end, Tanaka can’t let go of the past. He can’t drop that bracelet. He can’t build his own character. He is haunted by the ghosts of the past.

This leads us to the protagonist of our story, Hiroshi Kano. After enlisting in the war and being an uncaring spectator to many unsavory things, he too is haunted by ghosts of the past. These hallucinations cause him to practically go insane, hyper-simplifying things in a sort of checklist for him to achieve a “normal life.” This normal life is all he seeks to attain. He wishes to conform to all of society’s expectations and blend in with the environment. But his normal life is flawed. His mom is a senile old woman who is deathly afraid of him, his girlfriend constantly cheats on him in the same room his mother sleeps in, his job is practically that of a hired assassin. Through all of this, however, he unquestioningly listens to others’ requests of him. If he follows his job, a normal life may very well await him. Life isn’t this simple. You can’t keep pretending it is forever. You can’t take comfort in the past when the present is performing a barrel roll right into your nose. You have to pick up the phone when reality calls and think for yourself. You have to accept your ultimate responsibility as a human being and head towards it, even if it means going against an army. Even if it means you have to come back and finish the job as a haunting specter. Through the phantasm, you can accept the utmost reality through simple communication. Reject the fantasy in favor of the simple connection between humans. Through this, Kano ascends to our literal, real world reality and talks right to you. It doesn’t matter what the conversation is about, he just wants to. And that is certainly “something.”

10/10
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