JISATSU CIRCLE
STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
1
RELEASE
April 10, 2002
CHAPTERS
6
DESCRIPTION
Jisatsu Circle is a manga based on a movie of the same title, written and directed by Sion Sono. At first, the manga was intended to follow the same story, but Sion Sono asked Usamaru Furuya to adapt his own story to it, which resulted in a plot much easier to understand.
The story begins with the same opening scene, where 54 girls commit suicide by jumping in front of a moving train. However, one girl survives (Saya Kota) and opens another Suicide Club, with other victims. Her best friend, Kyoko, fears for Saya's future and begins to search for the strange secrets surrounding the Suicide Club to try and save Saya and the other girls from committing such a tragedy again.
CAST
Saya Kota
CHAPTERS
REVIEWS
TheGruesomeGoblin
Fifty four girls jump in front of an oncoming train. This is the story of the one that miraculously survives.Continue on AniListIt’s probably redundant to provide a warning for this manga considering the translation of the title is literally “Suicide Circle” but I feel the need to do it regardless. This series is centered around the topic of suicide and contains other likely uncomfortable subjects such as self-harm and teenage prostitution… so, if you’re not in the market for reading something unpleasant, I would recommend looking elsewhere.
Suicide Circle
I’m reviewing this manga from the perspective of a person completely unfamiliar with the movie that this was originally based off of. Instead, I approached it solely as a fan of Usamaru Furuya’s other manga. I think at this point I definitely do consider him as one of my favorite mangakas. I really really like his gore and I also really respect the almost bizarre variety of ideas for series.
Every single time I pick up another one of his manga, I have absolutely no idea what to expect. And in this case, I mean that in a positive manner. Course, as I've already noted, this manga is a tie-in adaptation of a movie.
But apparently, the director of the movie insisted that Usamaru Furuya put his own spin on the manga rather than follow the script of the movie as he originally planned. So apparently the only thing ripped straight from the movie wholesale was the opening scene of over fifty high school girls jumping in front of an incoming train.
Which to be fair, if you're looking for an attention grabbing opening to your movie or manga...
...there's really no going wrong with that. He doesn't pull any punches either. The next page shows the tracks afterward and they're just littered with bodies and blood. Plenty of them are just in pieces. But of course, of the fifty four that jumped, there was one girl who somehow managed to survive completely unhurt. Many would consider such a thing a miracle
because I think even if there were fifty four, a full speeding train would likely kill all of thembut not the survivor in question.Saya Kota was really set on dying.
To make things even worse, not only did she not die, but she also lost her idol, Mitsuko-san. She feels that in surviving, she's been abandoned. And in her depression, she finds a new path to follow.
Mitsuko-san's. She failed in dying with Mitsuko-san's suicide circle... so she takes the moniker onto herself to start a new one to try again.
I think my favorite part about this manga is there isn't just one possible interpretation to take away from it. As long as you pretend the part where an apparition of Saya as a child shows up and starts acting all spooky and shit to Kyoko is strictly in her head, you can go with the "there are no supernatural hijinks going on" interpretation.
I think it works way better if it's just a continuing chain of incredibly misfortunate girls carrying and passing on a suicidal tradition than "spooky ghost shit."
Conclusion
It's short, and it's definitely not my favorite Usamaru Furuya manga, but I do like it quite a lot. My favorite bit probably being at the very end where
Kyoko and Saya are having their conversation as they're falling. The part where Saya's face collides with the ground midconversation is fucking grisly.
Still, I probably could have lived without the depictions of self-harm and teenage prostitution which was just... thoroughly unpleasant, but that was obviously the point.
So with the unpleasant stuff factored in, I give this manga centered around high school girls killing themselves and also some murder a 6.5 out of 10 or 65 out of 100.
...What a cursed line to type.
atomx
Teenage Girls and Cults. What could go wrong?Continue on AniList
On May 31, 2001, 54 girls gather on at Shinjuku Train Station and start lining up at the end of the boardwalk while holding their hands. Once the train arrives they jump onto the tracks resulting in all of them, except one, dying brutally. The lone survivor is left alone crying for a mysterious person called “Mitsuko”
Suicide Circle is an adaption of the movie with the same name by esteemed japanese director Sion Sono. He personally requested the manga to be made by Usamaru Furuya and gave him creative freedom. In a way it’s more an interpretation of the movie instead of a direct adaptation.
Furuya only borrowed the title and the opening sequence leaving the rest of the manga to his imagination.“I don’t mind if the manga is completely different. I want you to write your own “Suicide Club”, Furuya-San.”
The story is based around the survivor of the seemingly first accident called Saya and her best friend Kyoko. Saya is a young girl suffering from mental health problems as she has been sexually abused by her father, which caused her to start cutting her wrist and becoming socially isolated. Her life seems to be hopeless until she meets a girl called Mitsuko, who leads a club of socially inept girls that for whatever reason have been wronged by society. As Saya becomes more and more obsessed with Mitsuko, Kyoko starts to worry about what is becoming of her friend.
After the train suicide she starts investigating Mitsuko and gets help from her teacher who frequents online forums to gather information. It turns out that Mitsuko isn’t a real person but a phenomenon that occurs in these suicide groups. The Mitsuko that was Saya’s idol, was a survivor of a previous Mitsuko and so on.
“Suicide Circle” has a double meaning. While the girls gather in a big circle before jumping off the roof it also serves as representation of the circular nature of the trauma that is left unchecked by society. Each time a group kills themselves another Mitsuko is born (shown in Kyoko at the end). Overcome with trauma and isolated from society she starts gathering a group of followers just for the same thing to repeat.
Furuya doesn’t shy away from showing the horrors that teenagers can go through in Japan. Bullying, blackmail, sexual abuse.. the list could go on forever. What is worse than these forms of suffering is that there is no help from any adults. Teachers seemingly ignore what is happening and parents are either too busy working or just not interested in their children.
In the end notes of the manga Furuya tells us that he took inspiration from the “darkness that girls these days carry… cutting their wrists, wanting to kill themselves, pseudo-religious groups and other things like that.”
It becomes clear that Mitsuko is not an evil entity that manifests in teenage girls. This isn't a supernatural manga about an old folktale. She is a representation of what happens if someone is left all alone with no one to help them. It's what happens when a society punishes anyone that steps outside of the norm by ignoring them. At the end of the day these are just little girls that have been abandoned by everyone and need something to believe in. Can you really blame them?
Mitsko-San has been born.
But she herself doesn’t seem to have noticed it.
I wonder what she’ll be like.
Suicide Club . End
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SCORE
- (2.95/5)
MORE INFO
Ended inApril 10, 2002
Favorited by 74 Users