>>19282>as a horror storyThe manga has a good premise in having a socially and emotionally stunted teenager being held back by his obsessive mom and slowly becoming aware of the situation. That's fine and probably my favorite aspect of the story. However, the story started morphing out of the horror state for me around the time the cousin thing gets sidelined. A few points, like mom's further characterization and the dragged pacing killed the horror atmosphere for me. The way the author handled cousin's
recovery was also weird as fuck, it seemed like an attempt to gross out the reader, but I just thought it was too tryhard and over the top.
>as a psychological storyMC-kun was a good portrait of parental abuse and social alienation but I got pulled out of it hard when he
kills his cousin and goes to "rehab", that's when I started to feel like he was more character than human. He stopped evolving in interesting directions (in my opinion at least) around that time. Likewise, mom hops from The Monster to a case study in personality disorders to a multi-layered victim of her own circumstances way too much. As someone who had to deal with bipolars, borderlines, and schizoids, I just couldn't see her as believable in that sense. It's fine if that wasn't the intention, she wouldn't be scary if the reader could understand her, however this kills the purpose of presenting her as a psychologically complex character when she feels too alien. These two ideas are at odds with each other.
>as a drama storyAs a consequence of the past two points, I couldn't care much about the characters and their struggles. MC-kun being a dick to his crush and fucking
his cousin up makes for an interesting psychological story but for a bad drama when the reader can't relate to his behavior. I could not find myself feeling sorry for him, or rooting for him whatsoever past the first 20 chapters or so. Recent story developments have taken a more drama-focused direction, and I won't discuss them here since you haven't read them yet but, again, I found myself very uninterested and decided not to keep reading chapter updates.
>the artI hated it. Very goofy facial expressions, feels like the author is trying too hard to impress the reader. Plus poor drawing skills overall, just couldn't take it seriously. As an example, mom's face is often off-model. I know there's a narrative reason for that, but still didn't justify it enough for me. I feel like this is the kind of story that really needs good illustrations to deliver a good experience. The Shining never had to distort the actors' faces to strike fear into the viewer as an example. At least the background art was pretty.
In short:
>the art could've been better, especially facial expressions>the pacing could've been better>the horror aspect needed to not drop incestuous overtones, add more threat of violence and other areas of coercion into MC's life>the author could've done a better job in making mom more sympathetic after the story leaves the horror state, and then could push further psychological dilemmas by guilt-tripping MC (and the reader) into feeling sorry for her when responding to her aggression>remove the whole psychedelic trip before MC kills his cousin