Freesia

As someone said elsewhere, Freesia is a great manga for traumatized people. The level of enjoyment that you will get from this manga depends on your ability (and willingness) to relate to a cast comprised exclusively of various kinds of broken people, maniacs and madmen. If it’s not your cup of tea, then you will, probably, see it as a weak political satire on modern society, full of forced gibberish dialogues and illogical actions. If you can get in sync with the characters’ idiosyncrasies, than you’ll read it as a witty essay on the two most important searches, that any person conducts throughout its life– the search for the goal and the search for the balance. Freesia doesn’t allow sane characters into its main cast: the trio of protagonists consists of a clinically insane guy, a psycho and an idealist. The lead character, Kano, is an unstable schizophreniac, who experiences hallucinations, delusions and memory failures on daily basis. He somewhat compensates for this with his ability to become invisible. (The setting isn’t exactly realistic and allows for some usage of ESP powers.) While technically the plot is organized around the cases taken by the vengeance killing company, that employs the three main characters, the author is more interested in the personal stories of the company's workers and their victims. The manga explores how people affect each other in both physical and psychic ways. (The revenge agency really isn't the point, I have no idea, why people focus on talking about it in legths in the reviews.) The best part about Freesia is that it is not safe. It doesn’t embellish its characters, it doesn’t pity them and even their darkest moments are shown mercilessly, all with a great dose of dark humor. Be warned though that the manga contains large amount of gore and several rape scenes. The art won’t be to everyone’s liking. It is not pretty and it doesn’t try to be. Though, if you’ve read some works by Nihei or are familiar with Dorohedoro you will, most likely, discover its appeal. The drawings are raw, unpolished and gritty, backgrounds are overloaded with details, faces are often oversimplified for the sake of expressiveness. The composition is superb. The art slightly changes from volume to volume: the first ones are a bit unpolished, the last two have slightly different tone to them. Freesia has most of the features, characteristic of Matsumoto’s works – it is dark, dirty, satirical and twisted. But while some of his latest mangas seem to be style over substance, Freesia is still very focused and content-rich. It is a very mature and, in the end, very humane statement on the complicated art of living and on the way we have to fight constantly with the world in and around us.

This manga was incredibly bizarre. It had a decent plot overall. The concept of enforcers, the politics, corruption, and the entire system is pretty interesting. That combined with some decent action during enforcement and the stories of those that were being targeted but wanted to live also made each episode interesting. However, there were major issues with the main characters, in that they were all crazy, which makes sense considering their job. Kano, the main character especially, was really crazy. That can be made to work sometimes, but here it was just ridiculous, with him never making any sense and a good amount of what's going on being hallucinations. It was interesting at first, but the novelty woreoff quickly as it ultimately felt like there was no point to it. Wrapped up in that madness there probably was some sort of deep commentary on society or whatnot, but I wasn't able to parse it at all. In the end, it all felt pointless, where it made no sense why what was happening was happening, why we should care about any of it or anyone involved, as everyone that seemed even kind of likable ending up getting some sort of bad ending before that. Also, the art style was really rough and to put it frankly, quite awful. tl;dr: A manga that seems strange in every aspect to such a degree it's hard to get invested in any of it.

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 sodifferent 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.

Did you ever think that criminals deserve a much harsher punishment than being sent to jail to serve time? Ever thought that the famous law of Talion should be in vigour? Freesia portrays such juridical system in which the victim's family may issue a warrant to have the aggressor executed legally. The story of Freesia is narrated in a society plagued with war, in which killings are legalized and are carried out by enforcers, who are trained killers or ex-soldiers. The protagonist Kano is recruited by Higuchi to such an agency, in which he cooperates with the newbie Yamada and the senior Mizoguchi. There is moreto Kano - he is not your typical protagonist; he has a disturbing personality, is very antisocial (unable to communicate accordingly with fellow humans) and he is plagued by hallucinations. In the beginning you have literally no idea what to think of this character. The manga also displays a lot misery, corruption, cruelty, gore, paranoia, insanity and misogyny. A bit in excess in fact, impacting the story in such a way that it seems that no humanity is portrayed in society at all. Other thing to mention is the war that takes place: basically nothing is explained about it, why it did happen, how is society affected by it, none of these questions are answered, making the war a mere plot device to justify the current juridical system, which leads to other point of the story: the "enforcing". First off, there is a gist to the system: instead of criminals being executed in a controlled and official environment, criminals are hunted down by enforcers. The criminal is free to hire bodyguards to defend against the prosecutors, but these are often unaffordable, which leaves the criminals with no other option then to rely on their friends or family members. Nevertheless, they have the liberty to choose a place where the enforcement should take place. The idea is interesting, but there are problems associated with such a system: trying to assassinate each other in populated areas, hence involving and risking the lives of many innocent civilians? This would never work in reality, leaving the reader with a somewhat unsatisfactory story setting. The development of the main character Kano is one of the strongest points in Freesia. Besides of being an interesting character, Kano himself is aware that he is insane, and not the world around him as he thinks in the beginning; he tries to change it gradually, which he does through interactions with different characters and events, and his own hallucinations. This cannot be said about the other characters. There is Higuchi, who apparently has a motive for working in such an agency, but this is never portrayed throughout the manga. The same could be said about Mizoguchi: characterized by being a total psychopath, who beats his wife on regular basis, killing innocent bystanders, without having a single positive characteristic to him. Nothing is explained on why possibly he displays such behaviour. A lot of secondary characters are introduced, with some being interesting as "The Phantom", the grandma, but a lot of those are shown in some pages and just disappear, as in the case of the serial killer. This character seemed to have some importance to the story development, but after being displayed to the reader, suddenly isn't mentioned before. Or the lover of Keiko, who suddenly disappears as well. The art style of Freesia is sketchy, which fits well with the theme of the story, making it able to display the cruelty and gore of the world well. Nevertheless, inconsistencies could be found in the manga, as well as characters design being simplistic and hard to distinguish from each other. Overall Freesia was a compelling read which suggested an interesting juridical system for themes such as revenge, but failed to convey these in a realistic manner. The characters were somewhat lackluster, and lacked in humanity, Kano being the most appealing one of the narrative. Definitely recommendable to anyone who seeks a dramatic action manga. Thank you for reading.