Happiness, Vol. 6

ハピネス [Happiness] #6

by Shuzo Oshimi

OLD SCARS Years have passed since Yukiko Gosho's last horrific encounter with Makoto, and the wounds to her body and mind have healed--but imperfectly. When a charming coworker attempts to draw her out of her shell, she must confront the lingering effects of what she witnessed as a teenager. But can the past stay buried?

Genres: Manga, Horror, Vampires, Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Fiction

198 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 8, 2017

About the author

Shuzo Oshimi (押見修造, Oshimi Shūzō) is a Japanese manga creator.
Drawn in a realistic art style, his comics tend to be psychological dramas exploring the difficulties in human relationships and often touching on disturbing situations and perversions.
Oshimi debuted in 2001 with the manga series Avant-Garde Yumeko, appeared in Kodansha's 'Monthly Shōnen Magazine.' Most of his works since then have been published by Kodansha and Futabasha.
Among his first successes the single volume manga Sweet Poolside (2004), later adapted into a live-action film, and the series Drifting Net Café (2008–2011), also adapted for TV.
Oshimi reached international acclaims with The Flowers of Evil (2009–2014) and Inside Mari (2012–2016), both adapted into successful anime. Other notable works are Blood on the Tracks (2017–2023) and Welcome Back, Alice (2020-2023) .

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

After lots of beautifully constructed brooding and blood in most of the first five volumes, a surprising thing happens near the end of the fifth volume: We jump years ahead into the future, where what we think of as a relatively minor character, Yukiko Gosho, works in an office, living her simple life with her mother, seemingly forever traumatized by the events of the past, all that vampire jazz. And killing. And the loss of friends. It seemed like an abrupt shift.

If you like blood and guts vampire stories, this volume six will disappoint you, but I have to say it pretty much pleased me to go with the change in tone, to slow down, and see Yukiko befriended by a young man who sees she is anti-social, possibly depressed. Then, after all these years, Yukiko sees that one of the (bad) characters from the past is still around, Sakurane. She has to see him, to see if some of her old friends may still be alive. So we change tones again to a thriller/mystery where Yukiko takes off (danger!) and New Friend takes off after her. Good stuff.

[Victoria ✮⋆˙ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damn...now I'm all caught up with the released volumes...

[The Artisan Geek · Rating 5 out of 5]

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18/11/20
This was so cute!! It was so nice to have a volume that was mainly focused on Gosho-san!! I like how this is a manga about vampires, but it isn't afraid to venture and explore other things as well! This is just an all-round great manga series!!!

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[Floripiquita · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 estrellas para la historia en su conjunto, una de las más perturbadoras y oscuras que he leído en mucho tiempo. Como ya ha apuntado alguien por aquí, este manga tiene un aire que recuerda a “Déjame entrar” aunque la historia bebe de un montón de referencias. La trama se sumerge en una espiral sangrienta que alcanza su cenit en un par de capítulos tan heavies que me han dejado tal que así 🤯😱🤯😱 y me han dado muy mal rollo. El final me ha gustado bastante y, más, las referencias pictóricas a Picasso y Van Gogh.

[Rod Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

An effective and absorbing interlude in the vampire saga as we are bumped ten years into the future and catch up with Yukiko Gosho. She is free of vampires, except for the PTSD from her traumatic experiences in the previous volumes. She has found an office job and maybe even a shot at a romance that could help her move on with life. The end.

But, oh wait, there are still four volumes left . . .

[daph pink ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love you, Gosho baby, but I beg you not to indulge with these mf vampires. Instead, live your life without risking your life. I was especially struck by the line about how, in contrast to her other pals, only Gosho is able to live a regular life. I'm looking forward to the upcoming volumes and the answers, but I'm also wondering what specific solutions we are looking for.

[James DeSantis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A series that turned from a High School Vampire story to a full blown recovery story about PTSD and violent attacks. Holy shit, Oshimi is growing as a writer for sure.

As we saw in the last volume Gosho is now trying to live her life out as a independent woman working a 9-5. But one of her coworkers cares deeply about her and decides to ask her out. But as he gets to know her she stumbles on a newspaper about the vampire who slashed her neck prior and almost ended her life. She goes into a full blown nervous breakdown and this volume is about her recovery with the help of a friend.

If you told me this manga would move me by volume 6 I'd call you a liar. It's not that volume 1-3 are bad, they're good, but this feels like a way different story. This is a more mature look at recovering and finding happiness in the darkest days. So will Gosho be able to do that? To move on? To live her life? The way we all should when horrible shit happens to us in the past? Easier said than done, isn't it?

Happiness volume 6 might be the best volume in the sense of character growth and even character relationship. Sure, we don't move the plot forward for other characters and such but Gosho we move mountains of character development to get to know her and how she'll survive.

I loved this volume. A 5 out of 5.

[Brandon Baker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunate time jump that killed all suspense and had me contemplating if I should just pretend this was a 5 volume series 😅

[Keiko, the manga enthusiast ♒︎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

The past can never be buried, it will always crawl its way up

In this volume, we get to see the gloomy life of Yukiko Gosho a decade after the vampiric incidents. Wearing a scarf around her neck, she tries to hide the mark that the past incident left her to remember forever. Gosho became friends with Sudo after a revelation in the after-work gatherings. Gosho tried to live her life the normal way with Sudo always on her side trying to breathe life out of her... until the news about Sakurane spread around the country, and Gosho found her way to the lot where Nao used to live... the past catching up to her. Gosho decided to face the thing that's weighing her down for over a decade now.

This series is really fantastic. I love how ironic that they call it, "the blood of happiness", like happiness is when the light already left your eyes, and then there are these characters full of life but normally living gloomy and sad every day.

I even remembered a chapter cover in the earliest volumes post-vampire bite Makoto, with him eating an apple. Like, he's finally enlightened after Nora bit him. It just messes with the mind, that's why I love ironies. Like, what is happiness really? Is it stealing someone else's life? Is it indulging yourself in pleasure? Is it the awakening of something within you? Is not the fact that finally, you're not feeling anything anymore—the numbness? I just adore this series so much.

[Jon Ureña · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a review of volumes 5-6.

Oshimi pulled off some daring plot points and now that the turning point of the story has been executed, and the baton of the protagonist has been passed to the main character still on scene, the author has managed to illuminate the themes properly. At its core, this is a story about whether or not one can find happiness despite having endured a terrible trauma, and bearing the guilt of having survived when loved ones didn't.

We left our infected protagonist having separated from his sociopathic best friend (a company I had hoped from the beginning he was going to ditch). Nora, the vampire girl who had turned the protagonist, had correctly identified the sociopathic guy as bad trouble, and had violently pushed for him to fuck off. She convinced the protagonist to finally leave his former life behind and fly away with her like predatory love birds. Meanwhile, the sociopathic friend, who had (big spoilers) turned into a vampire, a condition for which he's terribly ill-adjusted, visits his devoted girlfriend not only to hide but to quench his thirst for blood with some continuous fucking. The deed gets interrupted by the girl's parents. The sociopathic guy flips out and massacres everybody. When he comes back to his senses, it's too late. Now he wants to die, but his vampiric condition has made him too strong, and will need some help to be put out of his misery.

One of the main characters I hadn't mentioned in my previous reviews was an isolated classmate of the protagonist: Yukiko Gosho, someone who embodied the theme from the beginning: she had befriended the protagonist because he was the spitting image of her little brother who had died from an illness some years ago. She never forgave herself for having been unable to help, and she began caring for her new pal in a motherly way. When the protagonist separates from his contacts to avoid tangling them in the vampiric stuff, Gosho spends her time searching for clues to find him. Along the way she ends up meeting a shady guy who was also investigating vampires, supposedly because his sister had been killed by one when they were children.

Big spoilers from now on. While trying to contact the sociopathic guy's girlfriend (who now lies exsanguinated), the guy takes the call and agrees to meet Gosho and her new shady pal. When they realize what has happened, the shady guy invites both Gosho and the sociopathic guy to hide at his apartment. There this shady guy reveals that although he's not a vampire, he's a monster of a different nature: something of a serial killer who is attracted to the whole vampire thing either because he sees in them kindred spirits, or because his past with the dead sister is true. In any case, he slashes Gosho's throat and leaves her to die in a burning apartment. Gosho manages to find enough strength to escape, although realistically she should have bled to death, because I'm pretty sure that wound severed the carotid.

The turning point happens: as the protagonist and his beloved vampire prepare to escape, something like the Japanese SWAT ambushes them and manages to shoot them down. They can regenerate, so they'll be fine, but the protagonist wakes up to find himself turned into a lab rat. They'll torture him until they break his mind. As if that wasn't enough, the author surprised me with a ten year break between that scene and the following one: Gosho has become the protagonist, and we follow this now 27-28 woman as she attempts to live her rather meaningless life as an office worker, while living with her mother. You can tell she has spent all these years bottling up the pain, suffering from trauma she can't acknowledge to survive, and keeping everybody around her at arm's length. She wears scarfs constantly to avoid showing the gruesome scar on her neck; when her coworkers find out rather forcefully, they are weirded out.

A handsome enough coworker of Gosho's takes an interest in her; he's charmed by the mystery that surrounds her, her bluntness, and general cuteness. Gosho is reluctant to allow anyone in, but he insists. Gosho learns that the guy who cut her neck open is getting out of jail for a presumably unrelated offense; the woman suffers a breakdown and can't leave her home without triggering a panic attack. Her coworker helps her carry on with her normal life. Once he invites her for a regular date, she opens up a bit and ends up enjoying herself. It was heartwarming to see this now woman smile after so many years in a dissociative state. During the date she ends up showing this coworker mementos of her past: the school she went to, the lot that used to contain the house her friend was slaughtered in. They come across the protagonist's mother, who invites them home. They reminisce for a bit. When Gosho and her coworker leave, however, she's struggling with the now flowing pain she had contained for the last ten years. She can't forgive herself for having survived when everybody else didn't, and for having given up on finding the protagonist. She lies to her mother and her coworker to travel and meet the guy who slashed her, in search of some clues. The coworker, who is in love at this point, figures out where she's gone and follows her. This volume ends there.

Until the last volume, this series was about people with supernatural powers losing their minds to foreign insticts that called for them to rip throats open or defend themselves in spectacular ways. That's just less involving than the intimate story of someone dealing with a trauma that separates her from everybody around her, and that prevents her from acknowledging her emotions. I'm quite invested in Gosho's journey at this point.

[Remxo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this was unexpected. Not only did Oshimi change genres from horror to drama with volumes 5 and 6, but unexpectedly (to me at least) he shifts the focus solely to Gosho a decade after the traumatic events of the previous volumes. Gosho is in her early twenties. She has a job and lives her life. But she isn't living. Not really.

Lots of slice of life scenes of her at work, interacting with colleagues, but the psychological fallout of intense trauma is always festering in the background. Oshimi's sensitive portrayal of Shogo's self-imposed mental isolation, is strikingly well done. His extemely decompressed style of storytelling allows him to explore in subtle detail Gosho's inability to truly connect. Might be my favorite volume in this series so far.

[Alice4170 🌙 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5 ⭐️

[Alec Costa · Rating 3 out of 5]

um volume sem muitos acontecimentos, mas necessário demais pra porra os pingos no Is depois do final do 5°

[Irene ➰ · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5

It's getting better and better!!!
Considering how fast it goes I have a feeling I can finish this series today, I'll try.

The art got MUCH better in this volume.
She looks older which is good because I was confused why in the previous book why she was looking the same after 10 years lol

The mystery gets deeper and darker. The storyline evolves bringing the nightmares from the past to the present time continuing the main story that was left suspended in V5 to probably introduce better the world after the time skip.

[nia ✿ · Rating 3 out of 5]

i think i’m supposed to like the dude but i can’t stand him and his behaviour is pissing me tf off

[Connie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book via Kindle Unlimited.

This book is set 10 years after the events in Volume 5. Yukito now has a temp job, she wears a scarf to hide the scars on her neck from where Sukurane attacked her 10 years ago and she keeps to herself, much as she always has. This slowly starts to change when a friendly co-worker, Sudo, begins to pull her out of her shell slowly but surely, and she begins to have to confront what she witnessed as a teenager. When Sukurane is found, living in a weird commune, and is all over the news for his previous murders, she is triggered into her very obvious PTSD which she is supported through by Sudo.

This was a slower volume in the series, but that's not necessarily a negative thing. I loved seeing adult Yukito and how her life has changed and moved from the horrible events that happened in Volume 1-5. I love Sudo and I hope he and Yukito end up together and not dead, which is where I feel like this series might go.

[Sassy Sarah Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars. I am going to go out on a limb and say this is my favorite in the series. It is important to note that this story is all about Gosho now. This volume is about dealing with trauma and the effects it has on you with PTSD, anxiety, and depression. It is a beautiful exploration of a character's experience after being stripped off her innocence due to a madman.

[Sean O'Hara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oshimi's work is brilliant as always, but 90% of it consists of brooding, silent panels that portend something awful is about to happen, whch means it only takes twenty minutes to read a 200 page manga. And now I have to wait five months for the next volume.

[Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A transitionary volume. The entire volume is spent dealing with Gosho's mourning. Probably the most decompressed volume thus far, but it works well in establishing Gosho's grief. Looks like things pick back up next volume.

[Caahpinotti ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ · Rating 3 out of 5]

this felt like a domestic manga, focusing on gosho-san and how her life is after 10 years from the events of the firsts volumes . really adorable❦❦❦
ooh, and if a boy doesn’t go looking for you in a religious cult for vampires, what’s the point?

[Karoline · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.4🌟
Gosho no puede vivir una vida normal después de lo que sucedió. Vamos a por Okazaki 🥺

[Urbon Adamsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Watching Yukiko trying to rebuild her life is heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time.

She is not able to break free of the past and she goes searching for closure.

Oshimi's story pacing is excruciating at times, but I love it because it's the correct pacing for the reader to absorb all the emotions.

For example, while Yukiko goes on with her daily life trying to forget the past, you can feel the presence of a shadow over her just by the way each panel is drawn page after page. You need pages, lots of pages to achieve this. That is why the number of pages matter and I feel this is something that is a lot of times overlooked by western authors.

Amazing series.

[Mateus Bandeira · Rating 4 out of 5]

um volume full contemplativo sobre os traumas causados em um ser humano por conta dos vampiros? não esperava, mas que coisa linda. que bom que isso existe.

[Balerion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Things slow down significantly in this volume compared to the last two, but I’ve grown to like Gosho a lot and became invested in her story so I don’t mind it at all.
I wonder if she is taking on the role of the mc now? Or will we eventually go back to focusing on Makoto?

Also, I forget his name but I really like Gosho’s coworker that she been spending time with, he’s so sweet. I know I’m gonna be upset if anything happens to him lol.

[Snow · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5

Fav volume so far!

[Tobi ﾄﾋﾞ · Rating 5 out of 5]

"it’s nothing, it’s just… curry is something for normal
people to enjoy" gosho is not like other girls

[V. Aryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this volume!!! Gosho has been my favorite character in the series, so it was great to slow down the pace and catch up with her after the time skip. She is deeply affected by the trauma she's endured and cannot let go of Makoto's disappearance. The romance that had started to bloom was really sweet. I hope it's not short-lived, but this is a horror manga 😭

[elisabeth:) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not the biggest fan of time jumps but I like the way Shuzo Oshimi does them. I am happy to learn more about Yukiko Gosho

[hima · Rating 3 out of 5]

hmmm not sure where this is going

[Ophelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nah what 😭