Two and a half stars for the first volume of three. The title of this story translates to "The Few Things I Can Do For Anna Even Though I Didn't Deserve To Be Born".
The protagonist we follow is a guy in his early thirties, a bitter and resentful loser who hasn't achieved anything he had set out to do, who remains in love with a childhood friend (the titular Anna), who lies to everybody he knows about even keeping a part-time job, although in reality he spends all day holed up in his filthy apartment surrounded by trash and anime paraphernalia, and masturbates most of his time away only to fall asleep as the tears and cum dry up. My kind of man.
He's invited by his his best childhood friends, this Anna woman and a guy. Turns out that those two childhood friends have enjoyed reasonably successful lives and even got married to each other, which the protagonist can hardly resent more. They invited him to announce that she's gotten pregnant; given that the protagonist had always pined for her and on the back of his mind he probably fantasized that she'd "come to her senses" and leave her husband for the broken protagonist, her getting pregnant finally destroyed any minimal chance. After he leaves, he gets as drunk as possible and wanders to their school in a fit of nostalgia. He finds it open, and not thinking for a moment about the trouble he could get into as a chubby, slovenly thirty something year old man sneaking into a children's classroom, he finds the one they used to belong to and inside he locates the desk this Anna person used to sit at.
I'll write significant spoilers from now on, and I can't be arsed to tag them. You don't care about this enough anyway.
Until now the author could have prepared us a somewhat sympathetic, although enormously broken, protagonist whose flaws and bad luck ended up wrecking his life. However, this is not the kind of story the author intends to tell. This miniseries is closer to the fucked up "Onani Master Kurosawa" than to "Erased" or "The Flowers of Evil", all of which it could be compared to.
The guard doing the rounds finds the protagonist naked and masturbating to the swimsuit of whatever girl happens to sit on that seat in the present. He's pursued by the guard up to the roof. Although the protagonist believes for a moment that he could defend his actions, he suddenly has a clear look of himself: he's just a rotten pervert masturbating to a memory of a child, while holding a child's swimsuit as a proxy no less. He would appear in the local news, and everyone who even retained a shred of sympathy for him would despise him forever.
Fortunately for him he falls off the roof and instead of dying he gets transported to the past, back when he was attending that school as a child. Again, he could have reformed himself to an extent, but that's not how he's going to go about it. He's a thirty two year old in the body of a maybe eleven or twelve year old, and who can think of little else than to get into the titular Anna's panties as soon as possible. Everyone he used to know realize he's acting weird. There's a moment in which his two old friends talk about what they'd love to become as adults. The protagonist knows that neither of their wishes came true. When they say that the protagonist is for sure going to become a manga author, he despairs and flees home. This Anna girl ends up meeting him alone in a park because she worried about him, and he convinces her to show him her panties. He even attempts to take them off. Obviously the girl doesn't properly understand what's happening.
One of his classmates is a girl who has grown a little faster than the others, and that he considers a bit of a slut despite being just a teasing virgin. He calls her bluffs to get progressively more intimate with her. She happens to be pursued by the local bully who had always picked on the protagonist. When the bully sees how his romantic interest is paying more attention to the protagonist, he fucks with him worse than usual. Around this time the protagonist had decided to confess to Anna his love in order to steal her from whom would eventually become her husband, only to realize that his friend already had feelings for her, and she was receptive. His mind breaks regarding any decent intentions he might have held on to up to this moment; he believes his two childhood friends always used him as a third wheel and pretended that nothing was going on between them, which made him regret his lost chance even as a thirty year old. He's pissed. He's found himself in the past with foreknowledge of what was going to happen in the world and in the local community, and he's going to take advantage of it.
He makes a bet with the "loose" girl to prove to her that the bully is in love with her: she will call him and tell him to skip class and wait in front of a particular shop at a particular hour, because she'll meet up with him. If he skips class, he wins the bet, and that'll mean that she'll have to have sex with the protagonist. The girl agrees, not understanding the mess she's getting into. The protagonist knew that a truck would hit that shop around that time; it was a significant memory of his youth. He believes that it would give the bully a good scare, which he deserves, but the truck runs over the bully, killing him instantly.
After the funeral, the bully's romantic interest, sobbing, pursues the protagonist not only grieving the death of this boy who liked her, but also because she's sure that the police will get them in trouble. After all, they agreed to send him to that shop instead of letting him go to school. They are responsible. But the protagonist knows that they cannot blame them for what in this present is a coincidence. The girl thinks that the protagonist is crying, and goes to console him, but he starts laughing histerically. He loves that the bully got killed, that he could exert such retribution although in his previous adult life he was entirely powerless. In addition, he grabs the girl and reminds her that she lost the bet. He drags her under a bridge, intending to fuck her in the ass right now. The girl is appalled. While crying, she tells him that he must be completely insane not only to be happy that they got the bully killed, but for trying to force her into getting fucked right after the funeral. The protagonist notes that the girl can't help but smile out of excitement. I guess she's a bit fucked up as well. He ends up destroying her backside.
After that day, the protagonist has a brighter outlook on having gotten stuck in the past. He's getting what he wants from the "loose" girl, and now he's going to get what he wants from his beloved Anna as well. He manipulates his male friend, the one who would end up marrying Anna, into confessing his love. Although we don't have the resolution in this volume, I'm guessing the protagonist is cooking some way for Anna to reject their male friend. While his plans cook, he gets regular blowjobs from the "loose" girl he dominates, caring nothing at all for her as a human being.
As the parting dramatic question of this volume, the class got a transfer student to fill the seat left by the dead bully. It's some girl that according to how she looked at the protagonist, and this being a story, maybe she's someone from the future and who knows very well what kind of monster the protagonist is.
This miniseries so far is just okay. It is worse than all the mangas I compared it to. The art style is very amateurish, and the scene composition often leaves something to be desired. However, as long as you enjoy extremely fucked up stories with deviant characters, this will probably be up your alley.
Umareru Kachi no Nakatta Jibun ga Anna no Tame ni Dekiru Ikutsuka no Koto.
The Few Things I Can Do For Anna Even Though I Didn't Deserve To Be Born.
Synopsis
A 32-year-old aspiring mangaka, Kazuya Mukai, falls off the rooftop of his old elementary school during a drunken stupor. When he wakes up, he finds himself 20 years in the past, and even his body has regressed to that of a sixth grader. Now that Kazuya has a chance redo his life that had been full of disgrace and humiliation, he hopes to win the heart of a little girl and his first crush, Anna. However, his feelings only lead a whole new tragedy. It's a puppy love that transcends the bounds of time, only to be defiled.