ぼくは麻理のなか 9

ぼくは麻理のなか [Boku wa Mari no Naka] #9

by Shuzo Oshimi

Isao has gone. Mom is gone. And suddenly life is better for Mari. But she is not complete. There is still a need for closure that burns within. Going home, to Isao's home, might provide that resolution. Embracing everything that has ever been inside Mari will be key.

Genres: Manga, Comics, Mystery, Seinen, Graphic Novels, Drama, Japan

186 pages, Comic

First published September 28, 2016

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

[Maggie Grabber · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this while quarantining- I discovered the author from Blood on the Tracks, which truthfully wasn’t my thing. This, however, I thought was absolutely fascinating and exciting! What first seems like a supernatural body-swapping situation ends up being a story of trauma, repression, and I think over a decently thoughtful depiction of someone experiencing Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Normally I hate a ~multiple personalities~ twist because it’s used to make the character look dangerous and unhinged, but I don’t mind it here- Mari is a sympathetic character struggling with her identity. Other than some hurt feelings, her DID-related actions don’t hurt anyone. And we see that she is able to somewhat mend her splintered psyche in order to find confidence in her true self. She no longer obsessed over others as a form of escapism.

I also enjoyed the development of both Mari and Yori as characters- I found them each interesting and also really liked their relationship. I’m always happy to see some LGBT themes in the content I read :)

I also just enjoyed the optimistic ending- the three central characters finish the story having grown as people. They all have a better idea of who they are and what they want, and seem much better off than they did at the beginning. The author’s work often feels bleak to me, so this was refreshing and very welcome. I found myself really caring about Mari and being happy for her at the conclusion. 9/10 ending, 8/10 overall!

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

I want to be alone with my thoughts right now. I'll come back.

[jay · Rating 2 out of 5]

well, cool, that was my evening i guess

i don't really see what everyone else is seeing in that story, it was fine? i will never think about it again.

[petra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I havent been engrossed in something like this for a while now. Took all my attention, got my heart racing. I was completely invested. Some scenes were disturbing/disgusting but in a "wtf is going on".

Gotta admit that the last chapter got me a little underwhelmed. The whole story was tense and growing more and more tense like we jumped of a cliff and then we landed on a bed like nothing happened...well something did happen and I want to know how it got resolvedddddd. So yeah, that's it.

[Pretty Book Guardian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like there are so many ways to interpret this ending. This was brilliant for me. I will be rereading this series

[Glory · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved how it turned out that it was all an existential crisis. mari the poor girl found no one to understand her and see her.

فوكاشي كانت شخصية الطفل فيها، ماري كانت الشخصية الحائرة إلي مو عارفة فين تروح وتعبت من كل شي، وايزاوا كان طريقة هروب عقلها من كل شي.

[Xirimoya · Rating 5 out of 5]

oshimi soy tu fan número 1 😝😝

[Diana Naydenova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow where do I start?
It surely was a journey and I was really rooting for the characters. Isao/Mari as a character went through extremely complicated explorations of gender expression and dysphoria. I found many moments deeply profound and relatable. Some were comical while others were gut wrenching.
A central theme of the story seems to be the want to be seen. Mari is not seen by anybody: her parents, her friends, even the girl that supposedly knows everything about her. Yori states from the start that she doesn't care about Isao/Mari: she cares about the version of Mari she has in her head. During the story she falls in love with Isao/Mari. That's the person she gets to know truly. And that's the person that gets to truly know her.
Their relationship grows and it feels just as magical as the transformation of the sad lonely boy into a girl that gets to be pretty and kind while also being sexual and sometimes a downright menace.
And yet at some point it is revealed that Isao was never inside Mari. He was just a fragment of her. He was her wish to be free, which includes playing video games, skipping school, reading porn magazines and masturbating. So it turns out that it was never about gender identity? Despite the author's notes at the end of the first volume. It was a story about an overly stressed girl that had a mental breakdown. The magic disappears. Isao stated from the very beginning that Isao/Mari has nothing to do with him. So the reader thinks that this guy is sceptical and stuck in reality and thus in opposition to Isao/Mari, Yori and the reader. But he is simply right.
Also it seems puzzling to me that the "man" inside Mari represents her sexual desire as well? It made perfect sense if it's a trans story. A trans girl tries to grasp the concept of her sexual desire towards women and feeling like a perverted man in the meantime. It's crippling and dysphoric. But how can Mari feel like a voyeuristic man and look at women and desire women as a man when she never was/identified as one? Are cis lesbians manly for liking women? Is it purely manly to feel sexual desire and explore porn and masturbation? It lost me there.
The most disappointing moment for me was when Mari finally wakes up in her body and addresses Yori differently (the same way she did when they were basically strangers) and asks her to be friends. Isao/Mari promised her to stay together forever and yet despite being a part of Mari when she wakes up this part of her seems to be gone and the promise seems to be forgotten. Her lover is simply gone. All that is left is a character that we never spent time with. Mari was from the beginning a person we got to learn about. Not a person that we got to experience the story with the way we were with Isao/Mari. That's why for me the the ending felt empty. Mari keeps living her life with her family and her new friends and all she can do is keep her polite smile. The same smile she always had since the beginning: the smile that bewitched everyone and made them believe that she was whatever they wanted to project onto her. Not the passionate expression she had after singing the karaoke as Isao/Mari and not the joyful face she made at the amusement park with Yori. She leaves us with the same face from the beginning and a promise to meet Yori again some day.
This broke me.
Despite that the story was truly captivating and moving and the art style was mesmerizing. I can't bring myself to give it anything less than 4 stars. It deserves them despite me not liking the ending.

[G · Rating 3 out of 5]

[A review of the whole story]

It reminded me a little of Sartre's "No Exit" but with a twist about gender trouble and identity. It's also about finding your place in the world. This seems to be a common theme in Seinen. I see why it's popular with LGBT+ people.

It's interesting and it definitely has a lot of layers to it. It's less shocking/crazy than people often make it out to be, although it's definitely very dramatic at times. This dramatic tone seems appropriate to me because every little issue can feel like the end of the world when you're at the age of the characters and because the subject matter is indeed very heavy at times. It also has some endearing moments though that really feel earned in this so often restless story.

I haven't seen it mentioned by others but I thought the story was funny sometimes too. It definitely wasn't humourless and dramatic all the time.

The author is a great visual storyteller. To me it felt like he was reaching the limits of his medium: changing his drawing technique depending on the mood, using recurring visuals to connect and develop different ideas and story beats, deepening the relationships of the caracters through non-verbal communication, using good panel pacing to emphasize certain points or to raise the tension.

[Urbon Adamsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The final volume of this series.

I had a feeling it would end this way. It wasn't entirely obvious, but it does make sense.

Now that I know the ending, I'm eager to revisit everything with that knowledge in mind. I'm not certain if everything will fall into place, but that's beside the point.

The crux of the matter is how we're pressured to conform, to the point where our minds may fracture just to cope, and that's a chilling realization.

Once again, Oshimi has crafted an exceptional series. Its apparent simplicity belies the complexity only he can capture.

[Caroline Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

[review is for the whole series]

where do i even begin. i love oshimi, the flowers of evil changed my life, in all the ways that sentence implies. inside mari was shaping up up to be absolutely incredible, but i simply cannot get over the last 20 or so chapters.

there is so much geniunely interesting and completely fucked up yet accurate explorations of gender dysphoria and transition depicted with such shocking insight and detail that filled me with completely indescribable emotions. oshimi quite literally played my heartstrings like a fiddle while i was reading this one. however, the ending, in my opinion completely ruins any amount of insightful exploration into this topic that was done earlier. by simply saying "mari has multiple personalities" not only does it invalidate so many of the prevailing themes throughout the manga, but also (and forgive me of this sounds selfish because it is) makes me as the reader, an individual who related to strongly to the themes of the manga, feel invalidated as well.

the best way i can put it is like this. much like isao/mari, as a trans person, you live your life as normal and then all of a sudden after holding it in for so long that dam inside of you just breaks open and you're confused, naked, and afraid. you don't know how to act, how you should think, how you should look or ANYTHING. in isao's case, literally, in my case, figuratively. here's the thing though: day by day and little by little you claw your way out of the abyss, you see more clearly with every small step, each sky at noon a little bluer, the grass a little greener. every day you learn something new, you get better at makeup every day you put it on, you like how you look a little more every day as your hair grows and hrt changes your body, etc. until eventually you look at yourself and realize. i'm happy now. you have good friends, a girlfriend, you like yourself for the first time, maybe ever.

that was all this manga needed to be. by the time we reach around chapter 55-65, isao/mari is HAPPY, she has a loving girlfriend, she takes pride in her appearance. no longer is she embarrassed by physical contact, she feels comfortable looking at herself in the mirror. she plays video games with her younger brother and laughs.

in all honesty, i think that may have even been the way the story was supposed to end, considering the story beats of oshimi's latest manga, welcome back alice, and it's completely heartbreaking afterwords. but alas here i am, heartbroken, and disappointed. you kill me, shuzo oshimi

[Andy Ohm · Rating 5 out of 5]

It really felt it was going to end that way the whole time but i enjoyed the ride nonetheless. The fact it was her own creation of Koroko really made this manga special.

Loved the themes about the ‘self’ and how it ended.

[Breana · Rating 5 out of 5]

That shit was crazy.... Oshimi the best mangaka ever. THR FUCKING INCEPTION

[Diana H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nah who let this man cook? Too many sexual under and overtones- this author has a major problem. Interesting enough but the big twist is pretty easy to figure out after the phone call thing.

[James DeSantis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inside Mari ends on something of a whimper. Reading through it’s a 9-volume series, it’s not surprising that the conclusion revolves around the main character experiencing a mental breakdown and realizing that she needs to live her own life, rather than trying to take someone else’s. It’s not a bad ending, but it does feel a bit predictable.

While I appreciated the moments where the main character found happiness, I couldn’t help but feel that the story could have been told in 2-3 fewer volumes. Some parts seemed unnecessarily stretched out, which impacted the pacing.

That said, the art remains exceptional throughout. Shuzo Oshimi’s talent is undeniable, and his visuals continue to elevate the narrative.

[mar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually more like a 4.5 but omg i loved this manga so much

[Tanu]

interesting?

[abhay]

Some good fucking manga

This manga has somewhat made me realize why Kimi No Nawa has been my favorite movie for so long. It has changed something in me. it's a brutally deep and visceral depiction of so many things gender and identity.

Came to know of this and Shuzo Oshimiri from a video essay on YouTube, and I am forever grateful.

[Thomas Hale · Rating 4 out of 5]

And it's over. That was a strange, bumpy ride, and I don't know how satisfied I am with the final big reveal and its resolution, but I think it makes sense for Mari. A creepy obsession cross-contaminating with CPTSD, and an ugly mess of clashing personalities that seems a little too neatly wrapped up by the end. Not at all what I expected this to be, but I'm glad I binged the whole thing.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

What did I just read? A story of a lost girl, a victim of her mother’s narcissism? A portrait of depression? An exploration on the fragility of consciousness? A commentary on the manufactured nature of memory? A trans-questioning manga artist working out his feelings?

All of the above. Inside Mari is on the surface a story about a “body swap”—young college dropout loner wakes up in the body of a girl he sees every night at the convenience store, Mari. But things take a twist quickly when he confronts his old self, expecting, as would be the case in any reasonable narrative, that Mari’s consciousness would be in his old body. But it’s not, and his old self has no memory of Mari.

With none of Mari’s memories, and unreliable memories of his old self, Isao Komori has to try to pick up Mari’s life, negotiate her family dynamics, and live with her feelings; all the while striving desperately to figure out the answer to the question: what happened to Mari?

[Isabella · Rating 4 out of 5]

might be looking too much into this, but to me mari might actually be a trans boy

that would explain A LOT

[RIN ಠ_ಠ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings for the entire series.

[Gabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evangelion ending. I loved it.

[Kastie Pavlik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I binge read volumes 2 - 9 so I generalized reviews until this finale. Overall, this is a fantastic series that more than excelled at telling its story, but I can't go into that story because of spoilers. It's a great mesh of psych thriller, horror, mystery, and suspense.


I loved the psychotic break twist. It's not really even a twist, it's the story itself. Mari completely disassociates before we even see the first page. That version of Komori, creepy as he appears, is Mari's invention. The only thing real about him are the things he wrote in his journal that Mari used to create him. Everything else is a fantasy. She's the creepy stalker. She's the one bored with life. She's the one who's never truly seen. She's the obsessive. She's the one who goes to the convenience store at 9pm because he goes at that time, not the other way around, and she's clearly not seen at home because nobody cares that she's out late or where she's at.

Because of that, we meet Mari just as she's disassociating and manifesting the Komori personality. We don't know her any better than this personality knows her. We have no reason to question a body swap presentation. She has so thoroughly locked herself away that the reader doesn't question what we've been told to assume as true. And so, we discover Mari's life anew, gain clues about her life, learn her secrets, discover her body. And eventually, we learn her memories and her traumas, and everything spills out into a space where Mari, Fumiko, and Komori can unpack it and move forward.

That scenes that quickly flashback to her traumas include panty shots and boys laughing at her. Those particular scenes aren't really addressed or explored, and make me wonder if gender identity was also a question - perhaps this is why a male personality came forward and was the ultimate solution to finding her true self. I feel like I could talk about the psychological aspects of this series until I'm hoarse. It's superb and displayed in a relatable fashion using things we all question avouty ourselves.

Finally, I love that we get to know all of the characters over the coarse of the whole series. Yori, the real Komori, and Mari become more real and fully fleshed by the end, and everyone learns something about themselves and grows at least a little.

[Aisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

shuzo knows how make you feel disturb and open your eyes so wide. this story made me remember how i feel during my teenage years. how lost, unfamiliar and detached i was. i can tell how this story went and how i feel about it, it's like you have to read it to understand it.

i understand her.

i define this as a girlhood. how being a girl is so hard that she create a persona of a man. in komori persona POV you understand how hard it was. how mari receiving glances to people she meet, how they react to mari; also how people around her react. I'm not a conventional pretty but i feel how uncomfortable people treating her thru this story. getting backstab when infact you just want to have fun, or accusing of stealing someone's bf yet the bf was the wrong one. how Mari's old friendgroup react.

i think shuzo made a good decision to make it this way to express how teenage girlhood it is.

Mari's character is so realistic to me. she's mentally ill but indeed she did was wrong.
i hate she act that way to true komori and how komori end up like that in the book. he's on depression side, confuse and no motivation. getting drag when he's a victim and end up being a weird. but i hate true komori too, why he have to did that. they both are fucked up so bad yet is so blessing in disguise at the same time.

what if komori's persona didn't bother komori at all? she and yori just figured themselves. does komori still in the dark side of his life? but i know eventually his mother gonna take him home by then, but how komori doing by then. still on no motivation and depress state?

yori character is such a good character too. her and mari are compatible to each other. actually I don't know i explain this but their relationship are just friendship no romantic horizon. maybe they both didn't have a good friend (komori persona is same with yori but different approach). made it seem they have this chemistry but in reality it's just they love each other how best friend are. they act made them confuse.

the factor why mari have this other persona because of her shitty mother. i read 3 manga about psychological theme and all of them because of mother's fault. and made me think does mother issue gave us more traumatic experience and bring the mental illness than a father issue?

i love this manga. imma read welcome back alice.

[ezzermaya]

yeah yeah the lifechanging ceicocat video essay we’ve all seen it atp. What shocked me about this readthrough is how lesbian Inside Mari is! Yori is outright in love with Mari, and it can be argued that Mari’s Isao dissociation could have been triggered to help Mari cope with her blooming sexuality and feelings for Yori. Mari sees her desires for women as perverted, so Mari develops a personality based off of the most lecherous man she knows. However I think this reading was only possible for me because I knew how the story ended, that Isao was never inside Mari, but instead, an identity Mari invented to survive the pressures of adolescence.

It was also interesting to read Inside Mari after reading Nevada. There’s a monologue in Nevada where Maria talks James through the concept of “autogynephilia” - transitioning to female as a crossdressing fetish, basically. Maria’s main argument is that it’s hardest to hide gender dysphoria during sex - both cis women and trans women are aroused by being women! But James isn’t willing to hear this, the only understanding he has of his identity is that he’s depressed, anhedonic, and a weird pervert who likes reading transformation porn. I believe Maria also had a counter for that (or maybe this was an idea I saw articulated by Porpentine? not sure) that forced feminization can be the ultimate form of wish fulfillment for trans women: it’s couched in the language of eroticism, and they don’t have to admit that this transformation is desirable. It’s interesting that both Inside Mari and Nevada handle autogynephilia, but Nevada is written by an out trans woman and Inside Mari is, well…. All I’m saying: Isao/Mari’s eroticization of Mari’s body that fades into synthesis seems to follow Maria’s conversation with James extremely closely.

Tl:dr tl:dr: Oshimi There Is Still Time

[Sai Fighter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review for the whole series:



I read this series because of a video essay by ceicocat called "The Incel to Trans Pipeline and Inside Mari" which I highly recommend.

I read "Welcome Back, Alice" first, which I am glad I did because it really helped me understand the author's ideas about gender before diving into "Inside Mari." Inside Mari definitely feels like a gender exploration manga, but it isn't as straight forward about it as Oshimi's other manga.

This isn't your typical situational comedy gender swap manga (Ex. Ranma 1/2). This really feels like a more nuanced exploration of what it would really means to swap bodies with a teenage girl and all the stuff that would naturally come with it: complex female relationship dynamics, unwanted advances of men, social pressures of filling the role of a woman, school pressures, menstruation, etc. Not to mention at one point, it starts to feel somewhat like a trans narrative. The main character Isao Komori is struggling to decide if he wants to save Mari, be Mari, or just wants her sexually. It really reminds me of another manga, Until I Become Me by Satou Hatsuki which is another gender swap manga that slowly starts to take on a more trans story line. But Inside Mari feels a lot more abstract. The ending is honestly, ambiguous, and has more of a DID vibe which I didn't really enjoy. I would have rather it stayed more on the trans narrative track, but I also get that Welcome Back, Alice fills that narrative a little better so at least there is that. The "mystery" of where Mari is gets solved but its still pretty confusing.

This is definitely interesting. Not totally sure I would recommend but still pretty good.

[Maya Winshell]

i really couldn’t put this series down once i started it— well, i guess i put it down between volume 3-4 because i had to — but i DID end up staying up til 4am last night finishing it. lots to consider here. i think i wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much if i hadn’t first watched this beautiful video essay (https://youtu.be/IAA1XtDOuH8?si=2qkT6...)— i think i would’ve gotten the trans vibe, and i think the gay themes are laid out pretty clearly, too, but the ending may have confused me and i may have been completely put off by the fetishistic-feeling sexual scenes involving a high school girl’s body in close-up shots. i mean, i still feel really weird about the way it was drawn/shown (as did that video essayist). but it was worth making it to the end of the story, i think. when you begin to understand it all in context (after we learn about what’s really been going on with mari), it’s really a very sensitive story throughout, very attentive to the type of pain experienced by a high school girl. because i watched that video first, i knew what the deal was the whole time, so i got that sensitive read the first time through, and didn’t feel like i was viewing it through the eyes of a male creep manipulating this young girl’s body and mind. it’s sensitive to the different kinds of pain of ALL the main characters, really. what can i say, it’s Nuanced. i’m going back to that video essay now that i’ve read it; i think i still recommend the video more than the books. it does a great job in summarizing the story, and is tremendously thoughtful, insightful, and vulnerable. looove

[Tamyam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the only manga I'm going to put on my profile because each volume counts as a book, and I'm not doing all that.

Out of all the manga I've read, Shuzo Oshimi's works are by far the greatest. It feels like literature, and never before have I felt so intimate with someone I've never met. Shuzo puts his entire soul and being onto the paper when he wrote "Inside Mari" and "Okaeri Alice"; his struggles with gender identity, childhood under his abusive mother, self-identification and his masculine "disgustingness", and want for a "savior." Inside Mari is not just a story, but rather the author's cartharsis, for by the end, he had discovered their beauty inside his ugly and vice versa. Shuzo has no qualms about the pure disgustingness of our race, the deep and inner turmoil we hide inside, one's longing for the other gender, one's longing to be the other gender. I can't relate to the themes of Inside Mari, but it still felt like I was inside Shuzo Oshimi. 10/10.

[Busy.busi (fumetti) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dentro mari è un'opera che anche adesso che l'ho terminata devo dire non mi ha particolarmente catturato a livello personale ed emotivo (cosa probabilmente dovuta anche al fatto che sono molto fuori target). Ciò che mi ha spinto ha continuare la lettura fino alla fine è la curiosità: la curiosità di sapere cosa è successo a Mari e perche c'è stato questo scambio. Tutte domande che troveranno una risposta solo nel nono volume. Posso dire solo una cosa: ho amato questa risposta, perche in modo estremamente intelligente e coerente va ha distruggere l'unica cosa che si credeva certa dell'opera.
Un dettaglio però che poteva essere fatto meglio è la motivazione che ha provocato ciò da cui poi parte tutta la storia ,perche la trovo una motivazione non cosi tanto forte da provocare una reazione cosi grande, o meglio, avrebbe potuto esserlo se fosse stata più presente nell'opera e non solo mostrata sporadicamente.
Nel complessa un ottima opera davvero valida e geniale.