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血の轍 [Chi no Wadachi] #12
Blood on the Tracks, Vol. 12
Up on the hill, Seiichi's encounter with Shigeru merges with his own experience of being cast away by his mother, Seiko—and in that moment, he kills Shigeru in order to kill himself, a sacrificial rite to permanently sever his connection with his mother. Taken into custody, Seiichi feels only relief...
But Seiko isn't gone from his life yet!!
But Seiko isn't gone from his life yet!!
256 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 2021
23 people are currently reading
700 people want to read
About the author
Shuzo Oshimi
136 books1,060 followersShuzo 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) .
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) .
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 279 reviews
April 12, 2023
Bro…. What 🤯 wow this series is wild. This volume had some truly horrifying things and the way it ended!!!! I’m so curious to see what is coming next!
January 19, 2023
This woman scares the absolute sh*t out of me.
Just a still image of her face will send me into a a catatonic state.
Shuzo Oshimi is a God and he chose violence.
Just a still image of her face will send me into a a catatonic state.
Shuzo Oshimi is a God and he chose violence.
July 28, 2022
Date:- 28 July 2022
It's crazy how i still remember everything about it and it's been in my mind for so long. I think i want to know what happened.
Date:- 31 December 2021
Stopped at Ch :- 111
I can't take this torture anyone. The story is going downhill and doesn't make sense to me anymore.
It's crazy how i still remember everything about it and it's been in my mind for so long. I think i want to know what happened.
Date:- 31 December 2021
Stopped at Ch :- 111
I can't take this torture anyone. The story is going downhill and doesn't make sense to me anymore.
April 23, 2023
HIS MAMA AIN'T SHIT! I swear ya'll, I have never disliked a character more than her. She is literally turning him into a complete monster. There is nothing that I can say about this volume due to spoilers, but I must say that Oshimi is a mastermind. The comments on nature vs. nurture whether intentional or not have me thinking some interesting things! I am sooooo excited to get volume 13 where the real story will begin!
March 7, 2022
So we're not going to acknowledge that this woman just threw her son under the bus and left him to get ran over several times. She had time to go to Ulta, Nordstrom and stopped by Paul Mitchell to get her wig busted but couldn't take the time out her busy day to visit her son. I have no words. I would have choked that b**ch too.
September 10, 2021
stopped at 101, it’s getting tiresome. Should’ve stopped when Sei and Fukiishi drew their moms on a sack and metaphorically killed them. Would been a good ending. I don’t have energy for this anymore.
July 24, 2024
Seiko, you pos 🔪🔪🔪 omfg i can’t stand her
April 2, 2023
Seiko infuriates the hell out of me. This particular volume is maddeningly passively intense. I'll literally lose my mind. But I would never opt to drop the series. There's this certain Oshimi pull that makes me want to never let go but read further. Thank you, sensei, even though this one is sick to the core.
March 15, 2022
“The mother in his memories was always full of compassion...”
The more this series goes on the more its only more-than-average feature becomes the artwork.
The more this series goes on the more its only more-than-average feature becomes the artwork.
February 4, 2023
ngl i'm getting bored of the same plot and the same things happening over and over again... the last chapters were okay but not enough for me to love this
update: I just read this was a prologue?????? TWELVE VOLUMES FOR A PROLOGUE????
update: I just read this was a prologue?????? TWELVE VOLUMES FOR A PROLOGUE????
December 21, 2021
Man..Seiichi's life is truly sad, but I really feel bad for his dad. He's just an ordinary and a good guy who wished for a happy family...
July 12, 2022
this manga gives me the ick so bad
January 13, 2022
Four and a half stars. This is a review of the whole series up to chapter 111, which might be contained in this volume or in the next, presumably yet unreleased.
Shūzō Oshimi has become my favorite manga author now that Asano remains unable to recapture his old magic, and this series, titled in English either “Blood on the Tracks” or “A Trail of Blood”, seems to be his most serious attempt at a hard-hitting psychological drama so far.
I’m writing this review because I wanted to figure out whether or not I like the direction this story has taken, so I’m going to discuss severe spoilers that you absolutely should remain in the dark about if you haven’t read so far into the story (or at all).
So, this tale is about Seiichi, a shy, introverted kid whose mother, Seiko, is mostly crazy. This beautiful woman (the story would feel much different if she weren’t) chews up every scene she’s in a similar way she engulfs her son’s existence. As the kid’s aunt and cousin are eager to point out, Seiko is the kind of mother who’ll hurry to solve any problem her son might encounter so he’ll remain perennially dependent on her, to the extent that he still doesn’t know how to tie his own shoes. Our poor Seiichi is on the fast path to becoming a defenseless mama’s boy forever.
In the inciting incident of this story, that reverberates throughout the remainder of the tale so far (and this is the first major spoiler), during a family trip to a nearby mountain, the protagonist’s cousin, a pushy bastard of whom our protagonist couldn’t get rid, was clowning around on the edge of a cliff when he nearly falls. Seiko, our protagonist’s beautiful/crazy mother, takes the opportunity to push the cousin off the cliff to get rid of such a nuisance to her son, and presumably to satisfy her bloodlust.
However, the cousin survives but with severe brain damage from which he’ll never fully recover. Throughout the rest of the story we remain unsure about whether or not Seiko truly pushed the cousin off the cliff, because the protagonist might have imagined it (he was sick of having to deal with his pushy cousin, and wanted him gone).
But if Seiko didn’t actually push the cousin off, why does she (and this is the second major spoiler) eventually admit to it when confronted by his sister-in-law? And why did she seem so happy about it? The beautiful complexity of Seiko’s character comes in: little by little we discover that she has always suffered from the trauma of her own mother having failed to love her. Seiko convinced herself when she was younger that having a kid and loving him/her as she herself should have been loved would have “saved her” (in her words). However, as she held the baby version of Seiichi in her arms, she realized what sounds to me like one of the worst realizations imaginable: that having given birth to this child was a terrible mistake, and she isn’t capable nor wants to be a mother.
When Seiichi grew to be three years old, his mother had enough.
Seiko decided to soldier on. Day after day she acted like a loving, caring mother to Seiichi and a dutiful wife to her simple husband, but as the years passed, her bitterness grew.
She despises her hapless husband for having tied her down (the poor bastard does nothing but suffer blow after blow in this tale), and she also hates her son the more he resembles his father instead of her.
Meanwhile, our protagonist’s only reprieve from the rotten theatre play of his family life came in the angelic form of Yuko Fukiishi, a lovely classmate who gets a crush on our protagonist presumably because he’s cute enough (thanks to his mother) and because she can sense that his family is as broken as hers. Fukiishi’s mother abandoned her when she was a child, and his father is a dumb drunk. This angel gets close to saving our protagonist, but eventually she can’t compete with the rotten, co-dependent love that his mother has implanted in him.
Anyway, Seiko, his mother, .
Now comes a series of events with which I’m not sure if I’m on board. Huge spoilers that you shouldn’t know if you haven’t read anything past this point.
The lovely Fukiishi
Honestly, the series should have ended around this point. Not only it doesn’t, but we . Plenty of what-the-fucks from now on.
In an almost supernatural turn that didn’t feel to me like it belonged in this story, the protagonist’s brain-damaged cousin .
The police figure it out immediately. Seiichi remains in a shocked trance when .
.
The story has now gone either through its turning point or its “Dark Night of the Soul”; either way, .
.
I must state that I consider this series a masterpiece, and yet a couple of things sit poorly with me:
1) the Seiichi that had just proclaimed his .
2) the cousin’s parents had been relentless (mostly the aunt, though):
I’m a bit pissed with how this story turned out, at least so far. Still, I look forward to figuring out how the author is going to conclude the arc of a main character who .
Moral of the story: don't have children to fix your unfixable selves. Or maybe don't have children altogether.
Shūzō Oshimi has become my favorite manga author now that Asano remains unable to recapture his old magic, and this series, titled in English either “Blood on the Tracks” or “A Trail of Blood”, seems to be his most serious attempt at a hard-hitting psychological drama so far.
I’m writing this review because I wanted to figure out whether or not I like the direction this story has taken, so I’m going to discuss severe spoilers that you absolutely should remain in the dark about if you haven’t read so far into the story (or at all).
So, this tale is about Seiichi, a shy, introverted kid whose mother, Seiko, is mostly crazy. This beautiful woman (the story would feel much different if she weren’t) chews up every scene she’s in a similar way she engulfs her son’s existence. As the kid’s aunt and cousin are eager to point out, Seiko is the kind of mother who’ll hurry to solve any problem her son might encounter so he’ll remain perennially dependent on her, to the extent that he still doesn’t know how to tie his own shoes. Our poor Seiichi is on the fast path to becoming a defenseless mama’s boy forever.
In the inciting incident of this story, that reverberates throughout the remainder of the tale so far (and this is the first major spoiler), during a family trip to a nearby mountain, the protagonist’s cousin, a pushy bastard of whom our protagonist couldn’t get rid, was clowning around on the edge of a cliff when he nearly falls. Seiko, our protagonist’s beautiful/crazy mother, takes the opportunity to push the cousin off the cliff to get rid of such a nuisance to her son, and presumably to satisfy her bloodlust.
However, the cousin survives but with severe brain damage from which he’ll never fully recover. Throughout the rest of the story we remain unsure about whether or not Seiko truly pushed the cousin off the cliff, because the protagonist might have imagined it (he was sick of having to deal with his pushy cousin, and wanted him gone).
But if Seiko didn’t actually push the cousin off, why does she (and this is the second major spoiler) eventually admit to it when confronted by his sister-in-law? And why did she seem so happy about it? The beautiful complexity of Seiko’s character comes in: little by little we discover that she has always suffered from the trauma of her own mother having failed to love her. Seiko convinced herself when she was younger that having a kid and loving him/her as she herself should have been loved would have “saved her” (in her words). However, as she held the baby version of Seiichi in her arms, she realized what sounds to me like one of the worst realizations imaginable: that having given birth to this child was a terrible mistake, and she isn’t capable nor wants to be a mother.
When Seiichi grew to be three years old, his mother had enough.
Seiko decided to soldier on. Day after day she acted like a loving, caring mother to Seiichi and a dutiful wife to her simple husband, but as the years passed, her bitterness grew.
She despises her hapless husband for having tied her down (the poor bastard does nothing but suffer blow after blow in this tale), and she also hates her son the more he resembles his father instead of her.
Meanwhile, our protagonist’s only reprieve from the rotten theatre play of his family life came in the angelic form of Yuko Fukiishi, a lovely classmate who gets a crush on our protagonist presumably because he’s cute enough (thanks to his mother) and because she can sense that his family is as broken as hers. Fukiishi’s mother abandoned her when she was a child, and his father is a dumb drunk. This angel gets close to saving our protagonist, but eventually she can’t compete with the rotten, co-dependent love that his mother has implanted in him.
Anyway, Seiko, his mother, .
Now comes a series of events with which I’m not sure if I’m on board. Huge spoilers that you shouldn’t know if you haven’t read anything past this point.
The lovely Fukiishi
Honestly, the series should have ended around this point. Not only it doesn’t, but we . Plenty of what-the-fucks from now on.
In an almost supernatural turn that didn’t feel to me like it belonged in this story, the protagonist’s brain-damaged cousin .
The police figure it out immediately. Seiichi remains in a shocked trance when .
.
The story has now gone either through its turning point or its “Dark Night of the Soul”; either way, .
.
I must state that I consider this series a masterpiece, and yet a couple of things sit poorly with me:
1) the Seiichi that had just proclaimed his .
2) the cousin’s parents had been relentless (mostly the aunt, though):
I’m a bit pissed with how this story turned out, at least so far. Still, I look forward to figuring out how the author is going to conclude the arc of a main character who .
Moral of the story: don't have children to fix your unfixable selves. Or maybe don't have children altogether.
December 31, 2024
This series started out so fascinating, but then became a complete trainwreck. I found myself so angered by vols. 11 and 12 that I decided to take a break from it until all volumes were available in English. Now's the time to see how it all turns out.
The series gets back on track as we see that whatever the justice system has in store for the boy and his mother comes nowhere close to what they do to each other.
The series gets back on track as we see that whatever the justice system has in store for the boy and his mother comes nowhere close to what they do to each other.
July 30, 2023
"Culmina el giro iniciado..." decía yo en el minicomentario del tomo anterior. Once tomos deberían haberme hecho aprender que la culminación puede estar todavía por delante y manifestarse tres o cuatro veces más. Lo menos.
La sima de aniquilación de Seiichi no conoce fondo. Y la manera en que asume la culpa de su madre hace más daño, si cabe. Por cierto, a pesar del abuso de primeros planos, y cómo Shuzo Oshimi juega con ellos para detener el tiempo o acelerar la lectura, ¡qué bien funciona el desenfoque de las últimas páginas! La forma en que el dibujo asienta y profundiza en el paisaje psicológico del joven es tan sencilla que parece trivial. ¿Alguien más lo habrá enfatizado así?
La sima de aniquilación de Seiichi no conoce fondo. Y la manera en que asume la culpa de su madre hace más daño, si cabe. Por cierto, a pesar del abuso de primeros planos, y cómo Shuzo Oshimi juega con ellos para detener el tiempo o acelerar la lectura, ¡qué bien funciona el desenfoque de las últimas páginas! La forma en que el dibujo asienta y profundiza en el paisaje psicológico del joven es tan sencilla que parece trivial. ¿Alguien más lo habrá enfatizado así?
September 23, 2024
5 stars (reread)
Seiko's destruction of Sei is complete. There remains nothing of him left. Just squiggles on a page of a melting identity. That's the true terror of Shuzo Oshimi's Blood on the Tracks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
5 stars. This series continues to be shocking and unsettling. The mother's viciousness and coldness is chilling. My jaw dropped. I was shocked by what happened in the court room. I felt traumatized in the court room along with Seichii.
Seiko's destruction of Sei is complete. There remains nothing of him left. Just squiggles on a page of a melting identity. That's the true terror of Shuzo Oshimi's Blood on the Tracks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
5 stars. This series continues to be shocking and unsettling. The mother's viciousness and coldness is chilling. My jaw dropped. I was shocked by what happened in the court room. I felt traumatized in the court room along with Seichii.
November 5, 2023
OMG that courtroom speech
April 22, 2024
4.5⭐️
Twisted af.
Twisted af.
January 28, 2022
Abandonado por náuseas
October 4, 2024
Idk what to think anymore. This is traumatizing!
February 6, 2022
Ingenious.
Don't know when exactly I read the eleventh volume but I surely missed it.
Reading Oshimi's work takes a long time. I cannot help but look at each page and image precisely. This is art. Real art.
The story, phenomenal!
Don't know when exactly I read the eleventh volume but I surely missed it.
Reading Oshimi's work takes a long time. I cannot help but look at each page and image precisely. This is art. Real art.
The story, phenomenal!
October 3, 2023
just when i think i have a handle on what's going on, things go even more off the tracks. jesus.
March 26, 2024
Probably the most singlehandedly most upsetting installment of the series so far.
July 24, 2024
Q HIJA DE LA CHINGADA CÓMO Q “RENUNCIO A SER MADRE” WTFFFF SI NO ES UN OBJETO Q PUEDES TIRAR MALDITAAAAAAAAA SABIAS PERFECTAMENTE Q NO DEBÍAS SER MADRE Y TE LO PASASTE X LA RAJA ‼️‼️ DIOSSSS POBRE DE SEII PAGANDO TODAS LAS CONSECUENCIAS DEL CASO 😭☝️
January 18, 2023
Dayumn.
April 26, 2023
Some of the dialogue (especially during the interrogations) and the way the plot is playing out is kind of meh for me.
HOWEVER, the art style and illustrations still kick ass even though the content is psychologically brutal.
How many more volumes is Seiichi going to have to suffer through though?? I’m struggling to imagine how this series will end.
HOWEVER, the art style and illustrations still kick ass even though the content is psychologically brutal.
How many more volumes is Seiichi going to have to suffer through though?? I’m struggling to imagine how this series will end.
January 15, 2023
Bro this mother is HORRIBLE.
After all this, the kid is breaking day by day. Afraid of his own mother. But it's not till this volume where the metaphorical knife is plunged into his heart. This is fucked.
After all this, the kid is breaking day by day. Afraid of his own mother. But it's not till this volume where the metaphorical knife is plunged into his heart. This is fucked.
April 29, 2023
I read all 12 volumes in a day, this series truly fucked me up. Holy shit. I need a minute to process all of what’s going on.
March 13, 2024
Poor Seiichi.
His mother completely wrecked his mind.
Will he ever be able to recover from this madness?
Seiko is an absolute lunatic psychopath. I don't even understand how she is permitted to stay free after all the shit she has done.
As usual, Oshimi delivers another emotional rollercoaster.
His mother completely wrecked his mind.
Will he ever be able to recover from this madness?
Seiko is an absolute lunatic psychopath. I don't even understand how she is permitted to stay free after all the shit she has done.
As usual, Oshimi delivers another emotional rollercoaster.
October 27, 2022
The way the mother is drawn.. I just...
Displaying 1 - 30 of 279 reviews