Shin Jidoyogo Shisetsu no Kodomotachi

A manga about a young girl who’s abandoned by her mother and suffers countless horrors as she’s moved through various horrible nursing homes.

I’ve talked about this on a previous episode.

This manga made me so mad because it’s just sadness porn.

I think the manga artist Yumi Endo is maybe trying to convey the horrors of child abuse through this series but the plot is so heavy handed it honestly feels exploitative for the sake controversy. The main girl travels to between child care facilities were the staff are either incompetent, fully abusive, or pedophiles. When you put the main character through the ringer it fails narratively to make me care anymore because it’s just becomes unbelievable.

This would have worked if the stories were episodic. Each chapter could examines a child abuse problem with different tales of different children. Putting one character through child neglect, child abuse, traumatizing care takers, sexual abuse, bullying, and everything under the sun just makes things laughably unrealistic and ultimately a detriment to the severity of actual child abuse.

~dakazu