Revenge Manga - The Worst of A Great Trope

There are no original ideas, only retelling of old ones. At least, in theory. Stories of revenge & betrayal are as old as humanity's history of storytelling. But before we discuss the stories, especially the one that brought me to writing this, let's briefly discuss genres.

Generally, how an author approaches a genre will dictate the story more than the genre itself. Style over substance is a phrase usually used in relation to this, like in the case of action genre of movies, with the Fast & Furious series being an example.

This is because the effects, sound design, & visual appeal of the characters & their environment, make up for any shallow story or logical inconsistencies, which is when the rule of cool is in use.

This rule essentially states that, if something is cool, no matter how stupid or illogical it may seem, it's good. Using Fast & Furious as an example again, the car wheelie at the end of the first movie is impossible, but pretty cool in the moment & doesn't take away from the scene. The same can be said for curving bullets by slinging guns or being able to drive a motorcycle up a virtual wall.

I bring all of this up because generally, the way manga authors approach the revenge genre is most often through derivativies of the rule of cool. The rule of gore & the rule of shock.

These rules, which are essentially the same, state that if something is grotesque or shocking enough to get an emotional reaction out of the reader, then solid logic is not required in the scene. This, like the rule of cool, can bite an author in the long run if they overuse it in place of proper storytelling. With few exceptions.

Reliance on Gore & Shock

Recently, I stumbled upon a manga video about Juujika no Rokunin (English: Six People on Crosses) & I instantly regretted reading it after being warned. Not because of the violent depictions of torture that happen or the tragedy of events that befall the main character. It is that, like all other revenge stories, logical storytelling is thrown out the window early on in favor of shock value & overstays its welcome.

Side note that's mostly unimportant, way more than six people die.

In the beginning, it starts the same as all other revenge stories, with us being shown the MC in the middle of being bullied by others. Things get pushed to the extreme when the main bully kills the MC's parents & puts the younger sibling in a coma by beating him over the head with a rock. The MC then moves in with his estranged grandfather, who used to serve in the military during World War II. After trying to take his grandpa's shotgun, the MC is discovered by his gramps who trains him in the ways of his old unit, who did unspeakable things during the war.

There's then a time skip to high school & this is where the real gore begins. So far, the premise might not seem so bad & what followed during the high school arc might make the story seem logical. Except, it quickly goes from torturing terrible people to being outright insane after another time skip due to prison.

Enter the Revolution Cult headed by the main bully mentioned before & the undoing of logic. The Cult's only reason for existing in the plot is to introduce more deranged people to replace the ones already killed off because the author realized how quickly the end was approaching if something wasn't done. This meant killing the younger brother, the grandfather, & making the police worthless.

This is a problem with a number of manga. When authors don't accept a shorter run in exchange for a good shot story & instead go for a long run that doesn't do anything except show their incompetence. What I mean by this is that once the rule of gore & shock is removed from overuse, the reader sees that there is no story or thought-provoking message.

There are only so many ways to realistically skin a deer & the same goes for torturing people. This is usually why supernatural horror has less of an issue with finding new disturbing ways to maintain a reader's interest. Meanwhile, Six People on Crosses has the MC sit in a fancy VR chair so the MB can show him they used to be friends & it was the MC who started all of this by choking the MB near death when they were kids.

Now, the hero creating his own villain isn't a bad plot development when done correctly. However, we've gone from hyper-realistic bad people to a cult causing mass chaos, a murder-for-hire group that removes bad people, brainwashing girls, multiple uses of the amnesia trope, & drug-induced mania. And the biggest clap in the face perhaps is the fact the MC, who has dealt with all of this & has a gun, confronts the main culprit & does not immediately put two rounds in the bad guy's chest.

All so that we, the readers, can be shocked by the villain's origin story. Expect, at this point in the story, I don't care. All I want is for the villain to die like was promised in the beginning when it was about six terrible people. But the author, every time that promise comes close to being fulfilled, finds some reason to delay it.

It is one thing if the villain is in control of the situation & the hero either lives by the skin of their teeth or the villain underestimates the hero. But the one thing an author should never do to their readers more than once is make a promise, give the false hope of fulfilling it, & then go back on it. Especially if there isn't anything after the rug pull that makes up for it.

But when the promise is gore & nothing else, I guess it shouldn't be a surprise when there's no real story. Perhaps that argument can be made for most stories that are defined by a singular idea or genre. Most stories in the romance or horror genre tend to follow similar beats & trends, running for longer than they might have any right to. But simply because something is the way it is, does not mean it is good or right.

While I can understand the desire to express a feeling for a societal issue, bullying, authoritarianism, classism, & overwork to the point of death. A singular expression of an issue does not make a good story. It may appeal to readers & some may stick with the story in the long run, but the average person will likely abandon it the moment they realize there is nothing else there.

Real Life Issues

Since I brought them up, let's discuss one of the real-world issues by first discussing the process of understanding a problem.

One might argue that bullying is bad & there is nothing else to understand. However, that can imply the idea that anyone who is a bully is only bad & those being bullied are only good people being victims. Ignoring the possibility that the bully can be a product of their environment or that the bullied individual is incapable of doing something bad that would leave them ostracized by others.

This then leads to the arguments of nature-verse-nurture, the questioning of the idea that being accepting of all ideas & people is inherently good, & seeing a more complex discussion of the matter that might not have a one-size-fits-all solution.

Humans, unlike math, don't have a logical solution to problems that are outside our individual control. And when formed into a large group, we rely on the belief that what we are doing is right, even if it means putting the circle peg into the square hole. Similar to how one can please some of the people most of the time, but most people only some of the time, our solutions are often the same.

What might work in one instance may not work in another. Could it be that the bully became the way they are because of their home life? Sure. But could it be their brain is wired to get pleasure in causing harm to others? Possibly. Can the answer be for the victim to fight back? Perhaps.

This complex issue is of course going to be met with bias depending on who is asked. Victims, perpetrators, & people indirectly involved or not involved will see things differently. Which creates its own set of issues to work out.

But if a snobby rich kid is beaten up by a poor hero-type kid in a story, we root for it. This is partly because of how we see power dynamics. Most people don't grow up rich & see the rich as being disconnected from the struggles of the everyday person. As problems tend to be related to money, or lack thereof. Thus creating a situation where we see it as okay for one human to beat up another, even though if the beating was reversed we'd see it as bullying.

Because we see bullying as the strong picking on the weak, we don't tend to believe it's possible in the reverse. So what happens then when a kid, unrelated to their parent's wealth is either used or alienated by their peers for their family's wealth? They probably don't turn out that kindhearted & become the very thing people claim to hate the rich for.

I bring all of this up to express why a real issue can be more than a trope. That ideas & issues can be multi-sided. That by adventuring through the complex nature of humans & the problems we create, we can express multiple takes on a given subject & by doing so come out with a better understanding of the subject itself.

This is why the revenge genre of manga is the worst of what should be good. Not simply because it relies on gore or shock, but because it fails to express anything meaningful about human nature or its complexity. Instead, the hero's vile actions are always reasonable & the villains are pure evil with no human characteristics outside of being the worst aspects brought to their extremes.

While pure evil can exist, the average person does not have the full capacity to logically distinguish it from selfishness, greed, malice, or anything else that might be see as evil. Instead, people often lump every trait that is perceived as negative into one large group & call all of it evil. Hating anyone who displays any of these traits, completely forgetting that hate begets hate.

Violence begets violence. What this sentence truly means is lost on most.

To be good is to meet evil with kindness & to not succumb to evil behavior in response. It is very easy for someone to let anger or sadness control them, leading to actions that can be considered evil or hinder goodness. Thus, those who can be kind in the most trying of times are considered good. And when evil is done to them, the act of not giving up is inspirational to others.

So, when a story presents a character that is pure evil & the supposed hero meets them with evil deeds, with no other themes or ideas, what is the reader left with?

Revenge is usually portrayed as hollow because it is a shallow reason for someone to exist. Once it is completed, what then? What of the people hurt in the process? The lost time spent seeking it? The unjust means used to carry it out? Is the hero any better than the villain?

Sure, he might have killed a hundred bad guys & there are fewer in the world, but is he still good? Is forsaking being a good person worth it when there will always be bad people? After all, he is not just making fewer bad people in the world, but also fewer good people.

I had previously mentioned that the grandfather was a World War II veteran. For those who studied it, you will likely guess what I'm about to say. It was not simply good versus evil. We like to simplify things in order to make it easier to accept or reject things. But throughout the war, there were moments that proved things weren't so simple. That the ones fighting the war were all people capable of humanity with few chances to show it because of what was at stake. These instances of humanity in war, however, are my favorite part about it & it is a shame that they are little more than a single sentence in most school books.

I bring this up, however, because the grandfather who served in the war teaches the main character that if a bully has turned over a new leaf, he should forgive that bully & move to the next target. Guess how that goes. None of them had changed & the grandfather is killed off, along with him went the idea that people can change for the better even after they have committed evil. That revenge, no matter how gruesome, is the only answer to insanity, injustice, & evil.

Thus, the story itself ironically betrays the revenge trope by only destroying it, instead of reconstructing it into something more meaningful.

It is one thing to create something for the sake of getting an emotion of out someone. But when that's all there is to it & it does more harm than good to the genre or trope, then was it worth creating in the first place? I would say no & that stories like Six People on Crosses do more bad than good.