I wish this manga would have stuck more to Satsuki playing sudden death detective over having some ridiculous Anti-Satsuki villain duo.

Oh, I forgot, why leave a kid near an acid in any hypothesis, a strong one for making that burn, and how did it not leave a scar?

It did leave a scar, it's been shown before. But yeah, the responsibility would still fall on the teacher, regardless of whether she claimed it was an accident or not. I doubt she would have simply gotten away with that (or at least the mother shouldn't have let her get away with that). This backstory is so over-the-top that it doesn't make me feel anything towards the kids. Not that I had expected their actions to ever become justified through a backstory, but still, it could've been better than this. I just hope it ends and we can go back to the present soon.

I'm not too sure what the point of the backstory is, since it sure doesn't make them sympathetic. I wouldn't reject a plot where traumatized kids with superpowers have decided to take revenge through violence and we're expected to empathize with them, but after showing that they actually find killing people fun in chapter 51, I don't think that was the purpose.

Maybe it's just to show that even though they like killing, this didn't come out of nowhere and they had reasons to turn out like this? That addition would make sense, I guess.

I just hope I'm not wrong. If this all turn out into a "they were victims first, let's support them and just forget about how happy they were about killing before", I'd find this pretty annoying.

So the teacher is not just a participant in the bullying, but has organised it herself. Even "better".

There remains the question of how Kai awakened the power.

jumping the shark ho!

I'm not too sure what the point of the backstory is, since it sure doesn't make them sympathetic. I wouldn't reject a plot where traumatized kids with superpowers have decided to take revenge through violence and we're expected to empathize with them, but after showing that they actually find killing people fun in chapter 51, I don't think that was the purpose.

Maybe it's just to show that even though they like killing, this didn't come out of nowhere and they had reasons to turn out like this? That addition would make sense, I guess.

I just hope I'm not wrong. If this all turn out into a "they were victims first, let's support them and just forget about how happy they were about killing before", I'd find this pretty annoying.

The purpose of a backstory is never to justify, but to understand how someone/something came to be, this is just explaining that they werent evil from the beginning or that even if they had a predisposition, what happened to them was just a push to become

last edited at Sep 9, 2022 8:10PM

Seeing kid Kai gaslight everyone up to an adult teacher was hilarious, I must say I'm looking forward to any future backstory chapters.
While I understand the complaints about their backstory being too over the top to be effective from a narrative perspective, that's just the manga in a nutshell imo. People "die" by the dozens in increasingly complicated ways with visual effects on the level of a Slasher movie while the protagonist's sole remaining braincell rarely helps because it's busy recalling forensic knowledge most of the time, not exactly the formula for something meant to be taken 100% seriously.

So I think the zanny backstory fits this manga perfectly.

Finally gave this a try and I gotta say this is a very fun manga to follow, but at the same time, it's very frustrating. The sudden appearance of the villainous duo didn't help with that and completely shifted the premise of the whole deal, and I won't lie, I don't much like it.

I thought it would be about becoming a better person or some corny stuff like that with the "seeing death" part being both the pull-in as well as the "igniter" for all that to happen.
I don't mind the over-the-top reasoning for the prez duo to be the way they are, as someone mentioned a few times, this manga is pretty bonkers in its own way, so it's fitting. I also understand why such character(s) exists in a story like this. To show a "what if" scenario, a mirrored version of what you could do with such stuff. I'm not sure how seeing dead bodies help you kill people and get away with it but... I mean, sure.

The issue I have with it is that it stuck for too long and it seems like it's becoming some kind of an ongoing thing. Like the manga shifts towards some odd death-note territory. And if that's the goal here to change into that kind of thing, no amount of cute moments between Satsuki and Akira will save it.

I wish there was more Satsuki and less other (unexciting) characters. :[

Ah yes, how to pass a rag to your antagonists to try to justify their actions: create someone shallow who is crueler to them for no apparent reason, that will maybe make them look less bad

i don't think the point is to make them less bad but to address how they deal with those circumstances. arguably, satsuki is in a pretty shitty position too where she and her friends get the short end of the social stick pretty often, but she goes out of her way to save people no matter what. antagonist-kun here sees cruelty and thinks that the way to react to it is with even more cruelty (however deserved in those admittedly shallow examples it may have been).

The way Komachi was drawn on the Vol. 5 cover made me think it was the VP (the eyes specially). Had to do a double-check to notice the hair accessory.

(Maybe her rather uncharacteristic expression on the cover is foreshadowing to her being the true villain. Maybe I am reading too much into it.)

Geez, the Vol 5 extras sure make Komachi look sketchy. It's good to see her original facade slowly disappear but this is quite a difference, to the point that this looks like spoilers for just how far Komachi could go. Well it's already well-established that she's wired without concern for life, and Ryouko-sensei has proven she can make that complex and compelling. The question now isn't if Komachi is dangerous but what kind of dangerous Komachi is.

last edited at Sep 22, 2022 12:23AM

Geez, the Vol 5 extras sure make Komachi look sketchy. It's good to see her original facade slowly disappear but this is quite a difference, to the point that this looks like spoilers for just how far Komachi could go. Well it's already well-established that she's wired without concern for life, and Ryouko-sensei has proven she can make that complex and compelling. The question now isn't if Komachi is dangerous but what kind of dangerous Komachi is.

You are absolutely right!
And this page pretty much sums up the dynamic.

Komachi: [acting sus]
Satsuki: [useless lesbian can’t spot a psycho]
Akira: bruh wtf

Akira also being us.

Ah yes, the vol 5 cover indicates that Komachi being the true heroine.
I like it.

yeah I really love how the maid extra makes komachi looks just extra suspicious. But also like Satsuki.... she didn't realise it was poison???? Come on girl and you believe her??? haha.

last edited at Sep 22, 2022 7:21AM

The biggest mystery of all is whether that huge pile of corpses in chapter 1 was caused by Komachi

I miss happy Satsuki like you wouldn't believe.
The composition of this cover's amazing, though I'm surprised Ryouko's so openly playing around with evil Komachi. The phrasing on the back of the book, "You want to die? I think that's nice/死にたいの？いいと思うよ," is the same as back in chapter 22, when Komachi was giving the OK to everything.

Volume 5 has less changes overall than volume 4, but one significant change in chapter 48: the student council's suggestion box has gone online and the messages are more detailed. They mention Seo extorting others into bullying, along with a few more explicit descriptions like "playing darts" by throwing pens at a girl's head. Might be relevant later.

Damn, the new cover is great. Well, and that scene with the poison was really funny.

It's unbelievable how trusting Satsuki is for Komachi xD

It's unbelievable how trusting Satsuki is for Komachi xD

Or everyone, really... Remember how quick she was to trust Seo? She's too kind for her own good

Volume 5 has less changes overall than volume 4, but one significant change in chapter 48: the student council's suggestion box has gone online and the messages are more detailed. They mention Seo extorting others into bullying, along with a few more explicit descriptions like "playing darts" by throwing pens at a girl's head. Might be relevant later.

You mean we can read the full messages? Do you have a link? I'm curious now.
Seo might be the "villain" for this next arc. Apparently StuCo arc will stop for a bit after Michi(?)'s death, so I wonder if the antagonist will shift. Seo might be a good option. Out of everyone who was saved by Satsuki, she seems to be the truly explicitly rotten one (if the suggestion box messages are true).

I've said it before, but it's all hinting at Komachi playing a bigger role in the story (true antagonist maybe), but for now she'll probably stay in the background (or just barely show her true colors), even if the Vol.5 cover confirms homegirl is dangerous.

last edited at Sep 22, 2022 7:02PM

Wow the Author really isn't holding back with sus Komachi. now I'm just waiting for when the President keeps thinking that he is so smart just for the big reveal that Komachi was the master mind behind everything all along

in my humble opinion i think we need a maid satsuki spin off

Can someone please tell me what's the color of Satsuki's eyes? on some art it's red and on other art it's green

Volume 5 has less changes overall than volume 4, but one significant change in chapter 48: the student council's suggestion box has gone online and the messages are more detailed. They mention Seo extorting others into bullying, along with a few more explicit descriptions like "playing darts" by throwing pens at a girl's head. Might be relevant later.

You mean we can read the full messages? Do you have a link? I'm curious now.
Seo might be the "villain" for this next arc. Apparently StuCo arc will stop for a bit after Michi(?)'s death, so I wonder if the antagonist will shift. Seo might be a good option. Out of everyone who was saved by Satsuki, she seems to be the truly explicitly rotten one (if the suggestion box messages are true).

I've said it before, but it's all hinting at Komachi playing a bigger role in the story (true antagonist maybe), but for now she'll probably stay in the background (or just barely show her true colors), even if the Vol.5 cover confirms homegirl is dangerous.

I might do some rewording when I finish the volume version, but here's the final page of ch48 reworked.

While Ryouko said there would be a pause between Satsuki vs the StuCo, this flashback arc could just be that. This is pretty much the first real safe zone in 50 chapters. But things also can't slow down for too long. I'd like if Satsuki had time to make a peaceful recovery but the world's not that kind.

As for Seo, I get the feeling she'll be an ongoing moral dilemma. She's acting a little too genuine for me to think she's completely faking amnesia, and she reacted oddly back when Satsuki accused her of being suicidal. There's a lot of directions she could go, but my impression's leaning towards "Miho but worse but also with a conscience." Maybe she regrets what she did and is happy to find a way out, though she's still not a great person deep down. She's in the best position to expose the student council, but it would also mean exposing her own attempted murder among other things. The question is how well Satsuki can tolerate that.

Seo running a bullying ring is also an interesting parallel to Kai and Sayoko's past; she's primed to be both their perfect target and their undoing. And in that sense I think it's more likely she'll be redeemed than go full psycho. Most of the abusive characters we've seen so far have been victimized to some extent themselves and were just finding an outlet. They aren't completely unsalvageable.

But Komachi's totally the last boss.

Can someone please tell me what's the color of Satsuki's eyes? on some art it's red and on other art it's green

The canon color is probably a dull red similar to the volume 1 and 3 covers, but I've seen anything from bright blue to lime green. I think Ryouko learned from the Jojo school of color consistency.

The composition of this cover's amazing, though I'm surprised Ryouko's so openly playing around with evil Komachi. The phrasing on the back of the book, "You want to die? I think that's nice/死にたいの？いいと思うよ," is the same as back in chapter 22, when Komachi was giving the OK to everything.

This is such an awesome detail. Ryouko confirming our suspicions in a playful way is so exciting to me. Missing insane girl Komachi and this vol feels like Komachi’s time to shine so wahoooo