Content Warning: This comic contains descriptions, implications and consequences of domestic and parental abuse, violence and rape.
Hello there, this is Laurent, your Frenchman guest reviewer. I wish you all the best for this new year, full of happiness and great Yuri stories. I also wish to once again express all my thanks to Erica for running such a great website and allowing a French guy like me to talk about some Yuri that may not have been translated in English yet. Enough talk, on to the review ! My Broken Mariko has been released in English by Yen Press and in French by Ki-Oon Editions.
Tomoyo is your regular 26 years old salesperson, working for an insurance company. One day, while spending her lunch time at a ramen restaurant, she see news on the TV about the suicide of another 26 years old girl : Mariko… Her oldest and best friend. Tomoyo doesn’t understand what just happened, for she met Mariko the previous week and everything seemed to be fine. But Mariko had a dark secret, a secret Tomoyo knew about for years and which could have been the cause of her death : regularly beaten by her father when she was a child, then regularly raped by him when she was a teenager, Mariko’s life has been a downward spiral of abuse. Stricken by guilt, thinking she’s partly responsible for her friend’s suicide and, after a violent confrontation with Mariko’s father, Tomoyo decides to honor a promise made years ago : that they would go together see the ocean, Mariko and her. Thus begin the road trip of a woman and the funeral urn containing the ashes of her best friend.
To say that My Broken Mariko was like a slap in my face on first reading would be an understatement. I wasn’t expecting something so violent, so deep. This is an adult story, hitting hard on some very mature themes (at this point, I cannot say it is just ‘touching on’). To start with, Hirako Waka never hides the physical violence suffered by Mariko : black eyes, split lips, bruises on various parts of her bodies… It is sometimes painful to watch, and those are just drawings. Then, there is the sexual violence : never shown, but bluntly stated. With the same bland excuses used by every sexual predator, and the same painful excuses offered by victims unable to understand that the fault does not come from them. Then, finally, the psychological violence : with a Mariko so spiritually broken that, once she manages to leave the parental home, she ends with boyfriends as abusive as her father… And finally, like way too many victims of domestic abuse, going back to live with the one who started it all. All this despite Tomoyo’s efforts to defend her.
While Mariko is a kind girl whose only answer to abuse is to endure until she cracks, Tomoyo is a more tough character that never hesitates to use a metal pan or a knife to get what she wants. Until she also cracks under the guilt of not having been able to save the girl that mattered the most to her. This is shown in the various stages of the trip, in which deprivation of sleep and alcohol abuse allows Tomoyo to hallucinate conversations with Mariko at different ages, and to dive into their common memories together through old letters written by her departed friend. This degradation is shown in the way Tomoyo is physically depicted : barely changing clothes, chain smoking to stay awake, her nose dripping with snot from sleeping in the cold, losing the little money she has left to pay for the train… All this so that she could simply bring her friend’s ashes to a beach that was special to both of them.
This is a story of a deep friendship, wrong turns, of misunderstandings, of mourning and of redemption. This is a story about going forward. When finally Tomoyo manages to overcome her guilt, it is the only way she knows how : by violently defending someone. And in doing this, she manages to let Mariko go and finally be at peace herself. The finale, on a simple two case page followed by a single panel, is a masterful demonstration of how to say a lot with very little.
My Broken Mariko is not a manga about LGBTQ characters (although some scenes clearly leave room for interpretation about the true feelings of Mariko towards Tomoyo, something Hariko herself said that it would be up to each reader to decide) but a manga about the emotional relationship between two women, a friendship so strong that one could say it transcends Death. My Broken Mariko is a poignant story, yet it is not a downer. There is darkness (a lot), but there is light also. This is about what we do, what we are. This is a walk through trauma, whose message is clear : there is ALWAYS hope, even during the darkest of times.
The volume comes with two more stories : Yiska (Hirako’s first published story which owes a lot to Quentin Tarantino’s movies and the Coen Bros’ rendition of Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece No Country For Old Men and is a non-Yuri work) and a bonus chapter for My Broken Mariko.
If you read French, the translation published by Ki-Oon Editions comes also with a very interesting in-depth 4 pages interview of Hirako which was especially done for the volume, and in which she discusses her graphic influences how her very difficult personal life (and especially one of her best friend, who is the template for Mariko) influenced her work.
Ratings:
ART : 7 – Very European style, with some shades of Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl, Gorillaz) especially in the faces, suiting perfectly the story. It may unsettle readers accustomed to more traditional Japanese style of drawing.
STORY : 8 – Well written, full of characters one can relate to. If you’ve ever felt grief at the senseless passing of an old friend, then you’ll understand what Tomoyo feel.
CHARACTER : 9 – While Tomoyo and Mariko takes full stage, even the secondary characters feels real-like. Special mention to Mariko’s father : I’ve rarely met a fictional person that I truly hated until then.
SERVICE : 0 – This is just not this kind of story.
YURI : I consider Yuri to go beyond just lesbian relationships, and to incorporate also deep emotional non-romantic/non-sexual relationships between women. My Broken Mariko is exactly that, and gets a 10 from me. The lesbian subtext exists, and it shows the strength of the story that it can be appreciated with or without Yuri goggles.
OVERALL : For her first published book, Hirako Waka strikes hard and right in the center of the target. This is one of the most intense, gutwrenching Yuri Josei I have read in 2021. It may not be suited for everyone (and I wouldn’t advice it for readers under 15/18 years old due to its mature topics, despite being without any sexual content), and you’ll have to bring some handkerchiefs to avoid too much tears in your eyes sometimes.
Such stories reminds us that when you’re down, when you think death is the only solution… IT IS NOT ! Reach for a friend, reach for an helping line, never give up : you’re not alone, you never are.
I don’t know what stories Waka Hirako will write next, but I will surely keep an eye on her future work
