Watashi no Otto wa Reitouko ni Nemutteiru is a cursed 2020 manga by Takaru Hyakuhttps://anilist.co/staff/200639/TakaraHyaku. The english translation of that title basically being my goddamned husband is dead and in my freezer. So that automatically pretty much sets the stage for the sort of manga that youre in store for and of course is why I read it. https://i.ur.com/a2i5MA0.pngA However if before I had read it you had told me that this manga was actually based off of some hacky soap drama TV show I would have definitely believed you. However it instead spawned one I guess??? 440https://i.ur.com/qniJUuR.png https://i.ur.com/h6D3nMI.jpg Makes perfect sense because all I could think of while reading that manga was that it would probably work better as that. Mind you I of course didnt watch the show so I cant actually vouch for that. What made less sense is no apparently this manga is based off of some web novel I guess by Hachigatsu Misaki.https://anilist.co/staff/200640/HachigatsuMisaki Even for like a web novel... how do you stretch this story out that long? The mangas super short you can pretty much breeze through it no problem. For a TV show all the scenes are actually acted and of course you can pad that shit out and have the twists and shit be cliffhangers for the next episode and etc and that makes sense. A web novel??? Of this??? My husband was abusive so I fucking murdered him and put him in my freezer in the shed out back but oh no my husbands back But his corpse is still in the freezer I dont understand whats going on and then it just kind of goes on and on like that for thousands and thousands of words 440https://i.ur.com/xPT5HEo.png Theres not I dont consider this a spoiler at all by the way theres just not enough twists. The twists that are there are just so obvious and stupid theyre basically what you immediately think of. Like oh is it gonna be this??? But I the constant optimist for whatever reason was kind of engaged by this manga and genuinely wanted to see what it was gonna be Because you know I like murder And I like well actually FROM HERE ON OUT THIS IS A FULL GODDAMNED SPOILERS REVIEW. OH YEAH CONTENT WARNING BY THE WAY THIS SHIT GETS RIDICULOUS The whole jist of the thing is that the wife murders her husband because hes genuinely horrible to her abusive and just genuinely seems like hes a different person compared to the person she married. And then of course she ends up seeing oh her husbands still alive But wait her husbands also still in the freezer though. How is that possible? Could it... could it be... twins? 440https://i.ur.com/S7p75xd.pngA No no Thats too stupid and predictable Come on Give the original author some credit Maybe the living husband is actually a ghost or its like some psychological shit where the living husband doesnt really exist and its actually the guilt she feels from her murder fucking with her because even though her husband was a horrible person and abusing her murders still kind of a huge deal But that really doesnt make sense because shes obviously really happy that hes gone. Which makes sense because again he was beyond horrible to her so okay fine shes completely remorseless. But then when this new husband shows up and upon confirming that she really does still have a corpse in her shed freezer she basically immediately jumps to... I dont know who this person who basically is exactly my husband is or if hes his ghost but Im going to fucking murder him too. 440https://i.ur.com/pXTyWVW.png That by itself is kind of... maybe she should confirm what the fuck is even happening before murdering her husband twice? But then she escalates it and goes actually ILL FEED THE CORPSE OF THE FIRST HUSBAND TO THE SECOND ONE. And its at that point where the horror neurons in my brain started firing off. Jumped from ah man my husband was probably cheating with the older lady living next door which is typical generic soap shit to not just cannibalism. But involuntary selfcannibalism??? 440https://i.ur.com/v073RqW.png At this point the manga really stomps on the gas pedal of demonizing the husband as much as possible to keep it balanced. I guess probably cheating on her and regularly beating her and raping her or at the minimum beating her while they had sex but the way they framed it implied she probably said no and he just started raping her wasnt enough? We get shown that when the wife is worried that she might have cancer the husbands immediate reaction was hey you have life insurance right? You have life insurance right? I want to get paid once you croak from cancer. HA HA HA. 440https://i.ur.com/XMEBtLG.png Shouldnt... shouldnt he know that already? Like hes her husband right? Shouldnt he already know that...? But even thats not enough. How can we push it even further? How about that fun time when the husband literally dragged her off to force her to get an abortion? Like the husband shows a desire to have a child and already has a name picked out... 440https://i.ur.com/gNafkf4.png Its not even an immediate thing. Its not like when she tells her he goes actually I changed my mind lets go get this problem taken care of. Its shown that like just one day she came home from the bakery with like bread crusts and Ryo just gets super fucking annoyed and just drags her outside without telling her why until hes already dragging her down the street. https://i.ur.com/U4R5KiY.png This manga is insane. I really dont think its nitpicking to think about this scene for literally two extra seconds more than the author did. Was nobody else at all outside watching this man dragging his crying and screaming pregnant wife down the street and off to the abortion clinic? It was broad daylight. This wasnt needed. Just having him be normally abusive to her would have been enough. You could have still had some room if you were trying to go for the oh maybe she still feels bad about it and thats why theres this second Ryo here thing. But with the forced abortion if she wasnt 100 justified in murdering him she definitely is now??? Like after the abortion he comes into the room and just gives her a wooden doll. Doesnt even say anything. Well that was fucked up that I forced you to do that but here uh pretend this is our dead child. Maybe itll make you feel better. 440https://i.ur.com/ufDzo0d.png Then later hes like jesus just get over it already and go back to work I need money Whats that wooden piece of junk youre clinging on to? Just throw it away already like our child which I forced you to abort https://i.ur.com/SsDh0oI.png ...This is one of those special types of manga that I need to include images of just to prove that Im just not losing my mind. Yeah no this is an actual manga that exists Im not making all of this up I swear it Like why didnt she just immediately stab the second Ryo the moment he showed his face? Literally when he shows back up at first is when she was in the kitchen with a butcher knife. She was being physically and psychologically tortured by this person and even forced to undergo an abortion she very much did not want... who cares if upon returning hes acting all smiley and nice? Stab him in the face. Sure the freezers already full of first husbands remains. The manga later shows this point doesnt even matter though. 440https://i.ur.com/oM4HcKQ.png Its just so weird that her reaction to his return isnt horror or immediate murder but this weird ass cannibalism plot. Like admittedly thats what really pulled me into being actually interested in this manga... but its just so batshit weird. Is it just crazy to think that maybe we should have been shown a single moment where she considered... turning herself in? The husband absolutely deserved what was coming to him. I mean its not like she didnt give him another option other than getting murdered. Like after the whole insurance thing she was like okay no your reaction to me saying I might have cancer was not acceptable. I want a divorce. But then he just rips the divorce papers up in front of her. Im pretty sure thats not how... marriage works? Like Im pretty sure theres alternatives if your partner is horribly horribly abusive and literally goes no Im never letting you go. And Im also going to keep beating you and probably force you to get an abortion in the near future. 440https://i.ur.com/z7AUEFs.png Because you know if you can just force someone to remain married to you no matter what then why would anyone ever get married? https://i.ur.com/T2gnrR2.png Okay were getting horribly sidetracked here. The point is that... like okay if the wife had just buried Ryo somewhere normally and the manga had just been about her hoping nobody happened to find him. Like the wife would still be trying to hide her murder but thatd be a lot more understandable especially with giving the reader all of the flashbacks of how horrible Ryo was. But her deciding to feed his corpse to someone else? Like thats not something you should have your victim protagonist do? You know if you want the reader to remain on their side. Tortured wife gets pushed into murdering her husband because she feels like theres no other way out of her marriage without one of them dying... feeding someone an entire corpses worth of meat to make disposal of the body easier. These two things dont belong together without... like there should have been a scene where shes attempting to bury Ryo but then she almost gets caught and goes I need another way to get rid of this body 440https://i.ur.com/8iDvHvY.png Not just have her go wow its really weird theres another one of this person I just murdered Im going to trick him into eating the corpse Thats really weird Thats unacceptably weird To the point where thats all I could think about while the mangas trying to get me to sympathize with her. The manga really should have been about the wife trying to figure out who or what this second Ryo is. But instead shes just going to pretend everythings okay while giving him lunches full of human meat until all of its gone so she can just bury the bones in a forest because itd be easier to bury just bones. 440https://i.ur.com/1XzTl4q.png But her plan is to murder the second husband after all the meats gone so that means the freezers just going to get restocked with human meat. So what the fucks the point? Who is she going to feed the second corpse? So this weird ass game she and her husband are playing keeps going on. Meanwhile the husbands just smiling all the time. 440https://i.ur.com/rL1ITjj.png I know I may have done all of that horrible shit to you but Im going to be a good husband from now on Just think of how I was acting before as if I was just another person. Just another completely different person. JUST ANOTHER COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON. JUST ANOTHER COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON 440https://i.ur.com/E944CXt.png But then A second male character gets introduced And Im like... oh... just... go fuck right off. HERE COMES THE LOVE TRIANGLE SOAP DRAMA GARBAGE. The wife had met the second male character at some mixer she went to before she got married but they didnt match and oh wow he just happens to be a coworker of the husband so the second husband brings him home to dinner after the wife blabbed a bunch of shit to him and blah blah blah. 440https://i.ur.com/q7ID66y.png Really the second male character doesnt matter at all. He does get probably the best moment of the entire manga where But his real purpose is of course to be the person for the wife to confide to. I murdered my husband and now theres an impostor husband and he is evil and I did some real bad shit to you specifically as a result of him but Im not going to come clean to you about what I did apart from the initial murder because that would make me look really REALLY bad 440https://i.ur.com/enY5PQB.png So the second male character claims to believe her and they kiss and she foolishly decides to go home and the second husband shows anger for the first time as he demands to know where she went and she freaks out when he presses her on the fact that she hasnt eaten because she doesnt want to eat the human meat because she knows cannibalism is wrong BUT ITS PERFECTLY OKAY TO MAKE OTHER PEOPLE EAT HUMAN MEAT 440https://i.ur.com/lNTkneU.png But then the second husband just calmly says oh yeah the meat Ive been using in our meals isnt from the freezer. Its fine And the wife has the absolute audacity to ask... https://i.ur.com/xTs8lWj.png ... ...Oh that absolutely vital information that you... probably should have tried to figure out the moment a whole new carbon copy of your dead husband appeared? But instead you didnt even go all in on committing a second murder but this weird involuntary cannibalism shit? YEAH MAYBE FINDING OUT WHO THE FUCK THIS GUY ACTUALLY IS WAS IMPORTANT. But oh no hold on. The second husband takes her out to the freezer and rather than there being a human corpse sans some meat its just meat 440https://i.ur.com/dwvYBbH.png And the wife just fucking loses it and thinks hes going to drag her off to an insane asylum and have her locked away or something so she retreats to the second male characters place and confides in him again and wants to leave with him right away to get the fuck away from her husband ghost but hes not a ghost because weve seen him talk to like... the two other characters we have in this series. But oh no the second male character betrayed her and called the second husband to take her home Even though... even though they kissed before? So the second male character loved ??? her he just didnt believe any of the crazy shit she was spouting. So when she came back to his place spouting a bunch of crazy shit she just called her husband to come get her... Id say thats kind of fucked up before I remember EVEN IF SHE DIDNT INTEND IT SHE FED HIM A WHOLE BUNCH OF HUMAN MEAT. 440https://i.ur.com/yvuKs0s.png Because of course when the second husband comes and gets her he finally delivers the twist of the manga. And hes looking genuinely hurt while he does it. https://i.ur.com/OWgsX07.jpg Its twins. Twin brothers. Ryo and Sou. Ryo was the bad one and Sou was the good one. Their mother gave birth to them while fleeing her abusive husband and not wanting them to be known as their fathers children she just opted to not have them be registered. How does that work exactly? Did she just not go to the hospital and had them on her own somehow? Or after giving birth in the hospital she said something to one of the nurses like oh hey can you not... put them in the system? Lets just pretend I came in for a checkup and then I just left the hospital with two newborn children? excuse me maam but what the fuck did you even just ask me to do? what??? 440https://i.ur.com/DHlTWaS.png THE POINT IS THE WHOLE MARRIAGE BETWEEN RYO AND OUR PROTAGONIST AS A RESULT WASNT EVEN A REAL MARRIAGE. Maybe... maybe this is a reason why you shouldnt get hitched to some guy you literally meet just standing at the side of the road? 440https://i.ur.com/kctffHd.png Because maybe hell not be on the grid and also have a twin brother and he and his twin will decide to start playing a game where they start switching in and out. And even with the manga stressing that hey Sous a lot better of a guy than Ryo... he should have immediately stopped this then. 440https://i.ur.com/Siylopi.png They were gaslighting the absolute shit out of her. She thought she was in a relationship with one guy instead its two brothers and theyre just switching in and out whenever because they thought it was funny how she wouldnt notice the difference. 440https://i.ur.com/u9LyKVN.png But eventually things went too far and Ryo told him alright well fuck off then if you dont want to gaslight and torture this girl anymore. and so Sou left and let Ryo have her. But hold on. Sou also mentioned he was the one who gave her the wooden doll after Ryo forced her to get an abortion...? EVEN IF THAT WAS THE IMMEDIATE BREAKING POINT WHERE SOU FINALLY HAD ENOUGH AND LIKE LEFT THE WIFE TO RYOS DEVICES AFTER GIVING HER THE WOODEN DOLL THATS SO INCREDIBLY FUCKED UP. 440https://i.ur.com/VlioI7Z.png Shes been going on this whole manga since Sou showed up after Ryo died about wanting to kill this new second Ryo but after being told all this horrible shit and that Sou actually finished off Ryo because he was apparently still alive after she stuffed him in the freezer shes all like wow I love you Sou and then they get married. For real this time 440https://i.ur.com/QSg3y1v.png ...Why? No seriously fucking why? FORGET THE ANGEL AND DEMON SHIT THEYRE BOTH HORRIBLE TERRIBLE HUMAN BEINGS. YOU SHOULD BE HORRIFIED. HE WAS KNOWINGLY PASSING OFF LUNCHES FILLED WITH HIS DEAD BROTHERS FLESH TO THIS OTHER GUY BECAUSE HE WAS PETTILY ANGRY AT HIM THAT HE GREW UP IN A BETTER ENVIRONMENT. 440https://i.ur.com/hqimdte.png Speaking of hes also apparently on the run because hes wanted for questioning in a murder case. Murder case...? What murder case? FUCKING WHAT MURDER CASE? 440https://i.ur.com/0Glk3gO.png It never... gets explained... and even if Sou like were to throw second male character under the bus for Ryos murder then surely he would have had to told the police about Ryos corpse and he didnt but even if he did how would he explain second male character murdering Ryo and then hiding Ryos corpse in Sou and his wifes house... So... the only really sensible explanation is that hes on the hook for a completely unrelated murder...? I dont know. I dont know about anything that is happening in this manga at this point because on top of this the wifes mother and the older woman neighbor both were apparently aware that the wife was being gaslighted by the brothers? And they... just didnt tell her. Ever. Not once. 440https://i.ur.com/hgt0xJ8.png Granted they maybe werent fully aware of the abuse or the abortion but they were aware of Sous cheating and find it weird she didnt decide to go with Ryo instead. ...Wait fucking what??? 440https://i.ur.com/vnPWjBA.png So wait hold on Sou was actually the one who was cheating? But was Ryo still the one that was being abusive and pushed her into aborting her child? If this last attempt at misleading the reader was to imply that both brothers were awful human beings I was kind of already there. I want to say it almost feels like the implication the author wants to give is that somehow Ryo was actually the fully good one and Sou was just lying and he somehow tricked Ryo into being in the right place and right time when she decided to try and murder Sou but actually ended up murdering Ryo who in this case would be the good one and THIS IS WHY YOU DONT DO THE TWIN TWIST. BEST CASE SCENARIO? OH WHAT A CHEAP TWIST. WORST CASE SCENARIO OH THIS MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE AND IM FURTHER MUDDYING THE WATERS BY THROWING THE IMPLICATION THAT ITS THE ACTUALLY THE BAD TWIN WHO SURVIVED THE TWIN OFF 440https://i.ur.com/Z4bn2fH.png You know what? It doesnt even matter. The way the manga ends is that she and Sou who may or may not be the good twin get married they move away she gives birth to twins and then she alone moves back to her old house. And Sous just gone after the timeskip. 440https://i.ur.com/pQOXHOJ.png Because she thinks twins should always remain together and the last panel of the manga is of the freezer. Because... because both Sou and Ryo are in the freezer. Because the title isnt referring to Ryo because she and Ryo were never officially married but she did officially marry Sou and then afterward murdered him and now hes sleeping in the freezer with his brother. Although Sou said he moved Ryo or I guess at least his head? to under the tatami when he was pranking her and making her think that the meat in the freezer was just normal meat... so Im assuming she put him back in the freezer because if she just left him under there at room temperature he definitely would start rotting surely... I fucking hate this manga. 440https://i.ur.com/hI6FBtu.png I genuinely wanted to see where this was going to go. I even kind of forgave the twin twist even though it was the first thing I immediately thought of because of how insanely fucked up and stupid it ended up being. At first the wife even reacted how she should have reacted. What do you mean my marriage was a sham and you twins were taking turns? Why the fuck would you do such a horrible thing? But then she immediately goes oh you finished off Ryo? thank you Sou I love you and then were purposely shown that two of the three other characters that exist in this manga knew that Ryo had a twin this whole time making the wife look absolutely stupid. And then after she asks Sou no I know we got married for real and all but who the fuck are you really? 440https://i.ur.com/uRn4Lr9.png Cue transition to timeskip and bam. Her twins are born Sous gone and the wifes acting completely different to how shes been the entire manga. Why not show her murdering Sou? That was your one job The twist of the wife murdering Sou anyways after marrying him is completely ineffective because we dont care that she murdered him. If anything she should have murdered him much sooner because even putting the gaslighting thing aside Sous a huge asshole anyways. Like I know her mother is there with her at the end but she should be acting like how she was acting at the start of the manga when she thought she had killed Ryo. Oh thank god these piece of shit brothers who have manipulated me for fun abused me and ruined my life are finally both dead. 440https://i.ur.com/0KaK0KN.png Not: Thats where you belong Sou. With your dead twin brother. Which is a really unfortunate sort of thing to say given that I now have twin sons. I guess I need to find somebody new to feed all that meat to. Wait... hold on... I need to go make a quick google search real quick... https://i.ur.com/smU44zZ.png That without a doubt has to be one of the darkest implications a manga has ever left me with upon ending. But what the hell else is she going to do with the meat??? Conclusion An absolute roaring dumpster fire. But this manga is the kind of dumpster fire thats hard to even enjoy. Because its just so utterly incomprehensible. The obvious early twist is obvious and thus its silly thats what it actually ended up being the final twist is just infuriating and makes the wife character completely unlikable and honestly kind of creepy. Because she had plenty of time and opportunities to murder Sou where it would have made sense and honestly she would have been pretty justified. But she only did it when she knew he was seemingly fully in love with her and wrapped around her finger which would be fitting if she had demonstrated she was capable of being that manipulative at any point throughout the rest of the manga. The extent to which she was gaslit not only by the brothers but also as it turns out the people around her is just fucking crazy and honestly awful. This is one of those wild manga where pretty much every single character is just a horrible or so flawed to the point I cant even bring myself to like any of them. And the fact that the cannibalism actually ends up becoming such a minor point that it just kind of falls down by the wayside to the point of the wife has to actually go oh hey wait Sou why the fuck did you even do that to that guy? at the end is just wild. This manga is just a disaster and upon thinking about it further than I probably should have broke my brain and resulted in this absolute mess of a review. So Im giving it a 2 out of 10. I still might have been willing to recommend it as I found the act of reading it and trying to guess where it was heading fun but... the ending is just so bad. 440https://i.ur.com/xBOKfg6.png Its really odd for me to be thinking that everything was just a dream would actually improve a story but... I really was hoping her being crazy would win out against the whole twin thing. Oh well. Guess you cant win them all...