Kami no Kodomo or rather... um Gods Child is... 440https://i.ur.com/CxFQfjr.jpg ...An interesting read. I definitely recommend it to any and all who are looking to read something light that will brighten their day and not make them feel... bad... and mildly disgusted. Maybe somewhat disgusted. Okay Ill be generous and give you a moderately disgusted. Look lets just get into explaining what this is and why Im gonna end up giving it a positive score. The Birth 440https://i.ur.com/e3sumha.png Okay Gods Child is a 2009 manga by Nishioka Kyodaihttps://anilist.co/staff/101706/KyoudaiNishioka which is in fact not a single person but rather a brother and sister which... I guess this is just the sort of manga theyre both interested in doing? 440https://i.ur.com/3N1MERI.png That being said Gods Child is a look into the mind and life of a... unique child who grows up and essentially very quickly develops a God complex and becomes not only a serial killer but forms his own cult of youths resembling himself when he was a boy that also go around killing people. He also has sex with them and to them he is essentially their God. ...I know how this is sounding as I continue describing it but youre not really supposed to feel good when reading a psychological horror are you? I just want to take this moment though to ask did we really need to hear his thoughts on being conceived? Look I dont care how intelligent or fucked up of a mind youre gonna develop later youre not going to have memories from your time as a SPERM. 440https://i.ur.com/HL7XiQP.jpg If it wasnt obvious the birth of the Child is in fact the first chapter of the manga and it ends with the newly born child straight up internally declaring that hes going to get revenge on the world. For being born. He wants revenge on the world for being born. Which I guess is a fine enough note to start the tale of a monster. The Child While it becomes very clear that the Child is already on the path to becoming a monster its not like the others around him are perfectly nice people. Although that itself is debatable since the entire manga were getting the thoughts and the viewpoint of the child itself. Like theres a custom where he was born that if a child before his first birthday stands up the family attaches a large ball of sticky rice to their back which would cause them to fall over so they wouldnt leave their parents. Basically when the ten month old Child doesnt fall over with the rice attached to his back one of the adults outright pushes him to make him fall down. 440https://i.ur.com/4JKtQxM.png Putting the idea that the Child was in fact inherently evil from the very moment he was born aside one must question the parenting of parents that fail to toilet train their child and simply allows them to play with their feces. Then they basically just give the Child clay which helps combat their obsession with feces replacing it with an obsession of creating an endless amount of humanoid clay figures and then breaking them all apart. At this point of the manga this kid isnt even anywhere near adulthood yet hes basically running full speed towards the goal line of becoming a serial killer. 440https://i.ur.com/rxG6qwR.png In my opinion in terms of the Child making progress on his path its a little bit fast. Like its hard to truly believe that there could be a child that is this inherently fucked up from birth itself. Never mind also adding in the Childs intelligence and awareness. 440https://i.ur.com/jwD0s4G.png Though as unrealistic as it may actually be I really thought this manga worked as giving a look into the mind of such a twisted mind. Like... I really really have to underline that this entire manga is fucked up. As a child the Child witnesses like one of the assistant teachers of his special needs class being raped by some guy in a cabin in the woods and... Then he just rapes her himself after the original rapist has already departed. https://i.ur.com/5Fb0W3v.png Its no surprise that the Child ends up starting his killings before hes even left elementary school. His killings arent simple or subtle either. They are brutal and sadistic to the point where while these children themselves were pretty messed up as well in their bullying ways any possible well at least they were bullies I guess goes right out of the window when the killings are so sadistic that the original victim of the bullying kills herself because she cant stop the Child from killing other students but also shes far too paralyzed with fear to try and tell someone about it. 440https://i.ur.com/aaOKhnS.png The Monster 440https://i.ur.com/Bf9uLjS.png I cant help but respect that this manga is completely unrepentant and doesnt hesitate even a moment to become even darker following the Childs original series of murders. Fourteen years old and the Child has accumulated a following of younger children who can sense that theres something incredibly off about him and begin to cling to him like moths surrounding a flickering light bulb. One day his followers proceed to bring a stray runaway to the Child who proceeds to give him food stab him rape him and then finally kill him. He then cut off chunks of him and gave them to the children to eat saying that it was holy communion. 440https://i.ur.com/IYzvHwa.png I somewhat feel conflicted. Part of me feels that its redundant to say this is fucked up and downright disturbing to read but... this manga genuinely is unsettling. Sure the Child does apparently declare that hes gonna take revenge on the world the moment hes born and sure he is definitely without a doubt a horrible monster. But when he was still a kid and killed his cat he genuinely did apparently love the animal that he had cruelly slaughtered with his own hands. He even cried genuine tears over the cats death and its only when those tears ceased that he willfully made the decision to basically push any and all emotion and empathy from his mind and being. Then you as the reader are just there along for the ride as the Child continues to stray further into fucking darkness. He witnesses an assistant teacher who tried to be close and friendly with him since he purposely isolated himself from the other special students get violently raped in the woods and his reaction to this is curiosity and imitating the rapist himself after he leaves her already wounded and broken. Then when he starts to brutally kill bullies in his class that were forcing their one targeted victim to eat her own feces and etc he reacts emotionless when she comes up to him and asks him to stop. The victim herself doesnt want to see anymore of her tormentors be grisly murdered and then their remains left where the other children can find them but we as the readers can see and know that the Child does not give two fucks about what she wants and is killing them just because he wants to. Like as I continued descending into this manga I couldnt help but think back to the earlier chapters when the Child muses back on when he created and then broke clay dolls. Haha how cute That was when I still wasnt capable of committing actual murders 440https://i.ur.com/tRC22aE.png Then finally when the Child is essentially at adulthood he now more or less has a cult of boys younger than him who are not only entirely subservient to him but also eagerly wish to commit murders with him. Then when theres little response from society when he and his murder cult descend on the local vagrant populace the Child just decides to move on from vagrants to random passerbys and describes the way they murder them like its a matter of course. 440https://i.ur.com/j21q4Vc.png But even then the Child feels like theres something missing and then orders his followers to go and The Fall To conclude while Im of course not gonna fully give away how exactly it ends I do feel the need to say that if after everything this manga hadnt ended with a Fall it wouldnt have... worked in my opinion. After so much horribleness and following the Child from his very birth it would have been a horribly crushing and pessimistic ending if the Child had continued without facing any punishment for his acts. Speaking honestly the way it ends and how the Child gets his comeuppance is perhaps the linchpin of why I think positively of this manga that is admittedly not a fun read at all. Mind you of the images I included in this review I held back on including the majority of the messed up stuff. Gods Child certainly works as a psychological horror showcasing horrible human behavior and is almost entirely a look into the extremely twisted mind of this particularly fucked up individual who is almost inherently evil from birth. The horror beyond the surface level of how awful everything in the manga is and made me feel while reading it is just... thinking... what if a person like this ACTUALLY existed? Overall a 7 out of 10. If youre looking to make yourself feel bad or feel disgusted Gods Child is a pretty good choice. https://i.ur.com/pbfJtvC.png