Man my first review of 2024 and its for...this. I only heard about this manga through TVTropes and seeing as its complete I thought Id give it a look. Ehhh...I admit Im not a fan of this one. Ive mentioned before that bullying is a very tough subject to depict in fiction because you have to really know what youre doing. Some stories manage to do it right while others really fall flat. For example three years ago I reviewed a light novel called At Night I Become A Monster and I hated it because not only are all the characters bland onenote and onedimensional the whole story felt relentlessly meanspirited whereas another story that tackles the issue Lonely Castle In The Mirror manages to succeed in its depictions because 1. It actually bothers to flesh out the characters and make them feel relatable and threedimensional 2. It treats the victims trauma as valid and empathizes the importance of having a support network rather than simply blaming the victim and 3. It actually explores different facets of bullying from different angles rather than just one aspect of it. The subject of todays review the manga Is It My Fault That I Got Bullied? tries to show how bullying if left unchecked can leave people with both physical and mental scars that can haunt them for the rest of their lives while showing empathy to the victims which normally Id be on board with...if it wasnt for the fact that its execution leaves a lot to be desired. So whats the story? Shinji Suzuki has it made. He has a loving family and making high figures at his banking job to which he is the envy of his peers. But during a middle school reunion someone he remembers all too well is in attendance: Yuuichi Aizawa No not that onehttps://anilist.co/character/316/YuuichiAizawa a man that Shinji used to bully mercilessly back when they were in middle school traumatizing him to the point of making him drop out of school. Aizawa is pissed to find that not only is Shinji completely unrepentant years later he even has the gall to say Theres a reason why people get bullied implying that Aizawa was somehow at fault. But unbeknownst to Shinji his daughter Shiori is being targeted by bullies at school. To complicate matters further Aizawa is Shioris homeroom teacher. Can Aizawa be trusted? Who is friend or foe? And will the bullies both Shinji and the girls bullying Shiori finally face the consequences of their actions or will justice be out of the survivors reach yet again? Yeah in case you couldnt figure it out its a revenge story. I know shocker right? Considering the glut of them that weve been getting over the past few years Im sure were all getting tired of them. Hell bully revenge stories are pretty common in US media too. Ive seen a few movies about people getting back at bullies and several of them were...pretty bad. Word of warning dont watch that 2010 indie movie The Final. It sucks and Im still baffled that Lindsay Seidel is in it. Unfortunately Is It My Fault That I Got Bullied? is yet another addition to the bad bully revenge story pile and that stinks because there are some good parts about this manga especially its messages about how bullying is never the victims fault and that Japanese schools need to do more to actually combat the problem rather than just cover it up to save their schools reputations. But execution is everything and sometimes even with good intentions if you dont know what youre doing youll wind up really screwing the pooch here. One of the things holding the manga back is its art. Im not gonna lie the art for this manga really leaves a lot to be desired. The panel layouts are fine and I had no problem following the events of the story but the character designs are woefully generic and amateurish and there are even times when the body proportions are really off. Sometimes it seems like the characters eyes are stretched really long covering a good portion of their faces especially when theyre trying to look smug or scared and it makes them all look like silly cartoonish caricatures rather than truly conveying horror or evil like they intended. Granted it doesnt look nearly as bad as the manga version of Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni but its teetering on the edge. Ive also noticed that the mangaka really likes to use thick outlines for the characters but even those tend to be rather inconsistent. Sometimes the outlines look fine while other times theyre REALLY thick making the characters look like paper cutouts. It just looks odd. But the characters are really what hold this manga back. In all honesty the characters have nothing to them other than their circumstances or in the case of the antagonists just being evil. The protagonists are completely defined by their tragic experiences with bullying and I couldnt bring myself to care about them because the manga is just tragedy after tragedy every chapter with very little reprieve. The manga seems more concerned with putting Shiori through the wringer than making her into a threedimensional character and the girls who pick on her have all the depth of wet toilet paper even with their backstories explaining why they resorted to doing what they did. There are even some whose characterization is really inconsistent with the biggest offender being Eri Yazaki. Sometimes she acts like a rational teacher and other times shes a crazy psycho stalker straight out of a bad Lifetime movie who wants to get in Shinjis pants it feels like two different people are inhabiting Eris body rather than two sides of the same person. As much as I want to like Aizawa theres so many questions about his background that go unanswered that it really stretches credibility in regards to how he managed to become a teacher. If he dropped out of school how did he manage to get the credentials needed to become a teacher? Also did he even go to therapy for all the bullying he endured? What did he do with himself between dropping out and going to Shioris school? Does he have any hobbies? What relationship does he have with his parents? Did they support him or were they abusive? Seriously manga flesh out your characters beyond the tragedies they go through Theres no point in caring about any of your characters if you cant even treat them like people They all feel more like ciphers for the author to espouse their messages through than people. Speaking of the mangas messages thats actually one of the few redeeming qualities it has. Japan as a country has always had problems dealing with bullying or rather its refusal to do so. The fact that people tried to file lawsuits against the creator of A Silent Voice in order to force them to not make it into a series tells you all you need to know how much they dont want anyone to know about it. For all of Is It My Fault That I Got Bullied?s problems the messages it wants to put out arent one of them. Its clear that the author shows empathy for the victims of bullying wanting to express that it is NEVER the victims fault that theyre being bullied and that people who partake in bullying absolutely should face the consequences whether theyre active participants or people trying to cover it up to save face. Its not afraid to show that theres never an excuse for bullying and that nobody should ever willingly participate in it or subject someone to it so its better than At Night I Become a Monster in that regard. However as much as I agree with the mangas intentions these messages are undermined by the fact that the entire manga is little more than a wish fulfillment revenge fantasy complete with its characters having no depth or nuance to them and what little nuance they might have had never gets utilized. Actually the whole manga feels like a message first story second kind of affair similar to the 2019 remake of Black Christmas. The manga might have fared better if it bothered to flesh out its characters more toned down the revenge aspect improved the art and made the villains less cartoony. Overall Is It My Fault That I Got Bullied? does have something going for it but good messages cant make up for its lackluster plot inconsistent art and cartoonishly onenote characters. I can recommend several other stories that tackle the issue of bullying far better than this. This just isnt worth it.