100https://i.ur.com/KvetFjo.jpg Saint Rosalind is a suspense/horror shjo manga by Masako Watanabe published in 1973 inside the magazine Shjo Friend. It is nowadays a classic of the genre. The manga is about a cute and innocent little girl called Rosalind who murders dozens of people in quite gruesome ways. And it is glorious. The manga was republished numerous times: for this review I base myself on the 2017 edition which contains a chapter 0 specifically written for the edition 44 years after the original edition. Context At the time of writing Saint Rosalind Watanabe was an experimented author since she started her career in 1949 and is among the pioneers of horror manga with Aoi Kitsune Hon in 1967. In the 1960s decade and a little after it wasnt uncommon for shjo manga to be based on movies. It is the case of Saint Rosalind which is clearly inspired by The Bad Seed a psychologicalhorror novel written in 1954 by William March which in turns is adapted into a Broadway play the same year then the play is itself adapted into an Hollywood movie in 1956 by Mervyn LeRoy. I havent read the novel but I watched the movie and if the movie and the manga are vastly different works they share striking similarities on major plotpoints and little details. 400https://i.ur.com/eKfi8mV.jpg Rhoda from The Bad Seed. Now it isnt the first time that The Bad Seed inspired a manga for example Ine Satoshi wrote Akuma no Otoshigo in 1958 and the concept of murderous children was explored in earlier works like Kawais na Mama by Moto Hagio in 1971. https://i.ur.com/scqpVf4.jpg Akuma no Otoshigo. Story Saint Rosalind doesnt have much of a plot you simply follow the main character Rosalind murdering people after people. But the manga isnt episodic either as the events are directly connected to each other. The manga is divided into 17 chapters of approximately 20 pages. Most chapters follow a similar construction and work as would do a scene in a play with one chapter equal a place and a set of characters. This way is very similar to The Bad Seeds movie as it was adapted from the Broadway play. Thus in each chapter Rosalind enters an new place in Greece England and France meets new characters get a reason to kill a character or more then kill them. There is of course some exceptions to this schema notably when you follow Rosalinds entourage or the police trying to catch the devilish child and of course the final chapter concludes the story and thus follows a different schema. 400https://i.ur.com/L9agsVq.jpg Hello I am Rosalind. As for the characters the only notable one is Rosalind herself. There is over 30 characters but most of them are background characters or dont survive long. The only recurring characters worth mentioning are the direct entourage of Rosalind: Alfred the butler Hathaway the father and Mycenae the mother but they stay quite simple. In the end Rosalind is the only complex character she was made as an enigma she is the monster after all and the goal is to understand the monster. The other characters dont need to be really developed. To focus on Rosalind she is a 8 years old girl who looks like an angel but is the child of devil. My first reaction about her was she is probably a sociopath she doesnt feel any compassion nor empathy. But she isnt as she genuinely cry when people around her are suffering albeit never for very long. But nonetheless something is wrong with her as she understand what death is but still kill people some times with the goal to help them 400https://i.ur.com/z38Rgg9.jpg Rosalind being sad for Liza. From my understanding in Rosalinds eyes going into paradise is a good thing thus dying isnt bad. The first few murders are driven by greed: Rosalind wants an item in possession of someone else. So Rosalind manage to get them make a promise about giving her the item after their death then she kill them. As they kept their promise they are able to enter paradise. At least I think thats the reasoning behind those first murders since she is pretty adamant about liars arent able to go to heaven during all the story. After few murders her reasons for killing start to vary: for vengeance by accident or worse: to help people This is the disturbing thing with the murders they are never done out of malevolence. And this is the real difference with The Bad Seed where the girl is mean cruel and doesnt feel any empathy but put a smiling face before her family members. Meanwhile Rosalind is innocent and nice she is just amoral: the best example of this is probably when a girl get into an accident and is losing a lot of blood. Rosalind is both fascinated and amused by all this blood but is also willing to help saving the girl and as you can guess will only makes the situation worse :p. 400https://i.ur.com/KQ0FSux.jpg Look your daughters ring pretty isnt it ? But whats wrong? Is she simply naive or cruel?. But I am writing all of this based on assumptions: shjo manga are wellknown for their internal monologues where you have access to the mind of the protagonist. Internal monologues are usually quite central in horror shjo manga. In Saint Rosalind however you dont have access to Rosalinds internal monologues you cant really know what she is thinking you can only guess. But Rosalind speaks out loud to herself. Maybe we dont need to have access to her internal monologues because she seems to say everything that comes to her mind without any filter. This trait can only reinforce the impression of innocence that she is giving. Art Before entering into details of the art I have to say that the chapter 0 at the beginning of the book was drawn 44 years after the rest of the manga and it shows. If Watanabe managed to keep the flow of the panels coherent between the bonus chapter and the rest I cant say the same about the character designs which changed quite a lot with a strong influence of her redikomi style that she nowadays use: the face structure is more sharp the eyes are more light the hairs are less fluffy. 400https://i.ur.com/4IybaYp.jpg From the chapter 0. Now onto the original manga Watanabe is at the prime of her shjo style: she opens her panels and use the whole set of the visual techniques developed during the 1960s decade by shjo mangaka with extensive decorations and layered paneling some side artworks and threerow overlay style pictures. 400https://i.ur.com/bKpybIn.jpg My favorite panels sequence. Overall the author gives a Gothic style to her manga: the story take place in European countries the side artworks are full of flowers and blood and you find here and there Christian and angelic symbols. In the visual atmosphere everything is done to underline the ambiguity between Rosalind the angel and Rosalind the devil between good and bad. 400https://i.ur.com/HvB5yUo.jpg Hathaway watching the church tower. Rosalind is most of the time portrayed with either a great smile on her face or in the other hand she shows sadness or is crying. She is really cute and innocent looking pure and naive. But there is few panels very few of them which suggest that Rosalind may not be an angel. First are the blank eyes. Rosalind makes them in two situations: when she feels a particularly strong emotion usually sadness or anger but they are not the ones that are interesting here. It is in the second situation a very ominous one. Im under the impression that Watanabe drew them not for showing a particular emotion but rather to show that Rosalind is a monster that she is doing a pretty bad thing: 400https://i.ur.com/Fpiw4Y5.jpg In the same way in two situations where she is killing someone Rosalind makes a pretty ecstatic expression like she is enjoying herself: 400https://i.ur.com/HF1oc1E.jpg These faces are really making us doubt the fact that Rosalind is innocent and naive Conclusion The Bad Seed as implied by its name features a character that is inherently evil thus it choose to focus on the mother character who is the protagonist and asks the question what would you do if your cute child is in fact a serial killer?. The movie unlike the novel and the play dont let any doubt here as the girl meet a divine punishment at the end of the story. Saint Rosalind takes the opposite route and it is again implied by its name saint. You cant help but to ask yourself is this child is an angel or a devil?. And the manga gives the answer at the end of the story since it seems that Rosalind meets a form of redemption unlike the girl from the movie who is punished by God Rosalind enters into the grace of God. But still what she is doing is far too horrible and you cant help but to doubt: why did she meets redemption?