"Miyamoto.. You truly are the best." - Contains spoilers for The World is Mine For starters, I did not like 'The World is Mine' -- Hideki Arai's most popular work alongside his Kiichi duology. I thought 'The World is Mine' was a pretentious, edgy, and action-flick Hollywood like manga that while having an artstyle that plays with it's core theme of how ugly humanity can be (and one that I did enjoy quite a lot, despite how everyone claims to 'hate' it), fundamentally plays out like a edgy killer story where the whole point is 'keep killing.' It reads like a manifesto -- and not a verygood one at that. I feel like giving a manga bad rep is inherently wrong of me, because there are not a lot of manga I'd consider to be 'truly' bad. As much as I wanna be the pretentious guy with a thousand manga read with a score of 4.63 to be taken seriously as a 'reader,' The World is Mine had some sort of merit at it's core. It's a story with nihilism, poltics with content that never truly gets anywhere.

It's a manga about nihiism and nothing. It's a manga that transmits emotions, feelings and life. A life of hatred, one that drags innocent people down to their deaths because our ''hateful' god wanted to prove his powers. But sadly, 'The World is Mine' is about nothing. I cannot deny that. And it sucks. Because I see a core theme, I see a message, but I don't like the thematic or the story presented in it. Hideki Arai is a man of merit, though. He can write things. He can write emotions.

Four years later, I come across Miyamoto kara Kimi e, a manga made by the same author. 'I wonder if his writing is more edgy' -- I said to myself. 'I wonder if this series is gonna be another nihiilistic outlook on businessmen and how the japanese workspace is' -- I also said to myself.

Little did I know, the author peaked here. This is, without a doubt, an absolute masterpiece of character growth, trauma, coping with sexual assault, the meaningless violence of life, and proving that you can love people and push yourself to your absolute limits, showing your uglyness to the world while dragging an almost dead man to your girlfriend while bleeding and telling her that you were able to prove that you're a good person. That despite her suffering, you want her to be better. Because you want to prove that you're not bad. You care. You really do. You really do care for everything. You make mistakes, but you truly care -- even if our lives are meaningless and devoid of any true meaning.

It's a manga about being better. Miyamoto is a manga about being a better person. Miyamoto is a simple, optimistic figure who truly never gives up despite everything. He cries, he bleeds, and he turns into a disgusting blob of a human being. You can see his character growth and position in life by just looking at his face. His face is happy, cheerful, squishy. Optimistic. And after his girlfriend gets raped by one of the thugs he drank with, he cries. He loses his teeth. His face turns bloated, disgusting. Overwhelmed with hatred towards himself. That optimistic man is no more. The man lost it. The man could not bear the amount of hatred that his own lover held against himself, and he became the very thing that gave his lover permanent trauma.

Yet -- he fights. He runs. He fights those thugs, and fails. Even at his lowest, he still wanted to fight. He WANTED to prove to Tenko that he was a good man. He fought the man who raped her, bleed, and humiliated him like how he humiliated him as a man. Left him bleeding -- tortured. Hurt, wounded. Pouring out blood in the middle of the street, naked and turned into the literal scumbag of the earth. A man with nothing, and nobody. And even then, Miyamoto accepted the grudge anyone could hold against him because of that.

"I'll be the baby's father! I'm his father!"

It's such a beautiful, disgusting story about us humans. How we fight, how we work hard every single day, and how we laugh despite everything. It's the literal antithesis to 'The World is Mine.' It is literally a manga about hope and violence, the opposite of how Mon made all humans love him by creating a religion that worshipped him and his violence, Miyamoto made all of his co-workers love him by his passion in life. By his goofiness, his happiness, his desire to prove that he's a good person, despite his negatives and how he essentially beat up someone's son and destroyed any sort of chance at him getting his own girlfriend. While I cannot say anything but "he deserves it" -- the way Miyamoto views the world around him is the polar opposite of Mon's hatred.

Mon is nihilism.
Miyamoto is absurdism.

Mon is the belief that nothing truly matters, and that violence and power is what drives this world forward.
Miyamoto is the belief that life is good. That kindness, effort, laughter and joy pays off.

Mon is the hatred that humans have against what they don't know. What they're scared off.
Miyamoto is the love that we humans have in our hearts. The reason why we laugh, and why we're all beautiful people in our core.

Mon and Miyamoto represent two polar opposite views in life. Mon and Miyamoto are a literal coinflip from each other. Mon and Miyamoto represent what both hate the most. Mon hates 'life' and Miyamoto hates 'negativity.'

What truly made this manga resonate with me, was how a certain character handled being sexually assaulted. This is a very fine, delicate thread to walk on, namely because I too am a victim of sexual assault and sexual abuse. I do not believe that sexual assault makes a story more 'mature' or 'deep' if treated with no repercussion or handling. Miyamoto does this in a really realistic manner. A manner that truly hit home. You feel dirty inside, you feel disgusted. You clean yourself, and cry. Hypersexualize yourself and try to cope with what happened. You are traumatized, but your abuser can move forward. You can't. You feel do dirty and disgusting. Dirty, ugly, disgusting. You clean yourself, and you cry. You cry a lot.

I cannot truly make justice out of this in text, as it's 2:00 AM. at the time of writing this review. I genuinely cannot. It's something that you understand if you've gone through the same things as these characters. These feelings..

They're the best.