Screenwriter, After a Near-Death Experience, Kills People with His Cursed Screenplays
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Warning:
This review will contain spoilers for the manga and anime series Sleeping on Paper Boats. While the manga may vary slightly from all other forms of media, it may have similar story elements and could be considered spoilers.
Content Warning: There may be references to blood, car accidents, mass casualty incident, death, excessive drinking, PTSD, mentions of war, violence, mentions of sex work, suicidal ideation, burn scars, gossiping, pedophilia, dangerous BDSM (dubious consent breath play), violence, slut-shaming, extortion, breakups, mentions of police, self-deprecation, survivor’s guilt, child neglect, mentions of drug addiction, cheating (not between the main couple), child abuse, suicide, memory loss, murder, and nonconsensual recording, as they appear in the manga.
Synopsis:
In post-war Japan, when people are desperately clinging to all forms of hope they can, beloved screenwriter Kei Kitahara is a well of that hope. His films are as beloved as he is, and he has made a decent living from them. Now, if only his own life were so hopeful. Unfortunately, Kei’s words come with a price. When he was a child, he and one other young boy were the only survivors of a horrific train car accident. Since then, death, in the form of his child self, has haunted him. It beckons him to write, filling him with words that he can’t keep to himself. And all of his main characters are modelled after people he meets, actors in the fiction he writes.
But once his words are realized on the big screen, those people he modeled his characters after die.
Kei doesn’t want to hurt people, but he just can’t stop himself from writing. In an effort to not only atone for his sins but to save anyone he encounters from his curse, he disappears from the cinema industry. Living as a drunken hermit, Kei spends all of his time drinking out in the remnants of the red-light district, cleaned up and left for ruin after the war. It is there, after being beaten in the street by some soldiers, that he encounters Yoichi. Yoichi is an aspiring photographer and lives in an illegal brothel. He is also a huge fan of Kei’s.
After bringing Kei back to his place and tending to his wounds, the two form a relationship that turns physical, and while there is undoubtedly an emotional connection forming, too, Kei is afraid to get too close. But there is something connecting them that Kei isn’t aware of, and death’s form is slowly changing to imitate the man Kei is steadily falling for.
Review:
If you haven’t seen Teki Yatsuda‘s work before, like in A Home Far Away, you are missing out. It is exceptional. Admittedly, it might not be to everyone’s taste. It leans much more into realism than your standard BL manga, but because of that, it is so much more detailed and just lends itself so much better to the darker stories Yatsuda tends to craft. I will say, for some reason, this title falls more in line with the standard manga art style, which isn’t a bad thing, but it is interesting to see. As a result, it is more inconsistent, but it is still stunning. I can’t fault Yatsuda‘s art, no matter how picky I am.
But I have to say, this narrative is much weaker than A Home Far Away. It is still beautiful in many ways and generally well-crafted, but some points really weaken everything overall. Let’s talk about what works, though. There is a thin line between psychological and supernatural, and this one toes that line perfectly until the grand reveal. We see that the child who haunts Kei is himself, a broken child whom Kei actively tries to avoid or shows intense contempt toward. He calls the child ‘death,’ but this identity begins to blur when Yoichi appears in his life. As Kei and Yoichi grow closer together, Yoichi then begins to take on this deathly aura.
This is the first hint that what Kei is experiencing may not be supernatural but psychological. Unfortunately, due to trauma-based memory loss, Kei doesn’t realize that the feeling of love is something he actively tries to run from. The child form of death? This is the abandoned child version of himself. The version of himself who experienced his father attempting to kill him because he showed talent for writing, while he struggled with it. The version of himself who then experienced his father’s suicide alongside Kei’s biological mother, who called this devotion love. It is a love for writing, and the version of himself who wanted to be loved, he feels led to his father’s suicide, so he perceives his childhood self as death, too. So, when he begins to love Yoichi, Yoichi also begins to appear like death to him. It is such a powerful realization that, upon realizing it, he is not only able to confess to Yoichi but also to show love to his childhood self. It is so beautiful and well-written.
But then we get to the parts that don’t work as well. While it is revealed that this deathly entity isn’t supernatural but rather Kei’s internal struggle, that doesn’t explain why the people he based his screenplays on died. It is then that Kei can move on from his guilt and begin investigating this phenomenon. While I understand this plot point needed to be resolved, I kind of hated how it was resolved. As it turns out, the president of the company that produces Kei’s screenplays started killing people he based his work on in order to build up this reputation behind them, ultimately culminating in Kei’s screenplay about his own life, which would lead to his own death and then even bigger profit for the studio. That all makes sense to me, but something about Kei coming into his office, still not knowing this information for certain, hearing it, and then coming back later with this giant tape recorder, claiming to have recorded their last meeting where he confessed to all this, that felt like an afterthought to me. I sort of feel like the creator wrote themselves into a corner with this plot point, so they threw it away with a convenient recording device hidden in Kei’s bag, and then all is resolved neatly without a care in the world. The rest of the work was so well-crafted that this moment felt all the more out of place and rushed, which is unfortunate in an otherwise perfect story.
Results:
I really enjoyed this. It is a very powerful story, so well written in places, that I would love to read a novelization. Unfortunately, as much as I loved the art and the psychological aspects of this story, that murder plot line was so weak. I don’t know that this would’ve been a favorite either way, but that one moment was weak enough to me that I wouldn’t call it one now. I know that is probably harsh, but having read so much amazing BL with little to no flaws as far as I’m concerned, I, admittedly, feel like my bar for favorites has risen. My pickiness be damned, though, this is a really good read, and I do recommend it, regardless.
Have you read Sleeping on Paper Boats? If so, what do you think? Do you agree with my assessment? Do you not? Let me know, and comment below!
