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REVIEWS

• 

  phones

  90/100
  I want people to READ Aono-kun so badly I could die!

  Hi Anilist, I read all of _I Want To Hold Aono-kun so Badly I Could Die_ in like a month and wanted to write a review on it with the hopes of exposing more people to the series because, so far (at the time of writing this there are 55 chapters available to be read in English), it is really, really, really, really good. First though: _Aono-kun_ is a romance, but don’t take the simplistic art style at face value or write off the “horror” aspect of _Aono-kun_ as “oh it’s just a horror because he is a ghost.” I’d argue _Aono-kun_ is a horror before it is a romance. Don’t get me wrong though, I think the shoujo elements of the story are very well-done, but it isn’t something to just write off because you think it’s about a girl with a ghost boyfriend. So here’s some content warnings before you add it to your to-read list because the story can get quite heavy and it’d suck if someone just jumped into it expecting it to be a silly story about a girl with her ghost boyfriend doing silly shoujo things. Because it's not that. At all. **Body horror, child abuse and neglect, child death, sexual assault, sexual coercion and manipulation, and suicide + suicidal ideation.** _Aono-kun_ is about Yuri and Aono’s relationship and the struggles of navigating dating your ghost boyfriend! It’s also about how much it sucks when your ghost boyfriend sometimes gets possessed by an evil spirit–or maybe he IS the evil spirit?--and loses control over his ghostly body to do evil spirit things. It’s also about when your ghost boyfriend is presumably tied to the world because ghosts only haunt things when they can’t let something go and have regrets, right? And you should be probably helping him try to move on so he can rest in peace? But if you help him move on then you will be all alone again, and no one has ever cared for you before, and it’s selfish to think like that or to want him to stay but it’s still painful because he is a ghost and you can’t actually be together, and you want to hold him so badly you could die. While the story centers on Yuri and Aono’s relationship and the way it’s flavored through unhealthy codependence, eventually we get to see more of the side characters. To understand Aono and his nature as a ghost, especially when he begins lashing out and doing evil spirit things, she ends up befriending an agoraphobic horror junkie named Mio, and Aono’s best friend, Fujimoto. And so Yuri, who was previously friendless, makes her first friends, and slowly opens herself up to the world around her–which happens to be a world that exists both with and without Aono. Slowly, Yuri comes to terms that she cannot exist only for Aono’s sake–but the story is very real when approaching these topics, and often Yuri will have an epiphany and then cycle back around to acting on codependent impulses anyways. Aono isn’t safe from this either; he appears much more independent and realistic about their relationship, but since Yuri is the only person with whom he can really interact with, inevitably the problems and complexes he secretly has begin coming out to play. Without trying to give too much away, Yuri and Aono’s respective character arcs thus far are really, really good. Yuri begins the story as a bit of an airhead, a lonely girl with no friends, someone who puts such a heavy emphasis on love as escapism, and projects this onto Aono. Over the course of the manga she begins to learn she can’t place these expectations on people, that she has to be able to stand up for herself, and letting people hurt her or hurting herself isn’t love. Aono, in the beginning, as the deceased popular boy from school, seems to be the supportive, gentle type, but also as a ghost he’s a perfect embodiment of the “He’s sweet, he just goes into a dissociative state and commits atrocities,” tumblr post. His personality is much more complex than it initially appears; he is someone who intentionally waters himself down to be more palatable and liked by others. Yuri eventually comments that he smiles when he is sad and frowns when he is happy. It’s been very interesting to read the story and watch it slowly shift overtime; Yuri begins as a girl who is extremely codependent on Aono with whom he is really only dating because he liked the attention and felt sort of bad for to Aono now being the one who is extremely reliant on Yuri as he finds himself grow increasingly jealous in the face of her discovering friends and making new relationships and being able to exist in a world that can go on without him. Something that _Aono-kun_ does really well is horror, which probably goes without saying since this is a horror shoujo, but still. The art style is a little simplistic in flavor, but I don’t think this is a problem at all when the visual storytelling is as strong as it is (a la _Houseki no Kuni_, in my opinion). Shiina gives Yuri shoujo-style shimmering eyes very often, which is a fun juxtaposition with the body horror. Also, the way Umi Shiina draws expressions is really good, most notably when she’s contrasting Aono’s facial expressions when he’s “normal” vs when he’s in “evil spirit mode”. I’ll never forget that first panel I read where he went a little crazy and thought to myself, “oh, it’s THIS sort of manga.” Contrast and negative space are used very efficiently here especially to delineate the difference between something going on that’s more supernatural in flavor, whether that’s a room that someone can’t leave, or a black void when evil spirit Aono is talking with Yuri, et cetera. I cannot begin to tell you how often I was having to stop and silently scream to myself, whisper “I fucking hate it here,” under my breath over a new character reveal or story note, put my head in my hands, or audibly mutter “oh my god,” as I was reading. Rereading the story (yes that’s right, there are only 55 chapters and I am already rereading the whole thing after like a month) is another treat on its own because the foreshadowing is extremely satisfying. It’ll be even more fun to go back through the whole thing once the story is actually done because it’s already been a very rewarding revisit and I’m sure Shiina has quite a lot left in the story to tell. Again, it’s hard to say much without letting the reader experience the slow shift for themself, but _Aono-kun_ uses ghosts and hauntings as a vehicle to discuss very real, very tangible everyday things, and it’s really satisfying to watch that all come together. _Aono-kun’s_ supernatural world is real and tangible and interacted with by people who have spiritual inclinations, but it is also often a metaphor for something that isn’t supernatural in flavor at all, creating a really fun interaction between these two things that don’t feel like they should intersect. Overall, I’m very excited to see where _Aono-kun_ goes with its story, and I really think this is a story more people should be checking out, especially considering the attention _The Summer Hikaru Died_ is getting right now! As someone who’s been following both stories, I think _Aono-kun_ blows _Hikaru_ out of the water, so I’m giving the story what I think is its due justice and writing a review here about it. If you like _Hikaru_, I can thoroughly recommend _Aono-kun_. Also, Tatsuki Fujimoto (_Chainsaw Man_) and Shuzo Oshimi (_Blood on the Tracks_, _Flowers of Evil_) are both readers and have even drawn fan art for the story, so if you've read any of those and you like what the story does with its themes, check it out. Otherwise, heed the content warnings, and consider giving it a read if you like horror and stories about weird relationships. Giving the story a score feels weird when it's not done, so I'm just giving it a 90/100 because there's still room for it to fall flat on its face, but what the story has so far is amazing and it's easily a new favorite of mine! __7/31/26 Update:__ Aono-kun's final English volume came out a month or-so-ago and I just wanted to add an addendum here that I thought the last bit of the story was equally incredible, so rest assured that this manga is worth picking up and it delivers.
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• 

  Ghotath

  100/100
  where i end and you begin

  Full-series spoilers for both Aono-kun and Silent Hill f!

  Everything written here is my personal interpretation

  This is not a traditional review, but rather an amalgamation of my thoughts that hopefully conveys my adoration for the story, its plot, and its subtle worldbuilding—all of which rival the best of the Silent Hill franchise.

  ---

  Technical overview

  Ritual 1 - Yotsukubi-sama

  A method of angering the dragon god, who sleeps in the sacred pool in the mountain, while simultaneously asking for forgiveness (懺悔懺悔、　六根清浄 sange sange, rokkon shoujou), by throwing kegare into the pool, with the goal of awakening it and making it rain down upon the dried land.

  Ritual 2 - The Weeping Rocks

  A method of getting the dragon god to incarnate in the human realm by embodying it in a human generative unit. The goal is, again, to prevent the town from perishing.
  Having the unit be a pair consisting of a man or a woman in a sexual relationship ensures that the sacrifice gives birth to something.
  Having one half of the unit be dead first is necessary for the following:
  1) The man’s soul is ripped from his flesh and becomes the vessel of the dragon god's mind.
  2) The still-living woman provides the vessel of living flesh.
  3) Through merging a man and a woman, divinity is reached (Ardhanarishvara)
  4) By merging a half on the other side with a half still on this side, the boundary between worlds is broken down.

  ---

  1. a gathering of people as a parasite that feeds upon itself

  we as a species are forced to exist in the imbalanced conjunction of two frameworks - individualistic and communal. everyone wants to live, but sometimes the village decides to act selfishly, in an "all against one" fashion, if it suits it.
  by "selfishness" i mean:
  1) the violence inflicted on the victims of decisions and actions driven by this desire, and
  2) the fact that the desire to preserve the physical body and its comforts is itself selfish from hindu and buddhist perspectives (although not shinto, as i gather).
  the form in which this act could take place is malleable; the most straightforward form would be to imagine one becoming food for all; but sometimes they become food for thought (heh) the embodiment of a wish through a religious ritual. the wish itself is made real by the form of this ritual, which everyone must understand correctly, and which must also line with individual wishes (or fragments of the wish of the whole) of n-1 people as well.

  beneath the divine veneer there is the obvious exploitation of an individual for the benefit of all. in silent hill f girls are being sold to foxes, and in aono it is a reproductive unit that is cast into the waters (i say this metaphorically, because angering the dragon is a separate ritual; but i would not be surprised one ritual had been born from the other. the case could also be made that the two rituals form an escalation (although this is just my speculation): deployed in sequence depending on how dire the situation is).
  the end result of the wish is the same in both rituals in aono-kun - rain - a physical embodiment of life and survival in the dry land. in f the corresponding result is the protection from the noxious gases (the dragon's breath).

  the reproductive unit in question is a male + female pair (two complementary units that together make up a whole) engaged in a sexual relationship - the only way human beings at the time could create another life.
  the wickedness of such a choice is that, in addition to many possible divinity-related explanations (bride of god, etc.), there is a more grounded and visceral truth in it. biologically, culturally and socially we are conditioned to believe that the concepts of family, love ("becoming one") and childbirth are both desirable and pure.

  i suppose all of the above explains why the world starts blooming (flourishing) when the ritual --the literal becoming one in aono-kun and the wedding in f, which are basically the same thing depending on perspective-- is going well. although the source is the other side (and you expect decay and rot), the result is the coming of an abundance of life coming into the land, a blossoming so vivid and sweet it makes you sick.
  note: there are two (three?) ways things bloom in f: the red blossoms and tentacles represent the breaking (thinning) of the boundary between worlds, the barnacles could represent the parasitic merging that distorts the body of the host, and the pink bloom is the blossoming of Hinako's world (when she walks through the sunlit Ebisugaoka to say farewell to her parents). the ones we're concerned about the most are the first (to an extent) and the third (1 to 1 match) types.

  Aono and Yuri were dragged into the gears unknowingly and unwillingly, and we know nothing about the previous instances of the ritual. it could be argued that in times of need there were volunteers to be sacrificed for the good of Home, but i personally can't really imagine it happening with pairs of lovers.

  i suppose there is beauty in the result; it is, after all, lovers reuniting and giving birth to something more than themselves, something that will save people. the reality of the details is something the public can avert their eyes from, so this is the way that works and gets repeated, and leads to

  2. established routines mean rolling down a track worn smooth by generations previous generations

  i find it beautiful how the events of the current ritual just happen on their own. after all, many behaviors are enacted on auto-pilot, and we all know where they come from.
  i think the way aono illustrates the emergent collective agent (ECA from here on) --as something that looks like synchronicity, the occult or fear taking over the town-- is brilliant. this is more realistic and way scarier than the SH franchise’s reality/otherworld dichotomy.
  what i mean to say is that there are plenty of things people accept and act upon -- beliefs, traditions, upbringing, early education, architecture, stories, family structures, expectations -- and then pass them on to their children and students.
  it's as if the dead are making the decisions for the living.
  this propagates and preserves patterns of behavior and shortcuts in judgement, but the process is rarely discussed or deeply understood as those patterns are passed on to the next generation. over time, you could call this process

  3. Gestaltzerfall

  (Gestaltzerfall = a phenomenon that occurs when something loses its meaning and shape to you if you're exposed to it too much)

  rituals get repeated, words are spoken, but the details go missing, the shape becomes loose, and in the end the wish gets stripped to its bare bones - we wish for rain, we wish to live, but who are we? what does it mean to live? who are you asking this from?
  instead of stopping and questioning, people often default to tradition, and this is what i mean by tracks. you could also imagine it as the canals the water comes down through.
  the wish will never go away. and if there's a path already paved, why make an effort to deviate from it? this is how local cosmology and culture become behavior infrastructure.

  this paved path down the slope could also explain why the ritual kickstarts by itself, seemingly out of nowhere. this is not someone's plan, it is simply wishes and pieces pushed down by gravity (behaviors burned into both individuals and the ECA).

  this breakdown of meaning also leads to distortions in things more immediate. without proper upkeep and communication about the reasons between all parties involved, family love cracks and becomes a curse, expectations become contracts, dependency becomes possession, "I'm your friend" becomes "I must bend myself until I break if this means helping you" and "I would give anything to you" becomes a human sacrifice.

  this is how we end up with actions driven by results instead of reasons, and the misunderstood parts are left out or reinterpreted, and only the parts that "work" are preserved. how could you expect a result of this string of arbitrary decisions to also be pure? repetition without adjustments and purification leads only to distortion.

  i don't think the ritual ever managed to produce a pure god. and what it produces now it is both divine (as in beyond understanding and powerful, not beautiful) and malformed. is this why aono is perceived as both as a dragon and as a boy, in the same way tsukumogami is perceived both as a doll and a live girl (in the manga adaptation of f)?
  the thing that makes the whole situation worse is that the cosmology itself was a patchwork very few people could understand to begin with, a result of

  4. Syncretism

  (Syncretism = the process by which several religions blending into one framework. in f and aono, it is the resulting system of local faith)
  (the term for what happens to shinto seems to be Shinbutsu-shūgō but i'm not familiar with it)

  i think it is safe to say that the religious framework in aono consists of the following:

  1. buddhism
  2. shinto
  3. hinduism (possibly warped because it probably came through buddhism)

  1. buddhism

  this is probably the most straightforward of the three: the Buddhist framework provides the form and language. this is seen most clearly during the Kubinashi-sama arc: 懺悔懺悔 (sange, sange) 六根清浄 (rokkon shoujou) (baiken reference!)

  2. shinto and other native frameworks (?)

  no offence, since my knowledge of religion is only superficial, but shinto specifically seems to be the justification for the "selfishness" i mentioned. this is also the source of the concept of a bargain with the divine (or the other side).
  while buddhism and hinduism frown upon calls for the salvation of the mortal self (it is samsaric to do so), shinto seems to treat these material benefits as something legitimate. this is what allows the following transactions:

  • a promise of flesh grants the return of the dead
  • the offer of a deal summons dark aono into perception (literally into the realm of perception) (theater ritual)
  • a promise of a unit capable of generation grants, in return, a unit capable of salvation
    this straightforward mechanic leads to situations where anyone can do it, even people without proper knowledge, for anything, even though the ECA does have agents who are supposed to oversee these things; this is how we get children with their lifespans shaved off.
    another thing to ponder is the extent and purpose of the deal. what do we want, and what do we allow ourselves to give for it? crops? your children's health? a cure for disease?
    when could such a transaction could be deemed just, and when is it truly "selfish"? what happens if no one really makes a concrete wish at all? (we know that in this case the only agency lies with the vessel of the mind, and unfortunately this time it is the embodiment of Bhava-tanha (craving for existence, living), a sad, lonely boy, whose desire to live is so earnest that he can't help himself)

  3. hinduism

  the way of looking at a man and a woman as two parts of a whole distinctly evokes Ardhanarishvara:
  Shiva (masculine) + Shakti/Parvati (feminine principle) = Ardhanarishvara (integrated whole) (many may have encountered concept in Digital Devil Saga 2, and recently in the Ghost in the Shell).

  this is where the breakdown in wisdom, communication and means is most apparent: the unity originally implied is divine and whole because the two parts are already divine and whole in themselves. but mortals try to force the inversion of sexual reproduction
  (sexual reproduction: two different ones -> become "one" -> they generate a third while staying different)
  by bringing together into one not only two separate bodies, but two separate bodies that exist in two separate worlds! and the only way they manage it is for the flesh to become simultaneously a vessel and feed for the one on the other side.
  (ritual: two different ones -> separated by the boundary -> becoming one through the contract -> birthing something new by changing clay to gold (the almost alchemical result of the soul and matter sifting into each other through the boundary) while keeping the shape (soul-mind) of the first sacrifice, the man) (the woman provides the material, the "clay" that turns into "gold").

  should we become one if it means... this?

  5. where i end and you begin

  i think that the main theme of aono-kun is finding the boundaries of love.
  the most tragic part for me personally is that Aono himself realized this long before Yuri. he also realized his helplessness before his own desire to live, which was made manifest by his new nature in a grotesque way. this is why he screams at her, "You have to run away!" and tries to disappear, because he absolutely must not ask for what he wants.

  but Yuri, who was beaten into being a mirror image of her sister, could not imagine a boundary between herself and the boyfriend she loves. because love is being with the other utterly. so she accepts him and his needs completely. her unconditional self-sacrifice (not only the suicide attempt, but the whole ongoing process of offering herself, both literally and emotionally) meant "You don't need to ask. I'm giving everything to you. Take me". which surely felt virtuous and good in the moment, since it let her feel useful, even if it also made her expendable.

  how much legitimacy does behavior have in terms of "consent"? is the starving man solely at fault for partaking in what is offered?
  both the reader and Aono have complicated feelings towards Yuri's love. it shines so bright, but it doesn't warm.
  her love for Aono went too far, and that hurt him, because it enabled the worst parts of him.
  she loved her sister too much, and it hurt them both.
  she loved Fujimoto too much, and it hurt Aono.
  what little understanding she has of the boundary between people comes from learning social norms. and the story of her love is the story of her learning how to love.

  Aono, being wounded into death, can only express his love by either consuming or rejecting Yuri. one could question the sincerity of his love since he hurts Yuri greatly, but another thing this manga depicts is that sincerity is one facet of love. the actions taken to embody love are another. i believe that Aono does sincerely love Yuri from the bottom of his heart. but he can’t change the way he acts in time to avoid killing her.

  the ECA, a dehumanized collection of humans, is capable only of loving itself.

  6. notes on perception

  another aspect of the story that i love is the use of distorted perception. very silent hill.

  the first instance is in the dream, where baby-dragon Aono is attached to her by an umbilical cord.
  the second is onstage, when Yuri’s belly briefly grows large.

  both are representations the mind creates, akin to optical illusions, by forcing reality into comprehensible templates. the underlying truth stays the same.
  Yuri is a vessel of flesh for the unborn god -> pregnancy imagery

  we know that the process of incarnation takes place (astutely dubbed 受肉 by Mio in japanese), not physical birth.
  the Kariya dad also stresses that their kin were responsible for creating a temporary dwelling for the god to stay in (仮ノ宮). whether he's right about "temporary" or not is beside the point.

  this also happens during the Yotsukubi-sama arc. the droves of praying people are perceived correctly as regular townsfolk, but Sota's "friend" is not perceived at all. possibly because there's no straightforward template onto which the nature of the “friend” can be mapped, like creation<->pregnancy.

  this is another way our cultural infrastructure shapes the things we see.

  conclusion

  i think this manga is neat

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