Metamorphosis (manga)

Metamorphosis
Cover of English edition
変身 (Henshin)
Genre	Hentai
Manga
Written by	Shindo L
Published by	Wanimagazine
English publisher	NA FAKKU
Magazine	Comic X-Eros
Demographic	Seinen
Original run	September 2013 – May 2016
Volumes	1
Anime and manga portal

Metamorphosis (変身, Henshin), also published as Emergence , is a hentai manga written by American-Japanese mangaka Shindo L. Published between 2013 and 2016, it gained a following online for its grim and depressing storyline, becoming an Internet meme.

Plot[]

Saki Yoshida (吉田咲), a first-year high school student with no social life decides to change after graduating from middle school by getting a makeover. On her first day of high school, she makes two friends and spends time with them after school. After parting ways, she goes to a convenience store to buy a fashion magazine, when she encounters a man who compliments her appearance and invites her to a karaoke box. In the karaoke box, he gives Saki alcohol and drugs. With her inhibitions lowered, he rapes her, lying to her that he is only doing this because he loves her. After raping her, he puts his cell phone number in her phone. On her way home after regaining consciousness, she receives a message from the man revealing his name to be Hayato. The two start dating, where she quickly gets addicted to having sex while on drugs.

Back at school while chatting with her peers, when she lets slip that she isn't as well off as she appears, a school acquaintance recommends an online prostitution forum. Saki does not entirely understand the purpose of the forum, and takes an offer that weekend for what she calls an "appointment" with an old man named Kumagai. After having dinner with Kumagai, she is driven to a hotel where she is paid cash for sex with him. Ridden with guilt, she comes home late and breaks down, with her mother reassuring her that she will always be on her daughter's side.

At school, Saki is approached by some male students who show her a photo of her coming out of a love hotel. They then blackmail her for sexual favors in exchange for keeping the photos a secret. Due to a company restructuring where Saki's father works, he is laid off. Severely affected, he smokes cigarettes for the first time, drinks heavily, and then rapes his daughter in her room. Her mother, having told her in the past that she would unconditionally love and support her, finds out about the rape from the perspective of the father, who has spun the story to imply that Saki seduced him. Betraying her earlier promise, Saki's mother does not allow her to explain herself and beats her. In response, Saki runs away from home.

Having lost her home, Saki drops out of high school and pursues a life with Hayato, who has accumulated eight million yen in debt at a local heroin bar. For Hayato's efforts in helping Saki, she vows to help pay back the debt to the bar owner, Mr. Obata, who threatens to kill Hayato if he does not repay. She does not have the money to pay upfront, and bar patrons seize the opportunity to pay her for sex work so that she may make up the difference. Hayato pierces and tattoos Saki in an effort to make her more appealing to customers.

After various unprotected sexual encounters, Saki becomes pregnant, and Hayato convinces her to abort the baby. She soon finds herself returning to Kumagai, who, unimpressed with her body modifications, forces her to do increasingly degrading things to make the money she needs.

Mr. Obata, the heroin bar owner, sexually assaults Saki with other workers at the bar while she is looking for Hayato, and injects heroin into her to make her more pliable and compliant. She quickly develops an addiction, and begins to forgo paying off Hayato's debt in favour of buying drugs for herself. When Saki is robbed unexpectedly and Hayato only finds drugs in her wallet, he becomes enraged, abandoning her and leaving her homeless.

Found by other homeless people in a public park, she is forcibly impregnated a second time, and this time decides to carry the baby to term, vowing to quit drugs and change for the better in the process. She continues her prostitution for survival and for money, however, which injures the baby. Now in constant pain, she resumes her heroin use.

By this point, Saki has built up some savings to help with the cost of her unborn child, which she stores in a duffel bag in a public coin locker. She runs into her former classmates, who assume that the money is stolen, not believing that Saki, being homeless, could have earned so much money on her own. They rape her and beat her stomach, intending to kill the baby so that there would be "one less bum in the world". She stumbles into a public bathroom, bleeding profusely from her vagina, and looks at herself in the mirror. Horrified at the person she's become over the last few years, she shatters the mirror, and commits suicide by ingesting her entire remaining volume of heroin at once. The story ends with a glimpse at what Saki's future life may have looked like if she were able to carry the baby to term, followed by Saki's glasses laying on the bathroom floor among drops of blood.

History[]

Henshin was first serialized in Japan in Comic X-Eros from September 2013 to May 2016, and later published as a standalone book by Wanimagazine on 30 June 2016.^[1] It was published in English as Metamorphosis by FAKKU digitally on 27 October 2016 and physically in February 2017.

Reception[]

Reviewers have described Metamorphosis as highly depressing and disturbing to read, albeit while also praising the storyline and editorial quality.^[2][3][4][5]

Some manga artists have created derivative works based on Metamorphosis.^[6]

Analysis[]

Shindo L claimed he "originally had Kafka in mind" when he thought up the title, inspired by the novel The Metamorphosis, drawing comparisons to the dark themes and plots surrounding transformation.^[7] He also writes in the manga's afterword that he intended Metamorphosis to portray the "charm" of a miserable female main character.^[8]

Publications[]

• Shindo, L (w, a). 変身 (26 March 2016), Wanimagazine, (in Japanese), retrieved on 18 August 2020
• Shindo, L (w, a). Metamorphosis (10 November 2016), Fakku, ISBN 978-1-63442-060-0, retrieved on 18 August 2020

References[]