Freesia

This manga was incredibly bizarre. It had a decent plot overall. The concept of enforcers, the politics, corruption, and the entire system is pretty interesting. That combined with some decent action during enforcement and the stories of those that were being targeted but wanted to live also made each episode interesting. However, there were major issues with the main characters, in that they were all crazy, which makes sense considering their job. Kano, the main character especially, was really crazy. That can be made to work sometimes, but here it was just ridiculous, with him never making any sense and a good amount of what's going on being hallucinations. It was interesting at first, but the novelty wore off quickly as it ultimately felt like there was no point to it. Wrapped up in that madness there probably was some sort of deep commentary on society or whatnot, but I wasn't able to parse it at all. In the end, it all felt pointless, where it made no sense why what was happening was happening, why we should care about any of it or anyone involved, as everyone that seemed even kind of likable ending up getting some sort of bad ending before that. Also, the art style was really rough and to put it frankly, quite awful. 

tl;dr: A manga that seems strange in every aspect to such a degree it's hard to get invested in any of it.

Dystopia world with dysfunctional ruler and member of Humanity, ravages by the unknown war, leading toward a Psychotic MC. An unusual young man with mental illness coming back from the war is the premise of the story, or something that we will found later are the background of this MC. Unable to get a proper job, let alone a proper mind, get a job to hunting the sinner and guilty as the blade or revenge. Mix them with dementia and unexpected twist, is exactly the plot that quite intriguing to read.

The story is quite mind boogling, with the pace and twist here and there, we will found many character mixed up in the plot , one is trying to get his mind in check, one want to be the common sense in this story, one tangled in big conspiracy, even one is only exist in his mind. Quite nice indeed for the plot to be.

As the art, i don't mind with it it, it's quite good enough to describe this character and story.

Character in this story is can't be detached from the plot, as it is the one that made this rolling.

Quite enjoyable, but need a little bit guts to stomach some of it, and if you like this manga, you can another manga by this author.

As someone said elsewhere, Freesia is a great manga for traumatized people. The level of enjoyment that you will get from this manga depends on your ability (and willingness) to relate to a cast comprised exclusively of various kinds of broken people, maniacs and madmen. If it’s not your cup of tea, then you will, probably, see it as a weak political satire on modern society, full of forced gibberish dialogues and illogical actions. If you can get in sync with the characters’ idiosyncrasies, than you’ll read it as a witty essay on the two most important searches, that any person conducts throughout its life – the search for the goal and the search for the balance.

Freesia doesn’t allow sane characters into its main cast: the trio of protagonists consists of a clinically insane guy, a psycho and an idealist. The lead character, Kano, is an unstable schizophreniac, who experiences hallucinations, delusions and memory failures on daily basis. He somewhat compensates for this with his ability to become invisible. (The setting isn’t exactly realistic and allows for some usage of ESP powers.) While technically the plot is organized around the cases taken by the vengeance killing company, that employs the three main characters, the author is more interested in the personal stories of the company's workers and their victims. The manga explores how people affect each other in both physical and psychic ways. (The revenge agency really isn't the point, I have no idea, why people focus on talking about it in legths in the reviews.)

The best part about Freesia is that it is not safe. It doesn’t embellish its characters, it doesn’t pity them and even their darkest moments are shown mercilessly, all with a great dose of dark humor. Be warned though that the manga contains large amount of gore and several rape scenes.

The art won’t be to everyone’s liking. It is not pretty and it doesn’t try to be. Though, if you’ve read some works by Nihei or are familiar with Dorohedoro you will, most likely, discover its appeal. The drawings are raw, unpolished and gritty, backgrounds are overloaded with details, faces are often oversimplified for the sake of expressiveness. The composition is superb. The art slightly changes from volume to volume: the first ones are a bit unpolished, the last two have slightly different tone to them.

Freesia has most of the features, characteristic of Matsumoto’s works – it is dark, dirty, satirical and twisted. But while some of his latest mangas seem to be style over substance, Freesia is still very focused and content-rich. It is a very mature and, in the end, very humane statement on the complicated art of living and on the way we have to fight constantly with the world in and around us.

In a modern Japan inexplicably at war with vague foreigners, its prisons emptied to fill the military with soldiers, its population constantly reminded via loud speakers in public streets, we begin the tale with a delusional young man, Hiroshi, who talks to an imaginary friend while killing people with remarkable ease thanks to an interesting suppressed past.

This initially unflappable man gets a job working as a proxy for vengeance-seekers via a newly instated vengeance act. The act is so outrageous that even author Jiro Matsumoto is laughing while he writes this brilliant manga. We are looking at a Japan where courts receive petitions from victims of crimes, whereby local vengeance enforcer agencies inform the intended targets then use government proxy enforcers, aka assassins, to hunt down and kill whoever the victim has a problem with, regardless of whether the criminal has served time already or not.

This ludicrous notion is balanced out by informing the ex-convicts of the date of when the hunt will begin and by being allowed a weapon and even a bodyguard to defend themselves. "It's not a death sentence!" a character quips pleasantly. It’s a decisive and detailed government that is in control of Japan, detailed to the point of having a thick manual of rules and regulations guaranteeing the 'rights' of both proxy and target of retribution. A government that’s still following a political correctness-obsessed culture, and the result is both hilarious because of how close to reality Freesia's idiosyncratic world is, and horrific because of how it’s not but might be.

If the man who killed your loved ones is freed from prison, would you pay an agency to legally attempt to kill him for you? Would you legally attempt it yourself? Would you try to forget and move on? This is the world of Freesia. As bold and outrageous as the vengeance act is, its born of necessity to fight a war and to placate friends and families of victims who deem it unfair to free criminals early, or at all.

On top of the basic premise which is the backbone of the story, there is the added dimension of having a cast populated by mentally unstable narcissists butting heads constantly. The biggest conflict is between Hiroshi and a mystery woman, working for an enforcer agency, who gets under his skin making him doubt his entire way of life, to a fellow proxy enforcer who sees himself as a hunter and feels threatened by Hiroshi’s non-prey like atmosphere. Matsumoto ramps up the tension through numerous hallucinations and moments of reflection by Hiroshi who is the by-product of the insane environment depicted.

Jiro Matsumoto's wit is absolutely scathing. The black humour is dripping off almost each panel in this sordid tale, with nonchalant quips and payoffs that are so droll you have to be a fan of Kafka-esque lunacy to enjoy it, otherwise you'll turn away in clueless disgust.

Matsumoto's writing snakes its way through simple laughs like uninvited sex on top of a poor granny, to terribly mean-spirited wit like the first instance of the vengeance act being delivered to an uncomprehending mother of a killer who has already served time for his crime, and ultimately to more darker territory with harsh flashbacks of rape and murder that are anything but attempts to make you chuckle. The enormity of the consequences of having such a government sponsored act are fully explored through various situations, all of them unflinching as they should be.

In short: Matsumoto knows how to tell a tale and how to use humour. He knows exactly when to throw punches and pull them, (although in this case ‘pulling punches’ means having conventional humour and not something dreamt up from the lower depths of the demonic dimension) he knows when to inject a particular type of comedy into a scene, he is the master of the form and his punch-lines are devastating.

The art is in typical Matsumoto style, at first glance it’s as if he drew it in five seconds, but it’s all actually well detailed with many things going on in the background. The composition is skilful and overall it just all feels the complete opposite of the majority of polished manga out there. His art world looks lived in strangely enough. It’s the care and attention to detail despite how crude the art looks that is what gives it charm and the sense of aliveness about it.

Freesia has plenty of laughs but is not a mere comedy, it’s too detailed in its execution of the bold premise and too wildly satirical for that. Although it veers off into supernatural action hijinks at times, it maintains a surreal vibe about it consistent with the mental instability of most of its cast.

Freesia is of the same ilk as Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. It’s a mirror of the present, a notebook doodle imagining of the future; it’s the best kind of tale, full of rich content told vividly and with creative unabashed irreverent flair.

This is a manga that gets better and better as it goes on. It's certainly not for everyone, but give it a try or two--I gave it a second chance (hated it on my first attempt, but it somehow stayed at the back of my mind) and to date, I can say this is one of the best manga I have ever read.

A couple of things:-

(1) The art doesn't have a consistent quality. The covers and the first few pages are good and neat, but the rest are pretty raw and untidy and looks as if the artist didn't put a lot of effort into it. In the beginning, this was quite a turn-off for me but I eventually grew to like the style.

(2) The plot and esp. the characters are far from what you'd find in a typical manga. But I think it's a good thing, in this case. The series is roughly episodic and may be separated into several arcs, usually focusing on an individual case and its relevant characters (either the enforcers or their targets.) There is quite a bit of humour in the writing, but perhaps not everyone will be able to pick up on it.

At the end of the day, this is a manga that can weird you out and make you think, is funny as well as sad (almost approaching tragedy at some points), and I think this is why it's such a great manga, because it's working on so many levels and manages somehow to pull it off. A final caveat: the sexual content is quite explicit, and more revolting than erotic IMO. Don't let that put you off the manga though--you may eventually develop a taste for it =p

I'm gonna tell you right now prospective reader of this manga...there is a metric shit ton of sexual violence and overall brutal acts perpetrated by the characters in this series. If that is a turn off for you then just turn away now as the rest of this review is rather irrelevant.

Freesia is a story in alternative Japan where due to the overcrowded jails, the government has decided it would be a great idea to lessen sentences for convicted criminals in order for the victims of their crimes to be given an opportunity to legally kill them out of revenge. Since most victims aren't willing to place their own life in danger this has created a rather dubious industry around vengeance killings where these victims will act as their proxy for the sake of "justice".

From the very beginning this kind of premise seems original and Matsumuto Jiro goes out of his way to explain in detail without resorting to too much exposition how this deviation from the normal timeline has affected society. If this "what if scenario" was only used as a means to set up cool gun fights I would've been disappointed but the author takes into consideration the psychologies of every one of his characters, and those character studies is what sticks with me the most after reading this series.

The story's main character is a newly hired proxy enforcer and the fact that he's newly hired is a great way to have his co workers explain things to him without it breaking immersion. Another great point about the series is how the author likes to focus on the mental states of not only the main character but his co workers and the people they kill as well. There are chapters where we witness the lead up to a person receiving a notification that they are the target for a revenge killing and it is at times cathartic when you've seen them be nothing but shitty people and other times heart breaking when you realize how they've reformed themselves only to have their lives cut just short of redemption. This works mainly because the author just shows you these people's lives without having to explicitly tell the reader this is a shitty person or this person is a nice guy. He just trusts your intelligence to decide that for yourself and there is much room for open interpretation as to whether or not the target in question ever deserved a second chance.

There is also a sense of time and progression throughout the narrative. All of the characters working in the office go through various changes as a direct consequence of working there. I enjoyed the symbolism of decayed buildings showing up in the backgrounds sometimes where they shouldn't be to indicate the deteriorating mindset of some of these people. No one seems to be unaffected by this sense of time. Characters lose their faith in the system, or their relationships, or their loved ones. Even the nature of the industry changes and there is even a visual progression for some of these characters as they look noticeably different from the beginning of the series in comparison to how they are at the end. I feel there are consequences to any action taken in the story, either by the characters themselves or the government as a whole that feels more real than being strung along by a bland cliche backstory that defines each character. Actually, many characters will die before having explained why they act the way they do which leads the readers to make that insight
for themselves.

In terms of the artwork the mangaka goes for a very gritty look if I'm being generous and ugly if I'm being blunt. Do not use the beautifully smooth looking cover as a metric of how the characters look or else you will be disappointed. That said I think the artwork ends up creating a grimy pulpy atmosphere that fits not only the setting but the narrative as a whole. Killing isn't a beautiful thing, and the fact that looks as gross as it does is actually rather great. Also, characters who are seemingly further beyond any redemption seem to be drawn in harsher lines than others and I thought that was pretty clever.

Gun fights are also drawn to be chaotic but often times are a battle of wit to between hunter and prey to see who can cleverly out maneuver their opponent in a closed environment. Many panels are dedicated to shooters moving into position which leads to great amount of tension. If it was just a hail of constant bullets I feel it would get old fast. The fact that this often time leads to people hiding in dumpsters, or sewers or under dead bodies means it would be weird if it was drawn in a much prettier style as well. This also works for the many out there facial expressions that clearly convey character emotions where a more subdued visual aesthetic would have to have their characters verbally say how they're feeling.

In Freesia there is a level of enjoyment derived from reading what the speech bubbles say and what the character's faces say. The dialogue is also heavily characterized and much thought is given to the speech patterns of each character so as to differentiate them even further from one another. Even small random conversations seem more interesting not from what's being said but by who is saying it.

Freesia goes out of it's way to ask whether or not true reformation is possible and where do we draw the line between vengeance and justice. Is there any subjectivity to crimes and who exactly has the right to pass judgement on criminals. You will most likely come out more nihilistic on the way out from reading this series but at least in my opinion it doesn't leave a stone un-turned in creating this crazy what if scenario. It is later revealed that Freesia means "Prospect for a new future" in the language of flowers (I looked it up on Google but and it means innocence but whatever...". ) I found this to be really poignant and adds a level of tragic irony to the fates of these characters who are often robbed of any future throughout the story.

It's a rather enjoyable manga and I'd highly encourage reading this one if you are a fan of psychological thrillers, crime dramas, or atmospheric works of fictions.

I absolutely love this manga and mangaka. His work reminds me of the films by Takashi Miike, or the novels of Ryu Murakami (particularly Coin Locker Babies). If you enjoy surreal, ultra-violent, atmospheric seinen, then this should be in your wheelhouse. It also happens to be hilarious (in a very dark way).

Upon first blush, the art may appear unimpressive, with its unpolished, sketchy style. However, I feel that this is what gives the manga it's unique feel. Within a few pages, you can see that the artist has a distinct artistic sensibility, and is an intensely talented storyteller, with the movement flowing seamlessly from panel to panel. His character expressions are also on point and hilarious. The only knock I'd have against him is that he tends to draw the female characters similarly (they're all cute af, which might be a pro). All in all, I really respect mangaka's who are able to develop a unique style that is immediately recognisable. Artists like Inio Asano, Hiroaki Samura, Q Hayashida, or Junji Ito come to mind. Its a big reason I can't stand shonen or shoujo manga. The aesthetic is so strongly associated with the genre that artists rarely feel they can deviate from it.

You really need to have an affinity for a particular type of seinen for this manga to be enjoyable. This is not your typical manga.

Did you ever think that criminals deserve a much harsher punishment than being sent to jail to serve time? Ever thought that the famous law of Talion should be in vigour? Freesia portrays such juridical system in which the victim's family may issue a warrant to have the aggressor executed legally.

The story of Freesia is narrated in a society plagued with war, in which killings are legalized and are carried out by enforcers, who are trained killers or ex-soldiers. The protagonist Kano is recruited by Higuchi to such an agency, in which he cooperates with the newbie Yamada and the senior Mizoguchi. There is more to Kano - he is not your typical protagonist; he has a disturbing personality, is very antisocial (unable to communicate accordingly with fellow humans) and he is plagued by hallucinations. In the beginning you have literally no idea what to think of this character.

The manga also displays a lot misery, corruption, cruelty, gore, paranoia, insanity and misogyny. A bit in excess in fact, impacting the story in such a way that it seems that no humanity is portrayed in society at all. Other thing to mention is the war that takes place: basically nothing is explained about it, why it did happen, how is society affected by it, none of these questions are answered, making the war a mere plot device to justify the current juridical system, which leads to other point of the story: the "enforcing".

First off, there is a gist to the system: instead of criminals being executed in a controlled and official environment, criminals are hunted down by enforcers. The criminal is free to hire bodyguards to defend against the prosecutors, but these are often unaffordable, which leaves the criminals with no other option then to rely on their friends or family members. Nevertheless, they have the liberty to choose a place where the enforcement should take place. The idea is interesting, but there are problems associated with such a system: trying to assassinate each other in populated areas, hence involving and risking the lives of many innocent civilians? This would never work in reality, leaving the reader with a somewhat unsatisfactory story setting.

The development of the main character Kano is one of the strongest points in Freesia. Besides of being an interesting character, Kano himself is aware that he is insane, and not the world around him as he thinks in the beginning; he tries to change it gradually, which he does through interactions with different characters and events, and his own hallucinations.

This cannot be said about the other characters. There is Higuchi, who apparently has a motive for working in such an agency, but this is never portrayed throughout the manga. The same could be said about Mizoguchi: characterized by being a total psychopath, who beats his wife on regular basis, killing innocent bystanders, without having a single positive characteristic to him. Nothing is explained on why possibly he displays such behaviour.

A lot of secondary characters are introduced, with some being interesting as "The Phantom", the grandma, but a lot of those are shown in some pages and just disappear, as in the case of the serial killer. This character seemed to have some importance to the story development, but after being displayed to the reader, suddenly isn't mentioned before. Or the lover of Keiko, who suddenly disappears as well.

The art style of Freesia is sketchy, which fits well with the theme of the story, making it able to display the cruelty and gore of the world well. Nevertheless, inconsistencies could be found in the manga, as well as characters design being simplistic and hard to distinguish from each other.

Overall Freesia was a compelling read which suggested an interesting juridical system for themes such as revenge, but failed to convey these in a realistic manner. The characters were somewhat lackluster, and lacked in humanity, Kano being the most appealing one of the narrative. Definitely recommendable to anyone who seeks a dramatic action manga.

Thank you for reading.

Criminals do not always receive justice. If a murderer serves several years in prison and yet shows little change or remorse by the end of their sentence, should they be free to roam the streets and move on with their life? Written and drawn by the deranged Jiro Matsumoto, Freesia depicts a world where these criminals can be legally executed by a group of trained killers, formally known as 'enforcers'.

Rather than meeting a swift and painless end, targeted criminals are legally able to defend their lives by hiring a small group of bodyguards. If they cannot afford one (which is likely- a single bodyguard ranges in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) or do not have a friend willing to put their life on the line for their sake, the state will give them one free of charge. Or at least that is what they are led to believe. Far more often these 'free' bodyguards will abandon the criminal and leave them to an almost certain death. Corruption permeates the world of Freesia, but so too do many other awful things.

If legal assassination sounds implausible or absurd-- it kinda is. It would be one thing if these criminals were tried in a court and then executed via hanging or lethal injection, but instead innocent lives are put on the line for a twisted game of murder. I suppose entertainment in a story comes before realism.

Freesia is not a manga to be read while in high spirits. There are so many disgusting and inhumane events in the story that it is likely to make you pop a few anti-depressant pills. Gore, rape, betrayal, insanity, infidelity, corruption and domestic abuse are among the things that paint Freesia's cruel world. There is the ever-present theme of nihilism, and while it is not too overbearing, the lack of humanity in *any* of the characters is continually made apparent. Yamada is possibly the only character in the entire story who is not an absolutely terrible person, and that is even including the dozens of background characters who appear for only a few pages. This misanthropic portrayal of humanity feels a bit forced. The constant misogyny is also quite bothersome; if the girl has not been raped, she has been victimised or abused in some other way. On the other hand, all the male characters fall into the macho tough-guy persona. For a manga that deals with so much mature content, it can be awfully immature in how it chooses to portray it.

Thematic issues aside, Freesia does an excellent job of developing the main character, Kano. While he never becomes truly likeable, he does become more transparent. It is impossible to have any clue in hell what is going on with him at the start (what with his frequent hallucinations and out-of-place commentary), but his behaviour gradually becomes more coherent. Kano understands that something is driving him crazy and chooses to fix it. He realises that it was not the world around him, but he who was falling to insanity. He could have easily existed as a stereotypical anti-hero (the sort that 12-year-old boys go crazy over), but the mangaka thankfully treats Kano as a three-dimensional character. His role becomes less a plot device and more the central theme as the story treads on.

The same cannot be said for all the primary characters. Mizoguchi is as archetypical as they come, a cackling lunatic who kills for sport. He accidentally kills innocent bystanders during his job and does not bat an eye. He beats his wife and screams at her simply for doing as he asks. There is no redeeming feature in Mizoguchi. Not a one. A well-written character would at least have a believable personality, but Mizoguchi is a contemptible psychopath "just because". How did he become such a horrible person? Who knows. He receives little to no character development and exists largely as a catalyst for Kano's own issues. There is no excitement to his appearances; it is just another "Oh, great, it's this guy again!"

Freesia succeeds in making the reader care about the enforcements that take place. By spending several chapters developing the criminals' backstory and motives, it becomes difficult to decide who to root for. When they take that bullet to the face, they are permanently taken out of the story. It's always a bit of a bummer to see interesting characters perish in an instant (even if they were terrible people who deserved it). There is emotional weight to each and every major event.

There is also a bit of black humour spread throughout, such as during a scene where Kano casually sips his coffee as a bullet flies through the window right next to him. Are these moments even funny, though? ... Not really? It's hard to find humour in a world filled with chaos. Some of the scenes (like Kano having sex with his girlfriend on-top of his old, dying mother) are just downright disgusting. It takes a certain type of person to find scenes like that amusing, and I am definitely not one of them.

The artwork of Freesia is abrasive and sketch-like, though that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The lack of refinement makes the awful events of Freesia stand out all the more. Had it looked clean and polished, these scenes would only feel out-of-place. This does not excuse the many instances of lazy drawing, however. Panels frequently contain backgrounds that resemble doodles, while others (mostly the gore scenes) are drawn with expressive detail. There's absolutely no consistency to the artwork.

Is Freesia an enjoyable manga? Absolutely not. Is it a good one? Sometimes. There are some really interesting themes tucked away in here, but they are inevitably held back by the constant gore and childish misanthropy. Freesia regularly switches from maturity right back down to immaturity. It does not quite know what it wants to be or what it wants to say. It will take a skin of steel to handle the awful things Freesia throws at you, but if you can look past that you will find something much more thoughtful. Probably.

Have I ever told you the definition of insanity?

Freesia is written by Matsumoto Jiro, a man that makes manga that are pretty hard to figure out if they are art or simply ramblings by the mind of an insane person. Freesia, his longest work as of date, is the manga that made me realize that its simply both. Honestly, all the other manga that I read from him, Wendy, Netsutai no Citron and Benchin no Madala, were all manga that, even though I enjoyed, I wasn't that big of a fan, but I continued to read mostly out of curiosity, because it was so different than any other mangaka that I had found so far.
Freesia as most of Jiro's staples in it, the weird art, the weird characters, the sexual themes, and the dark atmosphere, while at the same time being more stable and taking more time to really establish the story, settings and characters, that's why Freesia is the first manga of his that I really put among my all time favorites.
There's something about Freesia. You know those works that really makes you hate humanity? Those movies, books or anime that just show the worst in people, that every character is made for you to hate?
That's what Freesia is. a story about horrible, insane people, that ultimately are human.
The manga starts with our main character talking to a imaginary friend, in a coffee shop. Eventually a woman that looks like the imaginary friend comes and convinces Kano to join a organization that is supposed to execute ex-cons if a relative of the person the ex-con killed wishes to. Everything is approved by the government so that the people forget the war that's going on.
This war is never explored much, it just exists in the background, there lingering and creating tension.
If you think this story is about why the woman looks like the imaginary friend, it's not. That plot is revealed pretty early on, and in the words of Kano: "Oh, that's all there is? I thought it was something important." This manga is full of those moments. Things that seem important to us, and to the people around Kano, ultimately end up being nothing in his mind, of course, his mind is a mess. There's a scene where he doesn't kill a man because: "He felt like the man didn't want it", even though that's his job. It's almost like he's a child thrown in that environment and is just going with the flow.
But Kano isn't the only one in this state. A lot of the main characters have some kind of delusions and hallucinations going on. The fine line between reality and hallucination is never fully revealed until it's too late.
In the end everything falls together. It's not like we get every explanation to every question spoon fed us, but it connects very well and what needs to be explained is explained. It's a manga that feels much like the movie Fight Club, Filth or Memento and has the same kind of surreal feel to it.
The only bad point I can find is the art, which either you like it or you don't. It's unique and it works well with the atmosphere, but I can see how a lot of people would be put off by the messy lines and horrible faces.
All in all, this is a great manga and if you're into psychological stuff you're going to be highly entertained by this work.