You and I both know when going into a manga like this that it’s going to be stupid edgy, stupid trashy, that a lot of murders will be stupid to up the headcount. These are not reasons to shame. You don’t go to a nightclub and complain about naked bodies. But is “Lesson of Evil” (oh my god, the naming) stupid overall, as you’d expect from a story about a sexy serial killer? It is unrealistic, sure, it is corny, maybe campy, occasionally cringey, but stupid? I think no. I even gained new ideas and cultural knowledge out of reading it, which both confounds and amuses me to a great degree. You shouldn’t read this if you have a strong emotional response to the topic of school shootings though, as the main issue of this work may be its gratuitous violence in later chapters.

I dropped Aku no Kyouten once. The thing I overlooked then was that it is not episodic, bullshitting its way from one magazine issue to another, as I thought, it is based on a book (which was also adapted into a movie). Thus it has a finished story with a proper composition: two distinct halves and a lot of broken reader expectations. Because of the latter it is not humanly possible to explain what this manga is without some spoilers, and it’d be better if you went in blind… but if you wish to read this further, I promise to reveal things gradually at the very least.

The manga starts with a sympathetic handsome English teacher Hasumi Seiji, nicknamed Hasumin, getting a whole class of troubled schoolkids under his black wings. The children have so many issues, so their sensei and counselor tries to help. It just so happens he is able to murder without remorse, and uses this to resolve the gravest of woes. During the first few chapters I fully expected this to be a school version of Dexter, with a psychopath solving people’s problems because he tries to redeem himself and/or contribute. I stopped reading when Hasumin acted rashly to get one of his students into bed. There were other issues too: unevenness of the art, which falls off model periodically, deeply stuck in the uncanny valley between godly and ugly; overdramatization of the school setting; Hasumin doing silly “cool” stuff like breakdancing… Based on my experience with overwhelmingly poor writing in psycho killer manga I fully expected the love subplot to be shoehorned purely for titillation and didn’t like an astute character acting stupid.

And now I wonder why. Why did I expect an unhinged murderous psychopath to be sacrificial for the sake of a higher goal? I guess popular fiction has us trained to expect high levels of reason from psychopaths in the main cast, if not outright protectiveness towards neurotypicals. But why? Why would someone with a diagnosis that indicates total egoism, recklessness, lack of fear, and sensation seeking strive for anything other than self-gratification? A psychopath cares about him/herself, seeks pleasure for him/herself. So it’s actually logical that Hasumin takes a risk to get some. He simply wants the sexu, and he wants to show off, because he is vain. This is good writing, not bad one. He shits where he eats too, sure, cause he doesn’t care, is overconfident.

Aku no Kyoten plays with this a lot. Hasumin is attractive and charismatic, loved by people around him. His opposition is ugly, stupid, lame, hated, has a bad personality. Hasumin pays attention to his students, teaches well. Most importantly, we follow him. You constantly expect good things from him against the logic. The manga teases the readers with his past: an understanding mentor, some human-looking connections, righteous revenge. You excuse and excuse.

Hasumi is clever and bold, successful in his endeavors. As the time goes by, he indulges a bit too much though, the lies accumulate. Just when you start to think that Hasumin is a perfect machine, his – technical – humanity catches up somewhat. The school setting reminds him of his formative years, wakes up memories. His mind shows subtle cracks. Plus the kids constantly get under his feet, little shits just can’t shut up and stay away from places they shouldn’t go to. One very unfortunate day Hasumi slips and snaps. The poor guy gets a big problem on his hands. And Hasumin deals by his favorite method.

I returned to Aku no Kyouten knowing only that the second half is “depressing”, according to internet commenters. I am thankful for this. But the main turn definitely needs a content warning, and it changes a lot in the manga, so further I will spoil the general plot progression again.

Hasumin has a lot of work after that, but he is super, so he manages. He drinks some coffee, stretches a bit, and then goes to do exactly 10 chapters of extreme manslaughter, during which he muses about his supper, plans how he can get sex afterwards, and makes a ton of English-Japanese puns. We mostly follow his victims though, as the manga turns into a full-scale survival.

The violence is indulgent, there’s no way around it. That’s why the movie was heavily criticized, especially because of its similarity to real life scenarios. But in manga we are freer and have seen worse. One thing I love about this part, besides the whole suspenseful hunting game, is that Hasumin gets hit in the face, and swelling robs him of his deceptive handsomeness. It immediately changes the way you perceive the character, which is so saddening and telling.

Aku no Kyoten begins with the flashy lyrics of Mackie the Knife the main character likes to whistle. It takes you aback how straightforward it is for a murderer and for a manga about murderer. But as the plot progresses you notice it follows the song somehow. As Wikipedia puts it, Aku no Kyoten has a lot of references to “German culture”. It often cites The Threepenny Opera, to be precise.

The Threepenny Opera, apparently, has an interesting history. At one point characters in the manga notice and tell Hasumin that he whistles Moritat, but he says he whistles Mack the Knife, the jazzy Broadway version. Hasumin may prefer the version popular in the US because he teaches English and loves the US culture, but it is also melodic and pleasant, as following the footsteps of Macky is fun to the character. The word “moritat” makes you think about Brecht’s music drama, which was a dirtier angrier political critique. This manga is fun to read through, with its showy main character, sex, gleeful murder, and nonsensical scheming, it’s a pop grindhouse flick through and through. But it also works as a cautionary tale, because for all its absurdity, people like Hasumi get away with worse things all the time, and the society allows them to thrive through its cowardice and petty squabbles. There are positive characters in Aku no Kyouten, but the world is immoral and hilariously broken, so they aren’t doing great, the evil triumphs just like in The Threepenny finale, sorta. Most importantly, I like how this manga breaks the image of a cool reasonable psychopath we’re dangerously overfed with.

Speaking about cinema, the art here evokes complex feelings too. I’ve checked several other works by the artist – and they are much simpler, lighter in linework. He sure went all out with the level of realism and the heavy lighting for Aku no Kyouten. It’s hards to tell the girl characters apart, the anatomy suffers as much as Hasumin’s victims from time to time, but the backgrounds reach a very high level by the end, and Hasumin is always easy on the eye, but stimulatingly creepy. When I wondered whether Aku no Kyoten was exploitative with its depiction of violence, I looked through types of exploitation movies, and giallo felt similar in feeling to the art here, though the panelwork in this manga is rather bland. It’s a spectacular pleasant art nonetheless.

I can’t say Aku no Kyouten is for everybody. I was likely in a unique position to enjoy it. I expected the worst, I was on board with suspending my disbelief AND disgust for the sake of slightly unhealthy entertainment. I was ready for something pandering, discordant, and controversial. I am fairly forgiving towards B-grade stuff. I ended up with a fascinating meta-commentary, a self-reflection séance, a bad boy, a couple of sweet kids, and a lot of murder, which for me feels like a catch. The author of the original wrote Shinsekai Yori, by the way, so there’s hope I am not fully projecting.

Aku no Kyoten is not high art, it is a shock content school slasher with a handsome scheming killer dude – it’s not something you enter in a suit with a bow. But it has richer sides to it, it laughs at you if you try to be fully mindless when reading. It’s also a music show by its heritage. The main character whistles Mack the Knife when he’s happy, a song called Karn Evil 9 is introduced at the turning point of the story (oh my god, the naming). But if you’re a dirty pleb like me you can also put Pumped up Kicks by Foster the People on your speakers, take your metaphorical pants off (or real, ffs), grin as madly as you can, and dive in the fun, the awfulness, the theatrics, the thematic face slaps, and the thrill of this work.