Jisatsu Circle by Usumaru Furuya

* spoilers *

Saya jumped in front of a train with 53 other girls and miraculously survived without injury. A month afterwards, she feels empty and depressed. Her best friend Kyoko tries to help her, but doesn't know what to do when Saya gains a following just like Mitsuko, the girl who led the suicide club, did before her. It's up to Kyoko to find out what's going on and save her friend before another huge bunch of girls dies.

This manga doesn't follow the story of the film at all. Furuya was given complete freedom to make a different story and most of it is very different except for the basic premise, first shocking train scene, and the names of a couple characters such as Mitsuko and Kuroda. This plot is much more streamlined without all the random storylines of the film. It starts in the present, one month after the mass suicide. Then it jumps around to show how Kyoko and Saya became friends and how the first suicide club came to be as well as the story moving forward.

The story centers on Saya and Kyoko's friendship and how they have grown apart recently. As children, they were close and passed a diary back and forth between them to draw pictures or write things that are hard to say face to face. As time went on, Kyoko was too wrapped up in her first romance while Saya's father was hospitalized. Saya turned to sex work to support her family and started to self harm regularly. Kyoko is filled with guilt as Saya recedes deeper into herself after being bullied and continuing to be expoited. She enlists the help of who she thought was a perverted teacher luring her to his apartment. He actually had real information for her and is the first character portrayed as ugly that hasn't been a villain that I've seen in manga.

I was fascinated by this version of a suicide club. Dessert is only mentioned once as a self harming artist. This supernatural cause melds with the internet rather well and occurs in a cycle. The surviving member of the club becomes the new leader, changing their name to Mitsuko, and amasses a bigger group that seems almost hypnotized by her. The fairly new phenomenon of the internet has spread Mitsuko to a much bigger number of people than she had access to before. This is the way to integrate the internet into a story like this. It was another red herring in the film and seemed to reflect general anxiety about something new. I also particularly enjoyed that girls posted there thanking Mitsuko after they had died. It's a small detail that makes everything so chilling.

Jisatsu Circle is a completely different experience than the film. I found it to be a more successful story without the numerous plot lines. The focus on female friendship also made the ending incredibly beautiful, tragic, and chilling all at the same time. This version has many more answers and also more emotions than its film counterpart. The only problem I really had with it was the large amount of nude pictures and frames of Mitsuko. It has its place in the story, but it's too much. Other than that, Jisatsu Circle exceeded my expectations.

My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins