Toxic Daughter Chi-chan Review

With Shuzo Oshimi being busy working on Welcome Back, Alice and Blood on the Tracks in recent years, there hasn’t been any real leeway for him to write shorter works as he did earlier in his career. However, with Welcome Back, Alice, having concluded, a gap in his schedule has seemingly opened up, allowing him to write a new single-volume story: Toxic Daughter Chi-chan. Does it prove an interesting read? Let’s find out!

The story follows Yua Hayakawa and Kodai, two students who make it their mission to save their delinquent classmate, Chi. Back when they were in kindergarten, Yua and Chi used to play together all the time, but Chi’s obsession with dead bugs made her an outcast with the rest of the class, and once the two moved on to grade school, they stopped hanging out.

And even though they’re in the same class now, Chi rarely attends. If she does show up, it’s with dead insects in tow and wearing tattered clothes. Still, Kodai wants to reform the girl, and due to Yua being her childhood friend, he figures Chi is most likely to listen to her. Yua has a crush on Kodai, so although she’s not keen on getting involved with Chi again, she agrees to the plan regardless.

Unfortunately, Chi is deeply troubled, and the two have got themselves in over their heads with any dreams of turning her life around. Things go well to start with, but Chi has violent tendencies, and upon a visit to her home, Kodai ends up getting wounded. Temporarily, Chi returns to class, which thrills Kodai as he’s lavished with praise for his accomplishment of bringing her back. Unfortunately, history repeats itself, and it’s not long before Chi is once again wielding her scissors as a deadly weapon and threatening her classmates…

Like many of Shuzo Oshimi’s works, this one is not for the faint-hearted. Not just because of the graphic depiction of dead insects, but for the violence and scenes of sexual assault as well. It’s a difficult read, but as is often the case for Oshimi’s work, the characters are relatively well written, and you find yourself turning the pages, eager to find out how the story is going to resolve. All of these characters have their reasons for acting the way they do, and it’s believable as to why Kodai would want to reform Chi, why Yua is hesitant to get involved and to some degree even why Chi is as disturbed as she is.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest issues with this manga is that it doesn’t conclude Chi’s story. This manga acts as a prequel to the Toxic Daughter film, for which Oshimi handled the character design. The film was released in Japan in April 2024, and while there have been some film festival screeners, there hasn’t been a wider release in English, nor a way to watch it currently.

For diehard Oshimi fans like me, I don’t think that poses a significant deterrent to picking this up. However, the more casual readers are certainly going to be left wondering what happens to Chi and where the story goes from here. It’s unsatisfying since there are too many loose ends that aren’t tied up. I was hoping that, given enough time, perhaps Oshimi would adapt the film into manga form as well, but so far that doesn’t appear to have happened either.

Still, the story aside, this is another high-quality project from Oshimi. The art is very detailed, and the character designs are quite distinct, although they do share certain qualities from his other works. As is usual for his work, Oshimi tells the story through quite small panels, but that allows him to hone in on the things that matter most in a scene. It’s a style that has been carefully crafted since his debut and is now very recognisable for being Oshimi’s.

Toxic Daughter Chi-chan comes to the West thanks to Kodansha under their Vertical imprint. Translation has been handled by Daniel Komen, and the release reads well on the whole. Sadly no extras to speak of, which is a shame as the Japanese release does come with colour pages at the beginning.

Oshimi does have another new series running at the moment, titled Mabataki no Oto, which will hopefully come West in due time. Although it hasn’t gotten a volume release in Japan yet, I imagine we’ll be waiting a while to see that. Still, always good to know there’s more of his work out there!

Overall, Toxic Daughter Chi-chan is an interesting but somewhat unsatisfying piece from Shuzo Oshimi due to circumstances not entirely within his control. Still, it’s a worthy read if you’re looking for a darker read or happen to be an existing fan of the mangaka.

Our review copy from Kodansha (Vertical) was supplied by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).