Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Like expected, volume 7 of Shuzo Oshimi’s “Happiness” is back to being discomforting. Yukiko Gosho heads out to find Sakurane after reading about him in a magazine that claims he is the leader of a cult called “Blood of Happiness.”
Recap of Happiness Volume 6: Gosho lives an ordinary life as an office worker and is pursued by a kind colleague, Sudo. However, she’s haunted by her failure to help her friends Makoto and Yuki, who became victims of vampire attacks. While walking with Sudo in her old neighborhood, she meets Makoto’s mother, who invites them for tea and is pleased Gosho is living a normal life. Emotional, Gosho becomes determined to find out what happened to her friends and sets out to search for Sakurane – the last person seen with Yuki.
Considering how Sakurane is wanted for murdering a bunch of children and has even made it to magazine headlines, it’s strange how easily Gosho manages to find the location of his reclusive cult. So now the main focus of the story is on whether Gosho will successfully infiltrate the cult and find the truth about what happened to her classmates.
“Happiness” volume 7 is dominated by dark, bold black panels, and it opens with Gosho sneaking into the premises of a private property. Shuzo Oshimi accurately creates an atmosphere of mystery, darkness, and fear through the illustrations, and it reminded me of Daniel Clowes’ graphic novel “Monica,” which wasn’t about vampires but had a weird cult as one of its primary themes. The cult stuff is pretty intriguing; like most groups, even “The Blood of Happiness” is isolated, reclusive, surrounded by ominous woods and its members blindly follow Sakurane as their leader.
Even though this volume shifts back to being pacy, mysterious, and brings back some of the violence that dominated the earlier leg of the story, I feel like Gosho should’ve been given some more time to deal with her trauma before she plunges headlong into a situation that will inevitably bring her face-to-face with the psychotic Sakurane. Readers do get to know about Yuki’s fate, but I would’ve preferred some more of the introspective, slow tone from the previous volume than the fast-creepy developments Shuzo Oshimi offers us.
Rating: 3.5 on 5.
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