Confidental Confessions is a shoujo manga series by Reiko Momochi, which ran in Dessert from 2000 to 2002 and was compiled into six volumes. Each volume is either a stand-alone story itself, or contains several different stand-alone stories, each story focusing on a tough issue for the protagonist to either overcome... or succumb to. Said issues include but are not limited to abuse, prostitution, drugs, HIV and AIDS, bullying, and falling in love for the first time...with someone of the same gender.
A sequel series, the two-volume Confidential Confessions: Deai was released May 2006, featuring protagonists who enter (and try to get out of) the deai-kei industry.
The manga was licensed in English by Tokyopop. As of April 2009, it is out of print.
Confidential Confessions contains examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: Zigzagged. A lot of the issues brought up by the series are caused or exacerbated by the authority figures refusing to acknowledge that the problems the teenagers are going through are problems at all, but there are cases where the adult comes to their senses and finally steps in to intervene.
- All Abusers Are Male: Unfortunately, the stories featuring abusive relationships all have a male abuser and female victim—kinda surprising, considering the other subject matters and how seriously they were handled. The only female abusers are all in stories on bullying, rather than domestic abuse.
- All Just a Dream: Tragically so. In the story about a girl who falls for her also-female best friend, she comes over one night to see her friend being molested by her father. The step-mother comes home then and stabs him to death, and the protagonist takes her friend and runs away. The two find an abandoned mansion, drop out of school, confess their love for each other and then make love, vow to stay together forever...and then in the last two pages we discover it was all an instantaneous daydream by the protagonist, who really stabbed her friend's father. She stands there, laughing crazily while her friend calls emergency services. Maybe. It's not that clear.
- All of the Other Reindeer: In Volume 4's story Tomorrow has a slight variation—Luka is only bullied by the Alpha Bitch and her Girl Posse, but everyone else in class (save for the protagonist) simply ignores her and watches the bullying from the sidelines, for fear that they'll be targeted next. It isn't until Luka's leg is injured while on her paper route that the protagonist finally confronts the girl gang violently, leading to the rest of the class joining in.
- Apathetic Citizens: In Distortion, pretty much all the students aside from Miho and Aiko are completely desensitized to the school's restrictive rules and Gunji's abusive ways of enforcing them. It's not until Gunji straight-up tries to kill Aiko that they snap out of it.
- Asshole Victim: In Forbidden Kiss, Kanna's sexually abusive father ends up being stabbed, presumably fatally.
- Bittersweet Ending: Sometimes the best ending the protagonist can have is bittersweet to some extent. This is usually because even if they make it out of their situation, they have a friend who isn't so lucky, they have to go to rehab or a mental hospital, they're scarred for life... Case in points:
- The first story has the protagonist attending Asparagus's funeral, where it's very undignified. The photo is unflattering, the priest pronounces her name wrong, and her bullies show up to pay respects but don't look mournful. When the protagonist calls them out, they go Never My Fault and says it was "just a few pranks". This motivates the protagonist to get treatment for her suicidal thoughts and move forward in life because in death you get no dignity. It's implied that her relationship with her mother will improve.
- Tears: Chika finally exposes Todo's misdeeds over a loudspeaker at school, leading to him getting fired. That still leaves her and the other girls with the trauma, however, with several having transferred to escape from the groping and innuendos. They decide to learn from their mistakes in not speaking up.
- In the story about drugs, Kyoko's parents drive her to rehab. They tell her friends that college is no longer a priority; the big thing is that Kyoko is healthy, clean, and happy. The friend who got her addicted tries to pass a bag of cocaine but Kyoko tosses it out the car window, refusing to get sucked back in now that her parents are actually helping her. Just as the ending seems to be happy, her friend runs into the street while high, as a car hits her.
- Blaming the Victim: Not exactly blaming but Chika's clubmates discourage from sueing their coach Todo for sexual harassment, believing that she'd cause problems not only for herself but also for them, branding them all as sluts and ruining their efforts to become strong tennis players.
- Blatant Lies: The Tokyopop ads for the series claimed that it contained "Real teens. Real problems." None of the teens are real, they're all fictional.
- Blood-Splattered Innocents: In Distortion, Aiko gets splattered with blood when Miho throws herself in front of an oncoming train.
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Broken Aesop: You can easily interpret the message of the suicide chapter to be not that you shouldn't commit suicide, but rather that you should leave a note. - Descent into Addiction: Kyoko reasons that trying cocaine once won't hurt, as long as she doesn't make a habit of it. Then she starts using it to pass exams and lose weight, much to her friends' consternation as she starts singing karaoke with a Dirty Old Man to get drug money. By the end, she's calculating how much money she'll earn for drugs while the guy is trying to molest her in exchange or cash, ignoring the implications. Kyoko remains in denial that she has a problem, even when the drug dealers blackmail her parents.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Kyoko's addict-friend shows up to see her off in the final pages, and is then unceremoniously hit by a car off-screen. It's because she was still taking drugs and ran into the street while high.
- Drugs Are Bad: The story Dizziness from Volume 3 goes into great detail on the negative consequences of drug use. Kyoko's father learns she became addicted to drugs because it was the only way, in her mind, to get the grades she needed and enter Tokyo University. She has a breakdown when he and his wife force her into withdrawal by confiscating cocaine an refusing to let her go outside, starting to stab herself with a pencil.
- Driven to Suicide:
- "Asparagus" from the first story is horribly bullied by her middle school friends, and plans to kill herself. She eventually succeeds.
- In the story Distortion, after Miho is subjected to a particularly humiliating punishment by a Sadist Teacher, she suffers a psychological breakdown and throws herself in front of a train.
- Dysfunction Junction: As this is explicitly a series about social and psychological problems, this is a given.
- Education Mama: Kyoko from the story Dizziness has an Education Papa - her father Keizo insists that she has to be accepted into the same prestigious university that he attended and that anything else would bring dishonour on him, so he pressures her to study hard even when she's clearly exhausted and overwhelmed and gets angry if she's anything less than top of the class. When he falls ill and has to be hospitalized, Kyoko's mother Kazue takes over the Education Mama role, mostly because she's terrified of disappointing her husband. Deconstructed: Keizo's (and later, Kazue's) treatment of Kyoko not only completely destroys her self-esteem, but is also the main reason for her descent into addiction.
- Gainax Ending: The ending of Forbidden Kiss is extremely confusing beyond the extent of a "normal" Ambiguous Ending. Through a combination of All Just a Dream and Or Was It a Dream?, the narrative leaves pretty much everything following The Reveal of Kanna being abused up to interpretation. Was it Ririko who killed Kanna's father, or was it Kanna's stepmother? Or did the latter carry out the initial attack while the former dealt the final blow (the stepmother, when interrogated by the police, doesn't seem to remember stabbing him more than once, and in the later scene showing Ririko stabbing him, he's already on the ground)? Did he even die in the first place (one of the last panels in the story shows Kanna calling an ambulance for him, and given the story's themes of daydreaming and unreality, there's a possibility even the stabbing was a fantasy based on Ririko's anger)? Did Ririko and Kanna actually run away together and start a relationship or was that Ririko's imagination? The story refuses to offer anything resembling a clear-cut answer, leaving readers wondering what on earth just happened.
- Going Cold Turkey: Kyoko's father tells her friends, after learning they weren't responsible for getting Kyoko addicted, that the cocaine desire will never go away. Kyoko will spend the rest of her life having cravings and wanting to get that high again. Rehab is a good first step, but Kyoko has to put in the rest of the work.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Whenever the protagonist ends up prostituting her body.
- I Have Many Names: Satsuki Yoshioka in Mistakes uses a lot of pseudonyms.
- Karma Houdini: This happens to an infuriating degree.
- Mid-Suicide Regret: The first story is about two suicidal high schoolers who bond over their suicidal ideation. One of them decides not to, while the other one does commit suicide.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Kyoko's father has this reaction when he discovers just why his daughter is taking drugs. Namely, when he and his wife are trying to isolate Kyoko at home, away from drugs or anyone who may give them to her, they find bags of cocaine all over the house, and Kyoko in the middle of a withdrawal breakdown starts stabbing herself with a pencil, saying she needs the drugs to get all the grades because she's not smart enough. Her father takes away the pencil and signs her up for a rehab program, realizing this isn't something he and his family can't do alone.
- Also occurs in one of the bullying stories, with a little added My God What Have I Become? The protagonist, a bully victim, discovers that the New Transfer Student has become the newest target for the bullies...and quickly decides to bully her even worse, hoping to keep the bullies off her back. Eventually even her past bullies are horrified by her actions, and she crosses the Despair Event Horizon when her victim says she'll keep enduring. The protagonist is set off and flies into a tear-filled rage because she sees her victim is strong, possibly stronger than she ever was. Realizing she's no better than the girls who bullied her, she then screams at the gathered crowd to look at what bullying does to people, before working herself up to point of collapsing on the floor. And that's it.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: In the story The Door, the protagonist befriends a suicidal girl whom she knows as "Asparagus." She only learns her real name (Toshie Tanaka) at her funeral, after Asparagus finally succeeds at one of her attempts.
- Police Are Useless: The protagonist in the stalker episode would have had her problems solved if the cops had just arrested her ex-boyfriend for posting risque photos of her online and going through her trash. Instead, they keep telling her there's nothing they can do.
- Psycho Lesbian: Downplayed with Ririko in Forbidden Kiss. She is pretty obsessive about her love for Kanna and has some rather creepy fantasies, but does not have any actual bad intentions towards her. And when she does end up crossing the line into violent behaviour by stabbing Kanna's father, the context still makes her come across as at least somewhat sympathetic because he was sexually abusive.
- Retirony: A non-fatal example. Luka resolves to quit her paper route job so her bullies can't exploit her for money, but intends to finish the rest of the week. It's during that week that her leg is injured by a car.
- Self-Harm: The Door. The protagonist's mother tries to push her to enter a better high school, making her think it will allow her dad to stay. Her dad leaves, and the protagonist out of spite enters a worse high school, and starts keeping up a collection of her scabs. When her mother finds the collection and rips it up, the protagonist has a breakdown and is motivated enough to grab a knife and slash her wrists. Cue her mother going My God, What Have I Done?, calling emergency services, and talking guiltily with a counselor about what happened.
- Stalker with a Crush: The main focus of Volume 6 is the protagonist being stalked by her abusive ex. Not meant to be romantic in the slightest and the protagonist is genuinely terrified of the guy.
- Teens Are Monsters: The series has a tendency towards this trope. The cast consists mostly of teenagers, and many of them are pretty awful people, from callous Apathetic Citizens to sadistic bullies to violent stalkers.
- Together in Death: Attempted by one girl's ex-boyfriend. He calls her for "one last happy memory." She goes to the house to see he's laid out a dinner for them...and then he locks her inside and threatens to kill the both of them so they can be together forever. She ends up wounding him and her friends call police before he can carry his threat out, though.
- Troubled Teen: In "Tears," Chika's parents see her tearing up an apology letter in a fit of rage. They sit down with her and demand an explanation; on hearing what happened with Coach Todo making her recite the apology while naked, they immediately pull up a list of sexual harassment lawyers, with her dad looking like he's going to tear the tennis coach apart. It's shown that if Chika had gone through with a lawsuit, they would have been completely on her side.
- Truth in Television: A lot of the situations can and do happen in real life, and some of them are genuine problems Japan is facing—a minor example would be, in the story about a sexually-abusive tennis coach, the protagonist getting groped on the train. She learns from her rescuer that he and a few others are petitioning for women-only cars to avoid this.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Kyoko in Volume 3 desperately wants to earn her father's respect and love by getting into Tokyo University, but her grades just don't match up.
