Manga / Maria no Danzai

A mother's love is as deep as it is horrifying.

"Mere revenge is too soft. They deserve judgement."

— Mari Nagare/Maria Akeboshi

Maria no Danzai (聖母の断罪, lit. "Maria's Judgement/Condemnation") is a manga series written by Kazuki and illustrated by Junto Kamejima. It began serialization in Tonari no Young Jump in 2023.

Middle school student Kiritaka Nagare loves his mother, Mari, and does his best to not worry her. This includes not letting her know that he is being relentlessly bullied at school by Nozomu Okaya and his cronies. One night, however, Kiritaka is sent an edited video of his mother having sex with a stranger, and is blackmailed by Okaya into jumping off a cliff in exchange for not uploading it to the internet. Noticing that her son left the house in the middle of the night, Mari tracks Kiritaka to the cliff, only to find his mangled, broken body mere seconds before he is run over by a truck and killed.

The ensuing investigation only uncovers fabricated evidence that strongly hints at Kiritaka being Driven to Suicide due to Abusive Parents, until Mari finds a diary where Kiritaka detailed the various forms of bullying he was submitted to, along with a flash drive containing evidence on all of his bullies except for Okaya, who is explicitly labelled by Kiritaka as the ringleader. He intented to collect evidence on Okaya before he could have his revenge by turning in all of his bullies at once, all so that his mother would no longer have to worry about him. Mari decides there's only one thing she can do: get revenge on her son's behalf.

Fast-forward two years, Mari has completely abandoned her old identity; she now goes by Maria Akeboshi and has become the kind, beloved nurse at the school her son used to attend. All the students agree that she's a living saint, not knowing that she has set the stage to avenge her son and pass judgement on those who took him from her.

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This work contains examples of:

• Adults Are Useless:
  • None of the teachers in Kiritaka's class ever picked up on his bruises and his social isolation which allowed the local Gang of Bullies to abuse him without fearing any repercussions.
  • The principal of the school seems more interested in getting illicit blowjobs by a person with questionable motives than caring for the wellness and safety of his school's students.
  • Atsuki-sensei, Kowase's and Shikimi's homeroom teacher does seem to care for the wellness of the students under his wing but he fails to notice that Kowase is brutally beating up, raping and torturing Yashima, or that Shikimi goes out with older men to Honey Trap them. Even worse, when he actually becomes informed of Shikimi's illicit activities, he completely buys into the Blatant Lies Shikimi tells him and doesn't press the matter further.
• All the Other Reindeer:
  • Kiritaka Nagare is socially isolated from the rest of his class as a direct result of a Frameup orchestrated by Shikimi.
  • Likewise, Taiichiro is ostracized by his colleagues and mistreated by his boss after his son's death due to the allegations that he abused his son.
• Armor-Piercing Question: After Mari learned the truth of Kiritaka's death and decided to sever all ties in order to pursue her vendetta against Okaya's gang on her own, one of the first things she did was divorce her husband. Taiichirou was already devastated by the loss of his son; divorcing Mari was more than he could bear. He begged Mari to stay with him, arguing that they could still rebuild and that it was times like this that their family should stay together. When Mari retorted by asking how they could be a family even though Kiri was gone, Taiichirou fell to his knees in shocked silence, with tears running down his face.
• Artistic Licence – Biology: Centipedes and cockroaches don't normally eat living human flesh. Though Shikimi's death is based on an actual ancient execution method called "Scaphism", the victims of that method take days to die and the flesh has to fester and rot first before bugs actually begin devouring it. Maria does at least take measures to entice the insects to partake in human flesh by putting honey in the well so Shikimi is coated in it when she falls in.
• Asshole Victim: It is highly unlikely that anyone who knows what Okaya and his gang are really like will shed a single tear at their passing once Maria is done with them.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • As Shikimi is about to be Thrown Down a Well, she is allowed by Maria to send just one text message to anyone she wants, the only limitation being that she doesn't outright ask for help. She eventually begins writing a message to Okaya, asking him if he likes her and to come find her if he does. The scene then cuts to Okaya taking out his phone receiving a message on it, seemingly from Shikimi. The message is actually from Okaya's mother, as Shikimi was too scared of Okaya potentially not liking her to send the message.
  • As Maria ponders just who could've murdered Iijima and why, Yashima approaches her to discuss "something she's been hiding for a while". She starts off by admitting she was present when Kowase first went missing, leaving Maria nervously wondering if Yashima saw her and knows about her own murders... only for Yashima to confess that she kept quiet because she was afraid of being suspected by the police for Kowase's disappearance. Maria becomes relieved that her secret is still safe and comforts Yashima.
• Beauty Is Bad: Shikimi is drawn out as a pretty schoolgirl. She’s also a completely rotten Alpha Bitch who frames up people she doesn't like to socially isolate them and indulges in "Badger Games" to extort money out of emotionally vulnerable men.
• Berserk Button: Kiritaka's name has become this for Okaya two years after his death. He's rather subdued about it, but even Kowase can tell he stepped on a landmine when he mentioned him in Okaya's presence.
• Best Served Cold: Mari spends two years planning how to get revenge on Kiritaka's bullies and making the necessary preparations, after which she takes the first step in approaching them by becoming the nurse at the school they attend to.
• Big Damn Heroes: After Yashima refuses to yield to Kowase, he suffers a Villainous Breakdown and tries to kill her. Yashima is saved at the last moment by Maria, who puts Kowase to sleep with drugs and kidnaps him. By the time Yashima turns around, both Maria and Kowase are already gone, leaving her none the wiser to her savior's identity (which is ironic, since Maria was the last thing Yashima thought of as she began to lose consciousness).
• Big "SHUT UP!": Kiritaka furiously tells his Gang of Bullies to shut up when they taunt him with the fake sex video of his mother. But the bullies just laugh it off.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: The first chapter alone brings us what Kiritaka regularly goes through from his bullies torments, from getting kicked hard in the stomach since they stuck a target on his shirt, to force-feeding him with his mother’s bento but with cockroaches mixed in. When Kiritaka comes home, his mother greets him with a cake and wishes him a happy 14th birthday. Later that night, the bullies text Kiritaka with an edited sex video of his mother and demand they all meet up somewhere. The bullies blackmail Kiritaka into jumping off a cliff or else the video gets put online. He survived the fall, but not the truck.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • Okaya becomes this two years later, since getting away with his evil deeds requires him to act like a model student. Okaya assists the student council with an anti-bullying campaign, but Maria knows him all too well and asks him if he really intends to become a psychiatrist like his father, a profession that "saves the heart of others". Okaya confirms it on the spot, not realizing the Death Glare Maria is shooting behind his back since she knows Okaya is responsible for her son’s death. Not long after, he's revealed to still be the same ruthless psychopath he was two years ago.
  • Shikimi portrays herself as sweet and sensitive to the men she dates, before blackmailing them out of exorbitant amounts of money after revealing that they were about to have sex with a minor.
• Blackmail: Kowase put Yashima under his thumb by recording her while she was stealing from a convenience store, after which he turned her into his personal toy to torment at his leisure.
  • Shikimi essentially runs a "Badger Game" scam, wherein she lies about her age on her dating profile, lures emotionally vulnerable men into love hotels by acting in a loving manner (even taking great care not to have them spend much on their dates to fool them into thinking she cares about them) and extorts men them out of exorbitant amounts of money in order to not reveal they attempted to have sex with a minor.
• Blackmail Backfire: Invoked by Yashima after Kowase threatens to expose her shoplifting and sex videos for allegedly hacking his phone. Having grown sick of his constant abuse by this point, Yashima practically dares him to go ahead and do it, since she'll just tell everyone about all the shit he's been putting her through.
• Blatant Lies: Maria tells Atsuki-sensei, Kowase's Homeroom teacher, that Kowase will definitely return one day, even though she killed him one chapter before.
• Break the Cutie: It's bad enough that Mari lost her son and helplessly watched him die; the investigation into Kiritaka's death only uncovers strong hints that he committed suicide due to Abusive Parents, which sends Mari into a deep depression after she blames herself for his death. Finding Kiritaka's diary and learning the truth does no favors whatsoever to her mental state.
• Broken Tears: Mari understandably suffers an emotional breakdown as she watches her son die, and later tries to cradle what's left of his corpse.
• Bully Brutality: Okaya and his gang's bullying goes beyond merely tormenting their victims; they break them utterly and treat them as subhuman, while stopping just short of killing them.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Double subverted in the case of Kowase in chapter 4. He gets chained by Maria inside a water-tank slowly filling with water with a combination lock holding him in place. Maria tells him that in order to get out he has to input the number representing "the greatest crime he has ever commited". After some thought, Kowase eventually figures out that she is talking about Nagare Kiritaka's death and that he has to input the date. The double subversion is that while he does vaguely remember the incident it was not important enough for him to remember the exact day it happened, meaning he can't escape his predicament this way. Zigzagged in that it wouldn't have helped if he did, as Maria's opinion of the greatest crime he ever committed was being born, so the number was his birthdate.
• Caught on Tape:
  • Okaya and his gang would regularly record Kiritaka as they tormented him, before either sending the videos to him or posting them on the internet. For whatever reason, they did not seem to consider the possibility that Kiritaka would gather as many videos as he could get his hands on in order to eventually use them as evidence to turn them all in at the same time. Which he would've done if he hadn't gotten himself killed at the start of the story, as he still lacked concrete evidence on Okaya himself. On the other hand, he did keep a flash drive with a copy of all the videos he had collected hidden in a secret location, which he wrote down on his diary... which his grieving mother Mari would find after his death. The videos prove to be more than enough evidence for Mari to deduce the true circumstances of her son's "suicide", and she makes the decision to avenge her son by murdering his bullies herself.
  • After Yuda tells Maria how he came to learn about her, along with how he murdered Iijima for knowing that Maria was connected to Shikimi, he begs Maria to use him as her accomplice in order to kill off the rest of Okaya's friends. Maria responds by revealing that she recorded his confession to Iijima's murder on her phone and warning him not to associate himself with her again, under threat of incriminating him for the murders she's already committed.
• Character Death: Kiritaka Nagare in the very first chapter.
• Chekhov's Skill: Mari obtained the qualifications to become a nursing teacher years ago, having dreamt of becoming a School Nurse to emulate the one from her own school days. She shares this with Kiritaka as she treats his injuries the night he dies. Two years after Kiritaka's death, she goes ahead and becomes the nurse at his former school as part of her plan to get revenge on his bullies.
• Cliffhanger Copout: Chapter 14 ends with Kiritaka's father Detective Taiichiro enquiring about Maria. Chapter 15 resolves this by having him head to the nurse's office where he finds out that Maria is currently on leave, resolving the cliffhanger in a rather unclimactic fashion.
• Close to Home:
  • After Kowase gets captured by Maria and he starts running his mouth to downplay his abuse towards Yashima (which he thinks is the reason Maria kidnapped him) by arguing that it wasn't such a big deal since Yashima never resisted or said anything, Maria is reminded of how Kiritaka hid his own pain because he didn't want to worry her, and calmly but pointedly tells Kowase to shut up.
  • When Atsuki blames himself for not paying enough attention to Kowase or Shikimi and not doing enough to protect them, Taiichiro, who went through the same situation with his own son, tells Atsuki that the only thing he can do is accept the pain and regret while continuing to live with his guilt. Both Atsuki and the principal react with shock to his words.
• Cool Teacher: Maria is widely regarded by the students to be a saintly woman to whom they can always go when they're in trouble, whether they are physically ill or need sex advice. And to her credit, she does honestly try to help them as best as she can, even taking the time to answer anonymous emails asking her for advice.
• Cradle of Loneliness:
  • After Kiritaka's death, Mari is shown cradling the box containing his ashes while in a Troubled Fetal Position..
  • She's switched to cradling a picture of him while in her underwear in the present as she goes to sleep.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Kiritaka gives in to the blackmail and jumps off the cliff. When Mari finds him, his legs are broken to the point that the bones are showing. Their gazes then meet for a second before an oncoming truck runs over Kiritaka at full speed. Mari is then left cradling Kiritaka's intestines as she desperately cries out for him to come back.
• Dating Service Disaster: Of the "Romance Scammer" variety. Shikimi likes to Honey Trap unsuspecting single men into Love Hotels using a false profile on dating apps. She then has Iijima bust in, reveal her true age and extort her victims out of exuberant amounts of money.
• Dead Man Writing: Weeks after Kiritaka's death, Mari finds a diary where he secretly wrote in detail every form of bullying he was subjected to, along with the location where he stashed a flash drive with video evidence on all of his bullies except for Okaya. Being in the middle of a deep depression, learning the true extent of Kiritaka's suffering drives Mari over the edge, after which she decides to take justice into her own hands.
• Death by Flashback: Subverted. Whenever flashbacks are shown about a specific bad character, expect the character to meet their karmic end soon. The subversion is that the character doesn't remember it themselves: Maria mostly remembers the horrors that character inflicted upon Kiritaka as detailed in his Dead Man Writing journal.
• Death Glare: The last thing Kowase sees before Maria drugs him is her Empty Eyes staring down on him.
• Death of a Child: Mari was there to watch her son Kiritaka die. When evidence leads her to believe that he committed suicide, she blames herself and her husband. Then she learns the truth...
• Despair Event Horizon: The idea comes up as Maria consoles Yashima over her guilt over hoping Kowase stays missing and gone forever. It dawns on Maria that even a Shrinking Violet like Yashima might be pushed too far beyond just the point of wishing harm, and that there's probably more victims turned disturbed individuals out there as a result of Okaya and his gang of bullies doing as they please.
• Died on Their Birthday: Kiritaka met his unfortunate end the night of his fourteenth birthday.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Kowase reasons with Maria that what he did to Yashima isn't that bad, because she didn't put up much resistance and she didn't make a big deal out of how he treated her. This only serves to make Maria angrier at him, as she recalls how her late son kept all his suffering to himself because he didn't want to upset her.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Kowase is noted by Maria to only target docile girls who don't look like they would try to retaliate.
  • Maria thinks Kowase and Shikimi to be this and opts to target them first, since she reasons that they'd run at the first sign of danger and potentially escape if not dealt with early on.
• Discreet Drink Disposal: When the principal tries to force Atsuki-sensei to drink against his will, Maria distracts him by offering to pick lint off his back and asking him to turn around. Once he does, Maria discreetly switches Atsuki's drink with regular water, after which he downs the glass once the principal turns around once more, none the wiser.
• Disposing of a Body:
  • Maria disposes of Kowase's body by chopping it to bits and burning it.
  • Kumiru's corpse is left to rot at the bottom of the well after Maria covers it in dirt, insects still crawling over it. Given that said well is located indoors in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, it's unlikely anyone will think to look there, and even more unlikely that they would try to dig it up.
  • Iijima's corpse is found buried at the side of the road, which is found to be so sloppy it becomes clear that an unknown party was responsible for his death.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • The reason Okaya goes out of his way to crush and torment Kiritaka? He doesn't like the defiant look in his eyes. And Kiritaka just so happened to have that "defiant" look in his eyes because he was disgusted over Okaya and his underlings torturing and nearly killing another classmate, all over their twisted bloodlust-game!
  • Okaya forces a Sadistic Choice on Kiritaka: either he jumps off a cliff, or else Okaya will upload a heavily edited sex video of Mari. Why? Because Okaya had the gall to demand Kiritaka be the one to upload the video, and got pissed when told no!
  • After Maria humiliates her by covering for Kinugawa and calling her pitiful, Shikimi asks Iijima to "teach her a lesson" in exchange for performing another Honey Trap job.
• Downer Beginning: In the first chapter alone, Mari loses her son to bullying and is physically present the moment he dies. Then she learns the truth behind his death and goes off the deep end.
• Drowning Pit: The punishment Maria subjects Kowase to after kidnapping him. Ironic, since he was trying to drown Yashima right before Maria nabbed him.
  Maria: You have stolen something very important from other people. That is why I will steal your oxygen from you.
• Dysfunction Junction:
  • Maria Akeboshi: A broken good mother turned Knight Templar Parent who planned revenge for two years to give the brats a taste of their own medicine and kill them for ripping her son away from her life, having to take unwanted, but needed actions that could help her reach her goal, even if she feels very guilty.
  • Nozomu Okaya and his Gang of Bullies: Teenaged students who torture their victim in sadistic ways, led by The Sociopath who ultimately blackmails him to jump off a cliff and gets disappointed when he dies.
  • Taiichiro Nagare: A depressed detective who believes that his negative reputation in the police precinct is well-deserved and blames himself for his son's death.
  • Yashima: A timid girl who unfortunately got in the hands of a cowardly rapist via Blackmail of a recording video of her attempting to shoplift, which is why she tolerates the horrible abuse.
  • Akihiro Yuda: A former victim of the Gang of Bullies before being saved by his best friend, so traumatized by the horrific abuse that he stopped coming to school. Deeply remorseful for not being further help when said friend died, he once tried to commit suicide, dropped out from school, and stayed in his house for a long time until he saw that his tormentors moved on happily as if they didn't take an innocent life. Enraged, he trained himself to be a torturer, but couldn't bear to do it on the first target because of his trauma. Then, he witnessed that someone had the same objective as his and viewed her as a god. When he talks with her for the first time, he asks her to use him as she wishes as his redemption for his late friend.
• Elevator School: The school Kiritaka, Okaya and the rest of the bullies go to integrates elementary, middle and high school sections. If Kiritaka hadn't died, he would've been tormented for five more years.
• Embarrassing Password: Averted Trope. When Kowase is chained and about to drown, Maria tells him to input the number representing "his greatest sin". After some thought Kowase figures out she is talking about Kiritaka Nagare's death and attempts to input the anniversary of his death, only to realize with horror that he doesn't remember the exact date of Kiritaka's death. After he eventually drowns, Maria unchains him by inputting Kowase's birthday. It turns out Kowase's "greatest sin" was "being born".
• Even Evil Has Standards: Played straight but ultimately subverted. Most of the bullies balk when they see that Kiritaka got run over by a truck — but it’s only because they didn’t want to get arrested, and promptly try to run away while never feeling any remorse for their wrongdoings. Okaya is the sole exception: if anything, he seems disappointed that Kiritaka died before he could torment him even more.
• Fabricated Blackmail: The plot is kicked off when Kiritaka jumps to his death after being blakcmailed with a heavily-edited sex video of his own mother.
• Face Death with Despair: Both Kowase and Shikimi break down once their fates are sealed, exactly as Maria intended.
  • Left with no other options, Kowase tries to use the cleaver Maria left him to cut off his own hand. The blade breaks because it's an old cleaver and Kowase puts too much force while trying to cut the bone, leaving him to drown helplessly as he flails about.
  • Shikimi initially doesn't even react to being dropped down the well... until she notices that she's surrounded by a swarm of insects, that is. Once they start crawling all over her and entering her orifices, she breaks down screaming and begging for mercy.
• Fat Bastard: Mutta Ajiki is overweight and a member of Kiritaka’s Gang of Bullies.
• False Reassurance: After telling Okaya that she knew he intended to follow in his father's footsteps, that she used to be acquainted with his mother and that she knew how she used to address him, Maria tells him that "the nurse in the infirmary knows everything". This is most definitely not a good thing, for Okaya or any of his friends.
• Finally Found the Body: Iijima's body is found buried near the roadway. Forensics estimate his time of death to be a week before then, shortly after his meeting with Maria. What makes his death particularly notorious is that neither Maria or Okaya's gang were the ones who killed him, nor do they know who could've done it. The fact that a third party with unknown motives is interfering with her own schemes puts Maria on edge, while Okaya sees it as an opportunity to potentially identify their own mystery killer (i.e. Maria herself).
• Flower Motifs: Lily of the Valley is shown as an image on Kiritaka's diary, and one shot has the flower covering Maria's face in her office. In the Japanese language of flowers (Hanakotoba), it symbolizes "purity", but outside of it, they are very poisonous, which fits Maria's façade as a school nurse and her true nature. In contrast, it is used in funerals to signify pain due to death. A notable other symbolism is the flower's alternative name: Mary's tears. This comes from the history of Virgin Mary who mourns her crucified son, like how Maria mourns her son.
• Frame-Up:
  • Kiritaka's death is framed by Okaya's gang as a suicide in order to avoid going to prison. It works well enough at first, until Mari deduces the truth from reading Kiritaka's diary.
  • Shikimi would occasionally frame some of her classmates for stealing her gym clothes, which she herself planted in their bags, then ask if anyone believed in their innocence, thus isolating them socially when no one defended them. Maria lets her know exactly what that feels like by planting her gym clothes in Kinugawa's bag, then vouching for his innocence.
  • Maria threatens Yuda, who confessed his murder of Iijima to her, that she will report him to the police and make him the scapegoat of her own murders of her son's two bullies as her attempt to make him withdraw from associating with her.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the very first chapter, Kiritaka's birthday (and deathday) is written on the Happy Birthday sign with the cake, which is December 5.
• Friend to All Children: In her role as the School Nurse, Maria portrays herself as this to the students, encouraging them to come to her office for help no matter what they need. While her act is mostly genuine, Okaya and his gang are the sole exception — they just don't know it yet.
• Gaining the Will to Kill: Discussed by Maria, who muses that victims of Bully Brutality could easily end up considering murder as a viable option to solve their problems. This clues her in to the possibility that Akihiro Yuda, another victim of Okaya who dropped out of school, could be Iijima's murderer.
• Good Parents: Mari is a straight example: she loves her son dearly and would like nothing more than to help him with his problems if only he would open up to her, which Kiritaka doesn't do because he doesn't want to worry her. Taiichirou, on the other hand, is a zigzagged example: he is too busy with his work as a police officer to really notice that anything is wrong with Kiritaka, and assumes that he's just at a difficult age. Both become devastated after his death, and share the blame equally.
• Gotta Kill Them All: Maria's main goal is to hunt down Okaya's gang one by one and grant each of them a Cruel and Unusual Death as payback for Kiritaka's death.
• Grief-Induced Split: Maria and Taiichiro get divorced after the death of their son, something which wouldn't have happened otherwise.
• Grew a Spine: Following Maria's encouragement, Yashima finally decides to stand up to Kowase while he's trying to drown her. When he threatens to upload the blackmail he has on her if she doesn't give him what he wants, Yashima tells him to go ahead and do it, since having to put up with him is far scarier than the threat of ruining her future.
  Yashima: GET OUT OF MY LIFE!
• Hannibal Lecture: Kiritaka of all people once gave one to Kowase while he was trying to drown him, telling him how, no matter how much he cozied up to Okaya, the latter would never give a shit about him, capping it off by pointing out how Kowase probably knew this better than anyone. Two years later, not only does Okaya prove Kiritaka right, deep down Kowase knows he was right, and it infuriates him.
• He Knows Too Much: Because she miscalculated how petty and impatient Shikimi was, Maria is forced to improvise and seduce Iijima when he is sent to beat her up for taunting Shikimi. Maria quickly understands that Iijima could easily give her name and face to the police once Shikimi's death is investigated, and decides to kill him to prevent that. Ultimately, she can't bring herself to do it after seeing an illusion of Kiritaka remind her that Iijima is not guilty for his death, and Maria agrees that killing him would be excessive; instead, she decides to silence him by other means, but finds that Iijima has disappeared after Shikimi's death. Maria has to race to find him before the police or Okaya's gang can find him first.
• Head-in-the-Sand Management: The school Maria works at seems to bury their collective heads in the sand whenever something happens to a student and they get killed or go missing. After Kowase goes missing for over three weeks and Shikimi stops going to school, Atsuki starts becoming concerned that he's not doing enough to help the students, only for the principal to overrule him by telling him that the school can't have nasty rumors spreading when the students are close to entering preparatory schools, which could affect their academic performance. Maria silently laments that everyone in the party looks so happy, as if the incident with Kiritaka never happened.
• The Hermit: After divorcing her husband, and as part of her efforts to cut off all contact with anyone who might know her, Maria has moved to a cottage in the middle of nowhere.
• Hollywood Hacking:
  • After confiscating Kowase's phone, Maria uses her computer to hack into it in order to check all of his blackmail material without his knowledge.
  • After presumably returning his phone without deleting anything, she anonymously sends him a video where he's masturbating, which naturally terrifies Kowase. Maria took this video via an app that allowed her to hack Kowase's camera.
• Hope Bringer: Maria seems to be this for victims of bullying; after Kowase kicks Yashima so hard that she vomits, then threatens her not to snitch on him, she is somehow able to genuinely calm down after Maria comforts her. Later, as Kowase is trying to drown her, Yashima thinks of Maria while mentally begging for someone to come save her. Cue Maria doing just that.
• Hope Spot:
  • Maria gives Kowase a way to escape death: all he needs to do is to input the number that represents his greatest sin into the cuff holding him in place. Kowase smiles in triumph once he realizes she's talking about Kiritaka's death... only to realize he can't remember the date of his death. But that's fine; after all, Maria left him another way to escape. At first, it seems that Kowase is going to be successful in this effort, but then it turns out that in his Detrimental Determination to escape, he ends up breaking the knife and drowning.
  • After a short process of elimination, Shikimi decides to use Maria's lifeline to text Iijima so he can come and rescue her. Maria has already turned him against her, however, and Iijima quickly replies that he never wants to see Shikimi again. Shikimi starts tearing up at the revelation, and calls out Maria for "cheating".
• I Have This Friend: How Yashima talks to Maria about Kowase blackmailing her. Maria retorts by encouraging Yashima to not give in and to come to her if it becomes unbearable, promising to keep her safe at all costs.
  Maria: ...Is what I would like her to know. Can you pass on the message?
  Yashima: ...Yes.
• Incest Subtext: Maria definitely didn’t take her son’s death all too well, but her grief reaches disturbing levels two years later. Because when she gets home, she strips down to her underwear, prays to her son’s shrine, and cradles a picture of him but imagines she’s holding him alive and well. And she’s STILL in her underwear.
• Inciting Incident: Arguably, what set the events of the plot in motion was Kiritaka's first meeting with Okaya while the latter was entertaining himself by hanging another student. The second Okaya noticed the defiant look Kiri was giving him, he made it his mission to make Kiri's life a living hell.
• Instant Sedation: Maria puts Kowase to sleep by injecting him with a sedative. It works fast enough that he's left completely helpless as she kidnaps him, allowing Maria to leave before Yashima can see her.
• Irony: Nagare jumped to his own death to prevent his mother from being sexually exploited. In order to avenge his death, his mother lets herself be sexually exploited, ultimately making his sacrifice to protect her completely pointless.
• It's All My Fault: When Taiichirou tells Mari that a suicide note was found next to Kiritaka's shoes at the site where he jumped off, Mari retorts that they are the ones who killed him. Taiichirou can only respond with an apology for not being able to protect their son.
• It's Personal: Nothing screams "personal" like erasing your former identity and dedicating two years of your life to planning the torture and deaths of the Gang of Bullies responsible for the death of your only son.
• Indulgent Fantasy Segue: Akihiro Yuda briefly fantasizes about slicing a rude customer's neck open with a boxcutter. Clearly, being tormented by Okaya's gang in middle school left a mark in him.
• Invisible Parents: While the premise of the series is a mother trying to get revenge on the demonic bullies that took her son away, and her husband is a supporting character, there's a surprising lack of parents of the bullies and other supporting characters.
  • Some of the bully's parents have been mentioned but do not appear, while others have not been mentioned at all.
    • Nozomu Okaya's parents have both been mentioned, even though they have not appeared. According to Maria (The woman who wants to kill him to avenge her son), his father is a therapist, and he plans on following in his footsteps. Maria also claims to be familiar with his mother. It was later revealed that his mother's name is Shizuka Okaya, that she addresses her son Nozomu with the "-san" honorific, and that he has her listed on his phone under her full name (while still addressing her as "mother"). An extra in the manga revealed that his parents own a company.
    • Tsubasa Kowase's parents were not mentioned or appear even when he brought one of his victims to his house to drown her. The closest thing to a mention of his parents was Maria claiming that his greatest sin was being born and not causing the death of her son. Interestingly, when the police are investigating his disappearance, there is no mention of his parents searching for him or reporting his disappearance.
    • Kumiru Shikimi does briefly mention her mother when she orders her to do laundry before Maria kidnaps her in her home. It's implied from how she talked to her mother that she has a controlling relationship with her, and she orders her mom to do her housework. It is unknown if her father is in the picture or why her mother was not home when she was kidnapped. Interestingly, when Maria lets Shikimi contact anyone on the phone on the condition that she does not tell them that she has been abducted, she never considers calling her mother; however, Shikimi may want to keep her mother in the dark about her seduction and blackmailing men for money. Later, when the police investigate Kumiru Shikimi's disappearance, her mother is not mentioned as searching for her or reporting her disappearance to the police.
    • Tsuyoshi Kinugawa and Mutta Ajiki's parents have not yet been mentioned in the story.
  • The parents of Yashima, one of Kowase's victims who is blackmailed with a video of her shoplifting, have not been mentioned, but that's understandable considering that she probably wants to keep her parents in the dark about shoplifting and being blackmailed. Yashima admitted to feeling guilty about shoplifting and believing that she deserves to be blackmailed, implying that she is not telling her parents what's happening to her because of her belief that she deserves karma for what's happening.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Okaya and his gang get away with sending Kiritaka to his death for two years. Maria sets out to correct that.
  • The first off Maria’s hit list is Kowase, who not only was a part of her son’s Gang of Bullies, but also sexually assaulted other girls for who knows how long, and is not above selling their compromising pictures that he took in secret and beating them up once he’s blackmailed them into being his punching bag. Maria just so happened to catch Kowase in the act of drowning Yashima, who he thinks is responsible for blackmailing him over HIS compromising videos, when it was really Maria. She has Kowase go through a Life-or-Limb Decision in the Drowning Pit unless he can get the password code of the date of his greatest sin. He thinks it’s Kiritaka’s death, but he can’t even remember so much as the month it took place. Kowase dies durning his struggle, and Maria unlocks the trap anyway... with his birthday, as she sees his own birth as his greatest sin.
  • Shikimi regularly runs badger game scams on lonely men and manipulates events to socially isolate people she doesn't like. Maria correctly guesses that Shikimi doesn't trust anyone and that her relationships are transactional in nature, and thus uses her own tactics against her by mentioning Shikimi's side-gig to her teacher and making it seem as if she's trying to Frame-Up Kinugawa, which results in Shikimi Skipping School. Before Maria can move to the next step of her plan, Shikimi sends Iijima after her, after which Maria decides to simply move forward and seduce Iijima before kidnapping Shikimi while she's home alone. Maria then hangs her above an empty well with a rope that's about to burn, and forces her to retrieve her phone's SIM card with her mouth while it is hidden in a box of razors, after which she allows her to send one text message to one person. Shikimi's first pick is Okaya, but upon checking their text history Shikimi realizes he doesn't give a damn about her as he's never replied to her messages before. When Shikimi tries to text Iijima, she realizes to her horror that Maria has already turned him against her via a fake Twitter account, leaving Shikimi to curse Maria as her rope burns and she falls into a hole festering with insects, which then crawl all over her and enter her body through her holes. At this point Shikimi can do nothing but scream.
• Karmic Nod: One of the reasons Yashima puts up with Kowase's abuse is because, since he caught her shoplifting, she thinks she's just reaping what she's sown. Maria discouraging her from this train of thought eventually leads to Yashima growing a spine and standing up to Kowase.
• Knight Templar Parent: After learning the truth behind the death of her son, Mari decides that simply getting revenge on his bullies is not enough; they must suffer for their sins.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: Maria offers Kowase two ways to escape the Drowning Pit she put him into: either he input the number representing his greatest sin (the date of Kiritaka's death) on the cuff holding him in place and escape through the ceiling, or use the nicked cleaver she left him to cut off his own hand. Kowase is left with no choice but to cut off his hand once he realizes he can't remember the date of Kiritaka's death.
  Maria: Offer your blood as penance for your sins.
• Lingerie Scene:
  • In the present, Maria is shown going to sleep in lingerie while cradling a picture of Kiri in her arms.
  • Maria is later seen in her lingerie while checking her closet, where she's keeping information on Shikimi.
  • Shikimi is wearing nothing but lingerie and a nightgown when Maria breaks into her house at night, kidnaps her and eventually kills her.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: Kowase, while torturing a gagged and bound Yashima by putting out cigarettes on her belly, tells her to "give him some good fucking moaning".
• Mama Bear: Mari is reeling with the grief of her son’s death and blames herself for it… until she finds her son’s diary and flash drive that proves he was not driven into killing himself, but that he’s been bullied while said bullies falsified the evidence that made it seem her son was suicidal. Mari plans for 2 years into getting revenge in her son’s place and makes sure the bullies will suffer for their evil deeds.
• Misplaced Retribution: After Yashima runs away from him (whereas she normally freezes in fear), Kowase assumes she's the one who hacked his phone. Later that night, Kowase tries to torture Yashima by drowning her, repeatedly asking her why his videos aren't on her phone and repeatedly being answered that Yashima doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
• Never Suicide: Okaya's gang fabricated enough evidence that Kiritaka's death would be written off as a suicide. Unfortunately for them, Kiritaka kept a diary and a flash drive with strong evidence to the contrary, which his guilt-ridden mother found.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: So the bullies come up with a sick and twisted game to see how long a random classmate can withstand getting strangled before he begs, but Kiritaka comes in and saves the classmate. The result? He’s made into the bullies new punchbag.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: By default Kinugawa never holds back when he beats someone up, no matter who it is. And because he has a Hair-Trigger Temper, it's very easy to become his latest victim.
• No Honor Among Thieves: The gang of bullies torturing Kiritaka don't really trust each other and don't really have each others' backs. When Shikimi is confronted by her homeroom teacher about her "second job" she immediately suspects Kinugawa and Ajiki of tattling on her.
• Non-Answer: When Kinugawa questions Maria on her last conversation with Shikimi before she started Skipping School, Maria realizes that she's in a bit of a pickle: she can't admit that she called Shikimi pitiful since Kinugawa might hold Maria responsible for Shikimi disappearing, she can't lie about what she said on the off chance that Shikimi shared it with Kinugawa, and she can't refuse to answer without seeming suspicious. So what does she do? She tears up, expresses regret for being too harsh and not choosing better phrasing for her "warning" to Shikimi, and blames herself for her disappearance. Kinugawa buys her act and drops the subject without realizing Maria didn't really answer his question, leaving Maria to realize Kinugawa hadn't figured her out after all.
• Not Me This Time: About a week after Shikimi's death, Iijima's corpse is found by the police buried near the roadway. While the investigation team suspects a connection to the disappearances of Kowase and Shikimi, it turns out Maria did not kill him (she considered it, but ultimately chose to spare him since he had nothing to do with Kiritaka's death). It also turns out Okaya and his gang weren't responsible for his death, either (while Kinugawa did think he was the one responsible for Shikimi's death and wanted to kill him in retribution, he wasn't able to find him in time). Both Maria and Okaya independently conclude that a third, unrelated party with questionable motives was responsible.
• Nothing Nice About Sugar and Spice: Shikimi definitely has shades of this. Her form of bullying Kiritaka is to sit back and gleefully watch him get tortured while recording everything he’s put through. It is outright confirmed when we get to see her being the focus of Maria's revenge, she is shown to be a fully blown Bitch in Sheep's Clothing that orchestrates a Frameup to socially isolate Kiritaka and regularly indulges in Badger Games with emotionally vulnerable men in order to extort them out of huge amounts of money. All this to win the heart of Okaya.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: Averted to horrifying effect.
  • Kiritaka's jump from the overpass indeed doesn't kill him like the bullies surmise it wouldn't, but unlike what they assume it doesn't just injure or break his legs — it completely destroys them, leaving him unable to evade the truck that runs him over.
  • Later on, Shikimi is subjected to a similar situation when Maria drops her into an empty well, having insisted that the drop isn't long enough for the fall to kill. This isn't for reassurance, as Maria taunts afterward; the fall was meant to be non-lethal so Shikimi could be alive to suffer from the isolation of being trapped at the bottom of the well, and predated on by insects. Even then, it does still seem to have caused some head trauma since that's the part of Shikimi that hits the ground first, leaving her dazed and with slurred speech.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Poor Mari was just seconds away from watching her son’s brutal fall from a cliff, only for a truck to suddenly run over him and finally kill him off for good.
• Paranoia Gambit: Maria successfully fuels Kowase's paranoia by hacking his phone, sending him a video of himself masturbating along with a video deleted two years ago where Kowase and his friends are shown bullying Kiritaka, and demanding 3 million yen in exchange for not posting them on the internet. Kowase then spends every waking hour wracking his brain as he wonders who sent it to him and slowly loses his mind.
• Parental Neglect: Taiichiro is this towards Kiritaka. He’s a police inspector but prioritizes his job more than spending time with his family. On the night of his son’s 14th birthday, he gets a call from his wife, Mari, as she’s concerned over their son’s wellbeing at school and fears he’s hiding something. He dismisses her worries as being overprotective, while firmly believing since Kiritaka is now a middle schooler, it’s normal for him to want privacy. Taiichiro promptly hangs up on Mari just so he can get back to work. Little did he realize, Kiritaka has been viciously targeted by a Gang of Bullies. Only a few hours later, the bullies blackmail Kiritaka into jumping off a cliff, leading to his death. Taiichiro comes to regret how he’s treated Kiritaka, especially after finding his suicidal notes; except that’s not quite the case...
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The password that unlocks Kowase's chains is the date of his own birth, since to Maria "his greatest sin" was actually coming into this world. Kowase was never able to figure it out since he mistakenly thought the "greatest sin" Maria was talking about was the anniversary of Kiritaka Nagare's death, which he didn't remember anyway.
• The Peeping Tom: One of the ways Kowase makes money is by selling Panty Shots of the girls at his school to third parties. He's not above selling pictures of elementary schoolgirls either.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Kiritaka's death and the circumstances leading to it leave his mother consumed with a hunger for vengeance.
• Poor Communication Kills: Mari is able to notice that Kiritaka is hiding something, and shares her suspicions with her husband Taiichirou while he's busy with work. He dismisses her concerns as overprotectiveness and chalks it down to Kiritaka being at that age. Kiritaka dies only a few hours later.
• Race Against the Clock: Maria ties up Shikimi and hangs her above a deep hole, then lays a lit candle next to the rope holding her in place; she then tells Shikimi that, by her estimate, it will take the candle light three hours to reach the rope and drop Shikimi to her demise.
• Rapid-Fire "Shut Up!": Kowase repeatedly shouts at Yashima to shut up once she stands up to him, desperate to make her go back to the way she was before (which in itself is a desperate attempt to regain a semblance of control over what he perceives to be his life crumbling apart). He does this while dunking her head in a tub full of water, which would've likely killed her had Maria not intervened.
• Refuge in Audacity: Maria covertly confiscates a distracted Kowase's phone while she's comforting Yashima, and gets away with it by exerting her authority as a teacher and reminding him that using smartphones within school grounds is against the rules.
• Revenge Porn Blackmail:
  • Okaya and his gang taunt Kiritaka with an edited sex video of his mother, then demand that HE be the one to upload it. When Kiritaka refuses, Okaya threatens to upload the video himself unless Kiritaka jumps off a cliff. The poor kid gives in and takes the jump, leading to his death.
  • Maria anonymously sends Kowase a video where he's masturbating (which she got by hacking his phone camera) along with a video of Kiritaka being bullied (which supposedly had been deleted two years ago), and tells him to prepare 3 million yen or else she will spread both videos on the internet. Not that she really intends to; the whole thing is just a bluff meant to scare him and make him experience the same pain he put his victims through.
• Sadist: Okaya makes most bullies look like saints. He goes out of his way to destroy Kiritaka's lunch, then force-feeds it to him when cockroaches begin to eat it, fully expecting his stomach to become infested with cockroach eggs. He later casually dismisses the possibility of Kiritaka breaking his legs, and becomes disappointed that he can't torture him anymore now that he's dead. While the rest of Kiritaka's bullies also qualify, Kiritaka acknowledges that they are just fanatics following Okaya's lead.
• Safecracking: Kowase, the first of Maria's victims gets chained inside a tank with a combination lock on his hand tying him down. Maria tells him that in order to escape he has to own up and input the number representing "his greatest sin". Kowase thinks that she is talking about the anniversary of Kiritaka's death and attempt's to input the date onto the lock, only to realize with horror that he doesn't remember when it happened. After Kowase drowns, Maria uses Kowase's own birthday to unlock his chain. It turns out his "greatest sin" was "being born".
• A Saint Named Mary: Maria is seen as such a paragon of kindness among the students that they call her the "Saint Maria of the Infirmary".
• School Nurse: Mari confesses to Kiritaka that she always wanted to be one because she used to be bullied in school and the nurse allowed her a safe space in her office. Because of this, Mari went and got the qualifications to be a nursing teacher, only to give up on it after Kiritaka was born since raising him became more important for her. Following Kiritaka's death and Mari learning the extent to which he himself was being bullied at school, Mari decides to become a nurse after all, only for a far more sinister purpose.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Defied by Maria, who explicitly targets Kowase and Shikimi first because she knows that, unlike the rest of the gang, the two would try to run away the second they realized someone was after them. And Maria has no intention of letting any of them escape her wrath.
• Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: These have been Maria's preferred way of dealing with her son's bullies once she has them at her mercy.
• Self-Serving Memory:
  • When Kowase is near death in chapter 4 he pictures himself with his friends lovingly smiling and having fun while lighting sparklers on Kiritaka's face. Everything is shown as a fond memory of times spent with friends, instead of the horrific brutal torture it actually was.
  • After Maria warns Shikimi that she's going to end up alone if she keeps distrusting people, she takes serious offense at the very notion that she could be alone. She then remembers the various times she has interacted with people, blatantly ignoring the fact that in all of those memories she repeatedly exacted some form of payment from the people who approached her and that in truth all of her relationships are transactional in nature.
• Shower of Angst: Maria takes one after learning that her ex-husband Taiichiro is investigating the disappearance of her victims.
• Shrine to the Fallen: Maria keeps a shrine behind her bed in her new home filled with candles and pictures of Kiritaka (along with two ragdolls that look suspiciously like him and what is presumably a couple of his old socks). She prays to it every night before going to sleep.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • The school principal seems more concerned with getting sexual favors from Maria and ensuring the academic performance of the students doesn't hurt the school's reputation than the students' physical and mental wellbeing. If a problem arises that could affect the latter, he simply sweeps it under the rug and pretends nothing is wrong, and strongly encourages the rest of the teachers to do the same.
  • Played with while Iijima is in the middle of carrying out his assault on Maria. He assumes Maria is trying to change the subject or stall for time when she mentions they'd catch a cold out in the rain, only to immediately see himself being put into a French kiss by Maria while he tries to call her out on it. Now putty in her hands, Maria completes the thought by saying they should head to a recently foreclosed love hotel, where they undergo a BDSM session.
• Sleeping Their Way to the Top: In order to become the School Nurse, Maria once gave the school principal a blowjob in his office. While she clearly did not enjoy the experience, she smiled and carried on undeterred. Later, she went to the restroom and forced herself to vomit. All in all, Maria acknowledges this as the "easiest step" in her plan, and describes the principal as a foolish man for being such an easy obstacle to overcome.
• Sleight of Handiness: While comforting Yashima after Kowase forces her to vomit, Maria covertly confiscates Kowase's phone, before showing it to him and excusing herself as upholding the rules of the school.
• Slut-Shaming: Okaya and his underlings go as low as to text Kiritaka a sex video with his own mother heavily edited in. The male members taunt him over how "fuckable" she is while Shikimi deems herself as more appealing than an "used auntie" like her.
• The Smurfette Principle: Kumiru Shikimi is the only girl in Kiritaka’s Gang of Bullies.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Okaya. Big time. He can say and do the most horrific things, such as force you to eat cockroaches or threaten to upload a video of your mother having sex on the internet unless you jump off a cliff, with the most serene, unnerving smile imaginable.
• Stab the Picture: At the very start of the first chapter, Mari is seen calmly cutting a picture of Kiritaka's bullies with a kitchen knife.
• Stealth Hi/Bye:
  • Maria enters Kowase's house, sedates and kidnaps him before he can understand what's going on, then leaves before Yashima even notices Kowase is not trying to drown her anymore.
  • Shikimi doesn't even notice Maria has broken into her house until it's too late, with the latter creeping up behind her as Shikimi tries to check the noise she heard. Smash Cut to Shikimi gagged and bound in the basement under Maria's cabin.
• Stealth Insult: Maria tells Shikimi that Iijima is a "low value man", and then not-so-stealthily adds that birds of a feather flock together. Shikimi reads between the lines and calls her a "fucking bitch" in response.
• Stupid Evil: Go ahead and record all the bullying you put on your victim. Might as well post it online and text the videos to your victim! It’s not like the victim is gonna save it on a flash drive and not even think about using said flash drive into exposing his bullies for what he’s been put through. Yeah, Okaya and his underlings definitely left holes on that one…
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Kowase attempts to cut his hand off to get out of the Drowning Pit but is unable to sever the bone.
• Take Me Instead: Kiritaka first gained Okaya's attention after he stopped his gang from strangling another student with a rope (they were making bets on how long he would take before begging them to stop). Okaya offered to leave the other student alone if Kiritaka took his place, though it's never shown if he kept his word.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine:
  • Kowase likes to collect compromising pictures and videos of his targets so that they won't resist when he blackmails them. Maria lets him know what that feels like when she sends him a video of himself masturbating and another video from two years ago where he's bullying Kiritaka, before demanding 3 million yen in exchange for not spreading them. He is also very fond of drowning people, so Maria arranges for him to die in a Drowning Pit.
  • Shikimi once staged a Frameup, making Kiritaka appear as a pervert and socially isolating him from the rest of his class. Maria stages a Frameup of her own that exposes her as a liar and is using Shikimi's Psychological Projection to push her buttons in order to create tension between her social bonds in order to inflict the same sort of social isolation she had inflicted upon Nagare.
  • Shikimi once subjected Kiritaka to a cruel game wherein she forced him to shove his face in a box full of tacks in order to retrieve her keys with his tongue. Maria in turn forces her to retrieve her phone's SIM card in a similar fashion from a box full of razors.
  • During the first chapter, Shikimi is shown cheering as Okaya forcefully feeds Kiritaka cockroaches while recording it on her phone. Her ultimate fate is being Eaten Alive by cockroaches and centipedes as they go inside her mouth, her eyes, her nose and every other orifice available.
• Teens Are Monsters: Okaya and his underlings, BAR NONE. They ruthlessy torture Kiritaka without a shred of humanity, to the point of threatening to upload an obviously edited sex video of his mother, unless he jumps off a cliff! He does just that, but gets killed when a truck suddenly runs him over. Most of the gang seemly looked dismayed at his sudden death… only because they didn’t want to land in prison and tried to run off. The leader Okaya, on the other hand, felt disappointed that his punching bag "won" now that he’s dead!
• That Woman Is Dead: As part of her ploy to avenge Kiritaka, Mari divorced her husband, cut off all contact with her former workplace and friends, legally changed her name to her maiden name, Maria Akeboshi, and underwent full-body plastic surgery to change her appearance. There's no one alive who can recognize her anymore.
  Maria Akeboshi: Two years ago, the first person I murdered was Mari Nagare.
• Third-Person Flashback: Kiritaka's diary entries as read and remembered by Maria are essentially this. Often combined with Death by Flashback, since Kiritaka describes the specific horrors inflicted upon him by a character that Maria now targets.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Learning the true circumstances surrounding the death of Kiritaka turns grieving housewife Mari into an avatar of vengeance dedicated to nothing less than ensuring the very painful deaths of Okaya's gang.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Okaya and his fellow bullies entertain themselves by attempting to strangle a student to see how long he lasts before begging for mercy, forcefully feeding Kiritaka cockroaches and blackmailing him with an edited sex video of his mother in order to make him jump off a cliff, not caring one bit if he breaks his legs. And they are still in middle school!
• The Un-Smile: Maria shoots one of these to Okaya while his back is turned.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: An interesting example where the perpetrator appears to feel already that vengeance is empty, but continues anyway. Mari Nagare was once a happily married woman with a loving relationship with her son, Kiritaka Nagare. Unfortunately, her son died, and the investigation told her and her husband that they believed he was Driven to Suicide by Abusive Parents. But when Mari Nagare read her son's diary, she learned the truth that a group of bullies inhumanely tortured Kiritaka, and he died in a prank gone wrong. Mari Nagare snapped and dedicated her life to getting revenge on her son's bullies by killing them. She divorced her husband, changed her name to her maiden name, Maria Akeboshi, cut off contact with her friends, got plastic surgery, and two years later begins to hunt down her targets. She's got revenge on two of her son bullies so far, Tsubasa Kowase (who would drown his victims, so she drowned him to death] and Kumiru Shikimi (who laughed while her son was force-fed cockroaches, so she was Thrown Down a Well and was eaten by insects). Maria, however, takes no joy in getting revenge or killing her son's bullies, no matter how much they deserve it, just sitting down and feeling sad and empty after the bullies die. It's implied that either she always knew her revenge would be empty, or that she realized later, but continued because she wanted to avenge her son, and she'd already gone too far to stop.
• The Villain Knows Where You Live: Or rather, The Anti-Hero Knows Where You Live. Maria kidnaps both Kowase and Shikimi from their own homes once she decides it's time to kill them.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: After Kowase kicks Yashima particularly hard in her gut, the poor girl bends over and vomits on the spot, in full view of the readers.
• With Friends Like These...:
  • On the surface, Okaya and his posse are friendly towards each other and happily torment the latest sap to get their attention together. When it comes down to it, however, it's made clear that Okaya's so-called "friends" are terrified of incurring his wrath, and very deep down they know that he doesn't really care much for any of them.
  • The only reason Okaya became friends with Kowase is because he was "really good at making money".
  • Shikimi texts Okaya often as part of her efforts to get his affection, but Okaya only ever replies with the bare minimum and has never had a real conversation with her. Shikimi only realizes this when she's at Maria's mercy and checks her text history while trying to contact him for help.
• Would Hit a Girl:
  • Kowase once tortured Yashima by putting out cigarette butts on her belly while she was handcuffed and gagged, completely helpless to stop him. Maria summarizes Kowase as a Dirty Coward who regularly targets girls that won't fight back. He later tries to drown Yashima after wrongly assuming that she's the one who hacked his phone.
  • Maria finds herself pursued by Iijima (Shikimi's "business" partner), who knocks her down with a baseball bat after she tasers the two goons accompanying him.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Upon trapping her victims in a death trap, Maria does what Jigsaw does where she presents them an ultimatum where they'll have the slimmest chance of being spared (typically involving self-mutilation on some level). Unlike Jigsaw however, she'll eventually reveal a cruel twist where the odds were naturally stacked against them and that they were effectively doomed from the start.
• Your Mom: As if Okaya and his lackeys weren't depraved enough already, they send Kiritaka a sex video with Mari's face edited on top, then tell him how "fuckable" she looks. Finally, Okaya gives Kiritaka a Sadistic Choice: jump off the cliff they're standing on or he will spread the video on the internet.

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