Shizuka lives a hard life. Her father isn't living with her, her mother is rarely home, and she's mercilessly bullied at school by her cruel classmate, Marina. But it isn't all bad — she has her pet Chappy, who makes everything okay. Unbeknownst to her, Shizuka is about to get a very special guest in Takopi, an alien from another world! His first order of business is to spread happiness throughout our planet, and his first person to help is Shizuka. After spending some time together, Takopi promises to make her smile, and Shizuka accepts his friendship.
Then something horrible happens.
Takopi is forced to rewind time, and in doing so, sets himself on a journey to really, earnestly make Shizuka smile. In doing so, he accidentally begins putting Shizuka, Marina, and their mutual classmate Azuma on a collision course with each other... and the results are something no one will expect.
Takopi's Original Sin is a drama/comedy/psychological horror manga from TAIZAN 5. It began serialization in Shonen Jump + in December 2021, and ended in March 2022 at 16 chapters, which were compiled into two volumes. The story deals with a number of extreme topics including parental abuse and self-harm, so know that it is not for the faint of heart.
It can be read for free online at Shueisha's MANGA Plus online app, found here.
Takopi's Original Sin includes the following tropes:
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The story takes place in 2016, five years before the manga was published. The future segments, on the other hand, take place in 2022.
- Accidental Murder: When Takopi attempts to defend Shizuka from Marina, the blunt force of the Happy Camera hits Marina's head hard enough to kill her.
- Adults Are Useless: Every single adult in the entire story is terrible at their job in some way. Shizuka's mom is never home and her dad abandoned her to start another family, Marina's father left her mother when he was found to be visiting Shizuka's mother for prostitution and as a result her mother has become highly volatile, and Azuma's mother is demanding and emotionally abusive while his father doesn't seem to be around much.
- Aloof Big Brother: Inverted with Azuma and his brother. While his brother is the more popular and high-scoring of the two, it's Azuma that keeps his distance and sets boundaries.
- Asshole Victim: Marina, the girl who regularly bullies Shizuka, ends up getting murdered by the Happy Camera falling on her head. She gets better, but still...
- The B Grade: Azuma's mother puts immense pressure on him to get perfect grades like his brother, despite ranking fairly high. She browbeats him whenever he gets a few points short of 100, and when he comes home with the first low score in a while, he's emotionally devastated and she gives up on him entirely.
- Bittersweet Ending: Shockingly for such a dark story, but yes, there's light at the end of the tunnel. Takopi sacrifices his life to repair the camera and sends Shizuka back to the day they met, but without any of the memories of Takopi or anything else that happened. During the scheduled confrontation with Marina that day, the two of them glance at a small doodle of Takopi in Shizuka's notebook and become overwhelmed with emotion. Though both of them have forgotten about Takopi, his lingering kindness lives on, and the two of them bond over their mutual home lives and the loss of a friend who genuinely loved them. Similarly, though Azuma is still stuck under his mother's abuse, he can now rely on his brother for support and has a bunch of genuine friends to help him out.
- Cerebus Syndrome: The story begins as a cute little tale about an adorable octopus alien trying to make a hurting girl smile, and escalates into a psychological drama about two kids covering up the death of their classmate.
- The Chain of Harm: Marina's father takes his frustrations out on her mother, whom in turn abuses her. Marina herself uses bullying Shizuka as an outlet. There are multiple manga panels showcasing how Marina's actions mirror that of her mother's.
- Character Development: A core part of the story is how Takopi, Shizuka, Marina and Azuma all change as a result of their interactions with each other. Most of them change for the worse- Shizuka becomes selfish and deranged after Takopi's murder of Marina, Azuma becomes completely obsessed with doing anything for Shizuka, and Marina descends further into insanity before being killed. Takopi develops most of all however, as he slowly realizes his short-sighted and shallow attempts at making Shizuka happy can't really help her at all. By the end of the story, he sacrifices himself to give all three of the kids one last chance, realizing what they all really need is a companion.
- Cycle of Revenge: Marina bullying Shizuka and taking Chappy away from her, caused Shizuka's attempted suicide, leading to Shizuka to steal her boyfriend Azuma years later, leading to Marina murdering her mother in self-defense and killing herself soon after.
- Death Is the Only Option: Takopi exhausts every option he can think of through time travel to make the main characters happy. He uses the last of his power to rewind time and help Shizuka and Marina become friends, which kills him.
- Decon-Recon Switch: The entire story is a deconstruction of Doraemon-style "magical buddy" wish-fulfillment stories, with Takopi's inventions often making Shizuka's situation much worse. Takopi can barely understand humans and has no idea how we really think, so his simplistic, short-term fixes to the problems the three main characters face just end up causing more problems in the future. Before he lost his memories, he also adopted the idea of killing Shizuka to make Marina happy scarily quickly, which shows just how dangerous his shallow worldview really is. That being said, Takopi really does want to help, and he eventually fixes the situation by sacrificing his own life. And for what it's worth, the final chapters show that beyond him just dying, Takopi's influence on the two main girls actually stuck with them in the final timeline, showing that his compassion for them wasn't misplaced and did allow them to come together and heal.
- Denied Food as Punishment: Azuma's mother often bribes him with fluffy pancakes he can eat if he gets a perfect score on his tests. He's never gotten the chance to because he typically gets a point or two off, causing his mom to take them away at dinnertime and berate him for his failure. The practice has conditioned him into desperately craving affection from others, and believing that he needs to do everything they ask in order to maintain it. When stress from being a Secret-Keeper for Marina's death causes his grades to drop, his mom seems to understand what she's doing and gives him the pancakes as consolation... before revealing she thought it was a stunt for attention, and if he's not going to try to do better anymore, she won't expect anything from him either. The pancakes she gives to him are a sign of giving up on him.
- Dramatic Irony: Takopi's initial goal after befriending Marina in 2022 is to kill Shizuka. When he time travels to the past to do it and loses his memories, befriending Shizuka in his amnesiac state flips his goal to making her happy in a much less violent manner; yet the first time he gets Shizuka to crack a smile is by accidentally killing Marina, the girl he originally set out to save.
- Dysfunction Junction: The three main characters and their home lives are miserable.
- Shizuka's dad ran off when she was young, while her mother is heavily implied to be a sex worker to keep food on the table. She gets bullied at school by Marina and her Girl Posse because of this.
- Marina's father blows his money on gambling and prostitutes and regularly gets into fights with his wife, whom guilt-trips Marina into always being on her side and takes her frustration out on Marina by harming her.
- Azuma was molded into a perfectionist by his mom, emotionally depriving him of love until he can attain the perfect scores of his popular older brother. She openly wonders where she "went wrong" with raising him despite him being an otherwise model student.
- Flash Sideways: In the final timeline, all three kids still have some memory of Takopi despite him never meeting them. Marina makes fun of Shizuka for not wearing her usual head flower, and both girls tear up at a doodle of Takopi in Shizuka's notebook, imagining it would be an annoying but good friend if it was real. They even think a pen with a cat topper resembles the Saturn Cat Ball Pen, despite both considering it a case of Strange Minds Think Alike at the time. Azuma also starts a genuine relationship with his brother by fighting over something petty like he told Takopi to tell his past self.
- Foreshadowing:
- Takopi's backstory is incredibly brief, being shown in all of a few panels. We later learn this is because he's an amnesiac and has lost the memories of the real reason he's on Earth... to make a Bad Future version of Marina smile by killing Shizuka.
- The first smile Shizuka gives Takopi is when they part at the end of their first meeting, having grown to become friends. This sets up the eventual way that Takopi does get Shizuka to be truly happy, by making her and Marina friends.
- When Takopi first explains the Happy Camera to Shizuka, she notes how heavy it is. Its weight ends up becoming a problem when Takopi accidentally hits Marina's head with it, killing her.
- Idiosyncratic Cover Art: Both volumes depict one of the main characters crying while wearing the Patch-It-Up Ribbon on their pinky. The first volume has Shizuka on one end of the ribbon, while the second has Marina on the other.
- I Have No Son!:
- When Shizuka finally reaches her dad's city apartment, he's lovingly taking care of two other kids. They ask about the dirty, disheveled girl at the front door, to which he pretends he doesn't know her and goes back inside.
- Despite studying hard, Azuma comes home with a bad grade on one of his tests. His mom gives him the pancakes he's craved, with him believing his mom finally understands his pain... only for her to declare that she's given up on him, and she won't even bother trying to be a good mom.
- Innocent Means Naïve: Takopi is a Happian, an Innocent Alien from a planet where all the inhabitants generally get along (with some rules) and he's taught to help others. However, his childlike innocence means he's not accustomed to the more complex morality of Earth, and he's unaware of what concepts like murder are. This proves to be a problem, as he resolves to help a Bad Future version of Marina be happy by killing Shizuka in the past, despite not knowing the full weight of what this means.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Chapter 12 reveals that Takopi came to Earth in 2022, and after coming to understand Marina and her problems, believes the only way he can help her be happy is by killing Shizuka. When he went back home to use the Big Happy Clock, his mother took his memories for breaking their planet's law.
- Mundane Utility: Takopi's gadgets are rarely used how he intended them to be. The infinite length of the Patch-It-Up Ribbon is used by Shizuka to hang herself, and the preservation abilities of the Memory Box are instead used to preserve Marina's corpse.
- No Romantic Resolution: Azuma harbors a crush on Shizuka that leads him to make bad decisions, while the original timeline had him involved with Marina and Shizuka romantically. By the end, the focus is put on the budding friendship between the final timeline's version of the main characters over all else, with no romance mentioned at all.
- Religious Russian Roulette: Shizuka confesses to Takopi that she wished on a star for her parents to stay together. When the divorce happened anyway, she lost faith in both magic and God.
- Sanity Slippage: Shizuka and Azuma slowly start falling apart after disposing of Marina.
- Shizuka's desperation to get Chappy back and see her father leads to a downward spiral of manipulation and spur-of-the-moment plans, culminating in an incident where she kidnaps her dad's other kids, thinking them impostors.
- Azuma turns into a Love Martyr, willing to do anything Shizuka says at the cost of his own sanity out of fear he'll lose the only person who's shown him positive affection.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Done multiple times by Takopi throughout the story:
- Takopi uses the power of the Happy Camera to prevent Shizuka's suicide (which he succeeds at), as well as attempt to prevent Chappy getting sent away (which he fails at).
- After becoming friends with Marina, Takopi decides to go back to make sure her future isn't miserable... by killing Shizuka, the "source" of her problems.
- In the end, Takopi uses the last of his power to turn back time far enough and help the kids start reaching out to each other, at the cost of his own life.
- Tender Tomboyishness, Foul Femininity: Zig-zagged with Shizuka and Marina. Shizuka is unkempt and wears plain t-shirts and shorts, and initially is the victim of bullying by haughty, stylish Marina, who torments her with her Girl Posse. However, the timeline where Marina dies has Shizuka slowly become more manipulative and unhinged, while the timeline where Shizuka lives to attend high school puts spotlight on Marina's own crappy home life. Both are portrayed sympathetically in addition to showing what would drive them to do their deeds, and the Flash Sideways from other timelines help them to end the story as friends.
- Title Drop: Chapter 13 is titled "Takopi's Original Sin", which turns out to be helping Shizuka kill and dispose of Marina.
- Trauma Button: In 2022, Marina hates looking at glass because it reminds her of the time her mother attacked her with a broken drinking glass. Seeing her mom point a broken bottle at her face makes her start sobbing, and when her mom tries to attack her again, it causes her to lash out and kill her.
- Troubled Abuser: Takopi befriends Shizuka, a 4th grader who is horribly bullied by her classmate, Marina. But Marina targeted Shizuka because her dad had an affair with Shizuka's mother, and her own mother became abusive towards her, and Marina blames Shizuka for her horrible home life.
- Wham Shot: An infamous one that made the manga viral overnight. Specifically, Shizuka's swinging corpse after hanging herself in the first chapter.
- You Can't Fight Fate: While Takopi was able to help Shizuka get through a week of school, he's not able to stop Marina from spotting Shizuka walking Chappy, getting bitten, and Chappy's getting sent away.
