Toumei Ningen no Hone (透明人間の骨, translated as "The Bones of an Invisible Person") is a 2017 supernatural drama manga, with art and story by Jun Ogino.
Beware that there is a big plot twist at the end of the first chapter, which even the summary bellow will spoil
The manga follows Aya Kinomiya, a shy, reclusive girl with a troubled home life, figuring out that she can turn invisible. After a particular brutal fight between her abusive father and her mother, she decides to take matters into her own hands, using her new found invisibility to murder her own father and rid her family of the pain he causes them. Upon doing this, although her mother and her family life seem to be improving, Aya is still deeply damaged by this decision, wondering how can she make up for the guilt she feels. She decides that in order to be properly punished, she must first find something she will be punished by losing. Moving away for high school, she starts a new life looking for something to lose.
Tropes
- Bittersweet Ending: Aya seems ready to turn herself in for the murder she committed. While this might mean the rest of her life will be subjected to much more hardships (whether it is even acceptable how she killed him), she now has things she truly holds in dear regards like her friends, and a much closer relationship with her family. While this means she might be torn away from them for a while, the manga ends with the clear information that once she gets out of whatever punishment she receives, there will be people to receive her with open arms.
- Central Theme: Guilt, and what to do with it.
- Character Development: Aya starts off as a recluse girl, whose troubled home life translated into little skill in making friends outside of her home too. Over the course of the story, we see her both bonding with others for the first time and coming to terms with the awful thing she has done, as well as the reasons why she did so.
- Domestic Abuse: Aya's father was verbally and physically abusive with his wife, and although Aya never was in the receiving end of a physical lashing, he would still yell at her, and the ensuing fight worsened Aya's mental state.
- First-Episode Spoiler: Aya murdering her own father at the end of the first chapter, the very event that kick starts the plot and the center of all of Aya's angst.
- Foreshadowing: Early on, Aya's experiments show that she can't be heard while invisible. When investigating Kana's stalker, he is capable of hearing her voice when she talks to herself. This is an early hint that her newfound connections are weakening her powers.
- Forgiveness: A big theme of the story. Aya realizes that there might not be any forgiveness for what she has done, even if she goes through the process of making any possible punishment worse off for herself. Shiori tells her that she thinks that what she did is unforgivable, but also, that she is not the one who needs to forgive her. She also confesses to her grandfather about it, and while he says that he can't forgive her, she says she can't forgive her father either. Ultimately, the manga seems to draw a line between "forgiveness" and "justice", considering that what Aya has done is unforgivable, but her punishment is something else entirely.
- Last Episode, New Character: In the final chapter, Aya visits her estranged grandfather. Ultimately, neither can forgive each other even if they completely understand the factors that led them to where they are now. Aya cannot forgive her father for the suffering he put her mother through, and her grandfather can't forgive her for killing his son.
- Heroic Sacrifice: After Aya ousts Kana's stalker, he tries to kill Aya, only for Kana to jump in front of the knife and take the blow herself. While she is in bad shape afterwards, she survives and makes it out in one piece.
- Magical Realism: Aya's invisibility powers are never explained, beyond the fact that it is connected to her wish to remain reclusive and hidden away from the world.
- Personality Powers: Aya wishes that she could disappear from the world, hating her lack of friends and her troubled family, which earns her the power to actually become invisible. By earning friends and being able to bond with others, no longer wishing deeply to be left alone, her powers vanish. They come back when she tries to run away, but after making up with her friend, they're gone for good.
- Stalker with a Crush: Kana is revealed to have a stalker that had been following her around and taking pictures of her in secret.
