YMMV / Boy's Abyss

• Accidental Aesop: The only option for growth when you're stuck is to move out of your old environment with no regrets. While everyone else has some kind of attachment to The Town, the only two people who escape the story mostly unharmed are Yuko's brother (who left as a teen and only came back one time to visit) and Saki (who moved out because of her husband and has the best life of any focus character bar none).
• Alternate Character Interpretation: There's a portion of fans who believe that Gen's confession of love for Reiji was not romantic but familial. Things supporting this is how Gen latched onto Yuko as a mother figure in his childhood.
• Arc Fatigue: Esemori and Yuko's past. They're necessary arcs to properly understand the manga as a whole, but also get in the way of the main plot and stop it from moving.
• Base-Breaking Character: Everyone to some extent:
  • Reiji gets a lot of flak from readers who believe that his passivity and one-sided obsession with Nagi are huge detriments to his character. They feel as if Reiji is not pulling his weight as a protagonist and merely reacting to the circumstances around him, and while some understand that his obsession with Nagi is born from a desire to get a bit of freedom for himself, Nagi's absence in most of the story makes people wonder what he sees in Nagi that doesn't involve her taking his virginity. His wishy-washy stance on certain goals is also a point of contention. However, some fans do understand that a lot of the circumstances are either beyond his control or put into motion years before he was even aware of them, and his behavior is very realistic for a depressed and suicidal teenage boy. He gets better reception as the manga goes on, when he's willing to confront the people who've shaped his life and call them out on their failings, while also showing compassion where it's due.
  • Nagi has very few appearances in the story overall, but her impact on a lot of the supporting cast cannot be ignored. The problem is that, because of her limited appearances and because her backstory at the time was left deliberately vague and mysterious, Nagi comes off not as a pitiable woman with a lot of intrigue but a shallow character who only exists to stir the characters into motion. Arguably, that is the point of her, given that she was deliberately called an "empty shell" in-series, but that doesn't mean that those readers accept it. On the other hand, being one of the only people in Reiji's life who isn't expecting anything out of him emotionally, people see her as the healthier romantic option and hope that her listlessness gets resolved the more she interacts with Reiji.
  • Shibasawa is a very popular character, not only for her descent into romantic madness but also for her unusual (and probably unintentional) black comedy antics and scheming. Some fans liked her because she had a very concrete plan for getting Reiji out of his toxic household, and that, no matter why she decided to care for Reiji, the fact remains that she's constantly trying to keep him away from perceived threats to his upbringing, and think Reiji a fool for not trusting somebody who's willing to risk her career to be with him. Her backstory, which portrays her as a woman who eventually snapped from the stress of expecting to be successful and married when neither option is available to her as a teacher in a small town, made some pity her. Other fans decry her actions as poor excuses for her need to feel needed, that her increasingly stalkerish actions make her just as much of a toxic peer for Reiji as any of the other adults in his life, and that she put her hands on a vulnerable student. Her plans are also thought to be pretty ill-considered, given that she can't actually provide for Reiji since she's living on a teacher's salary (which in most places is still low); her only successful plans are to corner a teenage girl, and when she attempts them on experienced liars and adults she's left powerless and dumb.
  • Sakuko is either considered to be one of Reiji's best friends who deserves sympathy or just as manipulative and disgusting as the rest of the women in his life, with very little in-between. Her detractors mention that her circumstances at home (an overbearing father, a passive mother, and both forcing her to stay in town when she wants to move to Tokyo after graduation) pale in comparison to Reiji's both in childhood and in her teenage years, so her desire for Reiji to help her comes off as Wangst and unfairly placing someone in much more need of help in the role of a savior. The fact that she knew on some level that Reiji's home life was not great but did not provide an outlet for him also made her look like a poor friend. Her defenders however think she's one of the most vocally encouraging for him to escape town, has made her stance on that clear multiple times, and has walked back on the idea of corruption several times as well (ie. sleeping with Esomori, attempting to make Reiji sleep with her).
  • Yuko Kurose (Reiji's mother). First due to her increased relevance in the story after Nagi leaves, lastly on whether she's a cruel and manipulative woman that wants a pseudo incestuous relationship where she dominates Reiji's life, or a victim of violence that couldn't break out of that cycle and actively perpetuates it.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Gen attempting to rape Chako in Shibasawa's apartment comes as suddenly as it ends, but none of the people involved mention it after they escape to Tokyo and it plays no role in the group's fallout. Chako in particular isn't bothered by it at all, despite struggling and crying the whole scene.
• Broken Base: Gen revealing gender insecurities near the end of the manga. Some don't see a problem with it, since there was subtle foreshadowing for it throughout flashbacks and to them it didn't seem like the manga was demonizing Gen for it since Gen was questioning way before the traumatic events of Reiji's life began. On the other side of the fence, critics felt the reveal came too late (as it came in the way later half of the manga), thought the foreshadowing wasn't handled well and that the story wasn't really interested in exploring this angle, and seemed superfluous to an already loaded and complex backstory. Detractors also point to the fact that Gen only reveals this after having seemingly killed Yuko and in Yuko's poorly applied makeup and clothes as a reason why it wasn't handled well.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Shibasawa crosses into that territory very often. It may be intentional on the author's part.
• Cry for the Devil: There is no denying that Yuko is a very toxic individual; she's incredibly possessive of her loved ones and doesn't care how hurt they are by her actions as long as they don't leave her. Once we see how she got that way, it's hard not to feel a little bad for the childhood she was robbed of and her need to feel loved.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Very few people in the series are truly morally upstanding. Despite this, it's very common to see fans take sides and proclaim certain characters are innocent victims who aren't nearly as bad as the other options.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • While Chako didn't start as a jerk, she eventually becomes quite the cruel, underhanded and petty person all because she wanted to be anything but the boring person she perceived herself to be. Given how uncaring her parents are of her beyond basic necessities and the suffocating atmosphere of her home however, it makes sense that she'd want to be a part of anyone else's narrative but her own.
  • Gen is a very violent and possessive character, even hurting some of the main characters and stabbing a girlfriend, but the kid has been through so much that it'd rival Reiji's suffering. Murdering your best friend's stepfather, keeping that a secret for most of your adolescence, being manipulated by said best friend's mother and dealing with some ultra repressed gender questioning along the way would warp a person.
  • Reiji's mother, Yuko is an awful person who actively works to drag people down with her, but had such an abusive childhood she's as pitiable as she is detestable.
• Misaimed Fandom: Rather than observe the story as a character drama, a huge portion of the fandom instead looks at the manga as if it was really a Harem manga and all the girls in Reiji's life as haremettes. Reiji is also thought of as a loser for not choosing a girl, as if the biggest problem in his life is that he's not immediately happy with the attention he's getting. Tellingly, Kazu's Motive Rant even includes a section where he reveals that he's jealous of Reiji getting to have sex with Shibasawa and thinking he "has it good" for losing his virginity.
• Wangst: After everyone's backstories get revealed, some fans believe that Chako had it the easiest of all the characters since it boiled down to her wanting to go to college out of town (which her parents won't let her do) and an inferiority complex. While her situation is further explained later on by showing that she also suffers from a disturbing amount of Parental Neglect for someone in a stable home, she still has it much easier than the Kurose family (full of Domestic Abuse and one long case of child prostitution) and Gen (made to kill Reiji's stepfather and another victim of Yuko), making some fans dismiss her as whiny. It doesn't help that she became more openly spiteful after the timeskip.