In the city of George Westan, a strange talking automaton known as Thicket was tricked by an unnamed old man, leaving him disillusioned as he lost most of his money from a scam artist. However, fate has other ways when a blind girl from Mealis who got separated from her parents suddenly shows up in front of him, asking about her parents, starting a fateful encounter that would change him forever.
Except for one thing... Thicket wants the girl's eyeballs at an especially high price, showing his true nature: he is an organ trafficker, who is into Organ Theft for monetary purposes as he states how his job is "to take humans apart". The girl instead accepts his ridiculously strange offer in her wish to see the world again with her own eyes. But the girl soon realises that Thicket is more than she meets her eyes (no pun intended).
Iromonia (stylised as iromonia) is a Seinen Slice of Life manga written by Miki Usami. It was self-published by her on Pixiv in 2013 (link here to the story
), before it was later published independently as a manga on eBook form on August 1, 2019.
Iromonia tropes
- Anti-Hero: Thicket. While he serves as a close companion to the blind girl, he is without his fair share of his immoral acts due to his criminal past. He is also lethal in his pursuit of justice, even using his robotic hands comprising of surgical tools to kill a criminal by taking an internal organ out from him.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: While the city of George Westan has a fair share of criminals of all kinds, including swindlers, rapists and even outright attempted murderers like the Shopkeeper who attempted to assault the blind girl, Thicket and Randan, the closest there is to the "heroes" of this story, are also amoral criminals with a very checkered past who run a shop that, in reality, is actually a hospital not legalised by the government.
- Blatant Lies: How Thicket wants to "kindly help" the blind girl to reach Mealis.Thicket: Going to Mealis alone would be a lot of trouble. (his fingers pop out a group of surgical tools) This kind Thicket-sama will take you.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Chapter 9. The mysterious shopkeeper's appearance, as well as his group of thugs, signals this trope as he attempted to rape the blind girl out of revenge, before a bloodbath happened between the shopkeeper's men and Randan, with one of them killed with a gunshot. The blind girl, on the other hand, is in critical condition as her eyelids and a part of her mouth was cut by one of the thugs and had to be put on surgery by Randan in his shop's operating table, marking this as the darkest chapter of this manga.
- Mood Dissonance: The blind girl who was separated from her parents after wandering off later befriends the automaton Thicket, who is a revealed to be a criminal with a rap sheet of his past crimes, notably including organ harvesting. Ironically, when she asks Thicket about where Mealis is, he quickly responds by saying with her "being a brat" he can sell her blind eyeballs at an "especially high price", to which the girl simply obliges innocently.
- Mood Whiplash: The sudden appearance of criminals in Chapter 9 immediately darkened the story's light-hearted mood when the blind girl was shot to near-death.
- Odd Friendship: The innocent blind girl is friends with Thicket, an organ-thieving criminal.
- Slice of Life: Despite the bittersweet and dark tone of the story, it focuses on the blind girl's endearing ventures across the city with Thicket.
- Wretched Hive: George Westan is like an ordinary modern urban city by today's standards. But it is also riddled with criminals of all flavours, with Thicket who is also a notorious ex-criminal and an organ harvester working in organ-legging for money.
