SPOILER WARNING: As this work has A LOT of Death Tropes, of which heavily pertains to the titular character, all spoilers will be unmarked here, no exceptions. Tread the page with caution!
The story of a cat-eared girl in the strings of death.
In an unnamed city, a black anthropomorphic cat known as Claroa works as a taxidermist, whose job is to "shrink" the heads of the deceased and store them inside his own home and add them to his collection. Enter Rain, a cat-eared girl who is revealed to be suffering from a terminal illness, and only has three years to live before her eventual death.
Claroa has quickly taken upon himself to shrink her head and store it as part of his collection once she passes away. In this heart-wrenching, bittersweet tale about a person suffering from a terminal illness, Rain uses what remains of her life to the fullest before her passing.
Rain's Head (雨の首 Ame no Kubi) is a Seinen Slice of Life written and illustrated by Miki Usami, which was self-published by her. It was firstly released on 6th of June 2021, completing with a total of two volumes and eleven chapters until its conclusion on 20th of September 2021.
This story is very full of spoilers due to themes of death being the central focus, so only read this page once you finished it completely. So to say this once again: You Have Been Warned!
Rain's Tropes
- Abusive Parents:
- Claroa was raised by his unloving parents during his childhood, who were too strict, leading to his current personality as a perfectionist. Even marrying his future wife did nothing better for him, which especially got worse when said wife and infant child left him due to his job as a taxidermist.
- Rain had abusive guardians, too. They seemed to consider her more akin to a pet than a child due to being a cat-human half-breed - When Claroa finds her, she turns out to have never been taught how to speak, and her sleeping out in the hallway instead of the room he offers her implies that her former caretakers forced her to sleep on the floor. Her nightmare in chapter 1 leaves enough implications of the numerous ways they inflicted pain on her: Not only is she surrounded by knives, broken bottles and open-palmed hands about to slap her, her female guardian also hunches over her to gouge out her eye with a fork, and a length of rope wraps around her neck. A short flashback also shows her in the aftermath of getting beaten senseless with a bottle and getting screamed at.
- Ambiguous Situation: Claroa finds Rain roaming the streets of their town and ponders whether the child ran away from home or if her guardians actively abandoned her. The story never clarifies which is the case.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: The reason Rain stays with Claroa, despite knowing that he mainly took her in (At least, at first) because he wanted to add her taxidermied head to her collection? Because he's the only one to ever show her kindness, treating her like a person and sincerely wanting her to be happy and live her short life to the fullest. Once she learns how to speak, she tells him that she's offering him her head out of her own free will and not because she feels forced to because she genuinely likes him and is grateful to him for everything he's done for her.
- Bittersweet Ending: At the end of the story, Rain passes away from her illness peacefully, leading to Claroa shrinking her head to be put into his own display. At the same time, however, Claroa posthumously fulfils her goal of finally dying peacefully.
- Breaking Old Trends: In a very unusual twist for Miki Usami's works, Rain's Head is the first of her mangas to focus on the main character Rain being doomed to die, specifically the terminal illness that is slowly killing her, as the story's main plot.
- Character Title: Titled after the story's main character Rain.
- Covered with Scars: Implied with Rain. Though they’re never shown to the reader, Claroa takes note that her body is covered with cuts and burns as remnants of the horrific abuse she suffered at the hands of her former caretakers.
- Death of a Child: The titular main character dies (albeit peacefully), who is only at her childhood years, at the end of the manga.
- Deadly Euphemism: How Claroa often names his way of cutting dead people's heads for preservation? By "shrinking" them.note
- Delicate and Sickly: Rain’s illness leaves her with low energy due to her bodily values being bad, and she frequently ends up bedridden with a high fever. There’s also mention of her having to take heart medication, and towards the end of the story, she even has trouble walking and is implied to mostly have to use a wheelchair.
- Excellent Judge of Character: Rain turns out to be very good at reading people, a skill she had to learn to spare herself more pain when she lived in an abusive household. She’s able to sense very early on that Claroa is not as aloof and detached as he likes to make himself seem and that he carries a lot of sorrow in his heart. The man lampshades at one point how Rain is practically reading him like an open book.
- Exhausted Eyebags: Rain has some very noticeable ones under her eyes, and they're used as a visual shorthand for her frail health.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Of the worst kind. Despite the main revelation that Rain suffers from a terminal illness in Chapter 1, her hair in the first chapter is shorter and reaches to her neck, but is still in perfect condition. Chapter 6 has her hair reaching up to her shoulder, but Rain's condition has deteriorated to the point that she's more often confined to her bed. Chapter 11 is where Rain has her hair reaching to her back, but she unfortunately dies from her illness.
- Eye Scream: Rain’s left eye is damaged beyond repair, only wearing a bandage over it when Claroa finds her and in her flashbacks, though Claroa gives her a proper eyepatch when he takes her in. Rain’s nightmare in chapter 1 reveals that her abusive guardians gouged it out with a fork.
- Fantastic Racism: It's only brought up briefly, but animal-folk and half-breeds are at least implicitly discriminated against by the human population, and it's heavily implied that the reason Rain was abused by her former guardians was due to her being a Little Bit Beastly. Claroa even outright refers to it as "racism" when he talks about how humans don't often approach him for his services.
- Foregone Conclusion: The first chapter reveals that Rain is suffering from a terminal illness, as mentioned by Claroa, of which she will be dead within the next three years. There's no guessing what will happen at the end.
- Funny Animal: Most animals including Claroa have humanlike traits, being able to talk, walk and act like human.
- Last Words: In the final chapter before Rain's death.Rain: Thank you, for giving me so much.
- Little Bit Beastly: Rain has cat ears and a tail, but is still a human.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Anthropomorphic animals, demi-humans and humans coexist in this world.
- Minimalist Cast: Rain and Claroa are the only recurring characters in the manga.
- Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: Claroa is considered very creepy due to his fascination and obsession with collecting and preserving the heads of dead people, even telling Rain when they first meet that he’ll take her in if he gets to preserve her head when she dies. He’s also rather aloof and dour and prefers to keep to himself, though the Fantastic Racism against animal-folk and half-breeds probably doesn’t help, either. However, from the moment he takes the girl under his wing, he does nothing but treat her with patience and kindness; He tells her right away that she’s free to leave whenever she wants if she doesn’t want to stay, gently tells her that there’s nothing to be afraid of in his house and to be open and honest about her feelings, gives her a name, clothes and a bed to sleep in, takes care of her whenever she’s bedridden with fevers and teaches her to speak and read. And all of this is before he grows to cherish her as if she was his own child.
- The Nameless: Rain's real name is unknown, though it's implied that she was never even given one in the first place.
- Only Known By Her Nickname: Rain's name is not her name at all. It's a nickname that Claroa gives to her, which counts as a Meaningful Name since she was firstly found during a rainy day two days prior in Chapter 1.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Discussed by Claroa during Chapter 2, who is on the receiving end of this trope. Claroa reveals to Rain that he once worked as a doctor has a family in the past. But after he changes his job to being a taxidermist, his family and his infant child left him alone, out of their fear of their heads to be put into his own displays.
- Soap Opera Disease: It’s never revealed exactly what illness Rain has; The only thing that’s mentioned is that her bodily values are low, that there’s no cure for her and that she’ll eventually succumb to it.
- Spoiler Title: The manga's chapter titles are this, due to focusing on a countdown before her death in three years. The finale chapter's title is a big spoiler title as it leads to the death of Rain, exactly three years after the first chapter.
- Stepford Smiler: Rain starts out giving Claroa plastered-on, fake smiles and nodding at every single one of his suggestions, even when their first meeting involved him telling her that he wants her head when she dies (Though he also tells her that she’s free to leave if she doesn’t want that). Claroa bluntly tells her that he knows a coping/defense mechanism when he sees one and that he wants her to be honest with her feelings… And though it takes a while, the kindness and patience he shows her finally causes the poor girl to burst into tears.
- Taxidermy Is Creepy: Heavily Downplayed. Claroa, despite being a taxidermist, is nowhere evil like most characters who are within this trope. Instead, he preserves the heads of the deceased to protect them from being sold off by unsavoury black marketeers, which he makes it clear during Chapter 10 in one conversation with Rain.Claroa: (to Rain) So that's why it's been my goal to take in custody and protect all those like them.
- The Unreveal: Ultimately, Claroa goes through with taxidermying Rain’s head after she passes away (On her own request, no less, since he by that point had become so fond of her that his desire to taxidermy her had left him). The reader never gets to see what it looks like in full, but Claroa’s narration emphasizes that he took the utmost care to preserve her features down to the smallest details as well decorating the head with the garments Rain requested, all in order to honor her memory. The Pig Man who comes by admires the head’s unrivaled beauty as a result.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Played for Drama. Rain, due to being inflicted by a terminal illness, only has three years to live. The story's chapter titles all focus on the amount of months she has been living. Chapter 6 hammers it completely where Rain becomes slowly sicker to the point that she's seen on her sickbed far more often than the previous five chapters, which becomes more common in the next chapters. The final chapter, aptly titled "3 Years and 6 Months", puts the nail in the coffin where Rain dies peacefully from her illness three years later.
