It is highly recommended that you at least read the first chapter of Venus Puts Fur On Me before continuing to read on for the full experience. Major spoilers are ahead.
Venus Puts Fur On Me (Ijimeru Yabai Yatsu) is a manga by Nan Nakamura, which was serialized in Kodansha's Magazine Pocket from 2018 to 2023 and compiled into 19 volumes. As the name suggests, it is loosely based on Venus in Furs, and is somewhat of a modernization that brings it to a Japanese high school and flips the genders while telling a tale about the horrors of bullying.
Shirosaki Hana is a poor girl who finds herself the victim of Nakajima, the local school bully. He beats her, forces her to do things like drink her own piss, and basically humiliates her in front of her classmates, who all join in or spectate. All except one- the kindhearted Tanaka, who hates what is being done to her. After a particularly bad day, Tanaka decides he will no longer take this lying down, and becomes Shirosaki's protector, defending her from Nakajima whenever and however he can.
If only Tanaka knew the truth.
As it turns out, Shirosaki is not the gentle, suffering soul she projects herself as, and Nakajima is not the heartless bully he seems to be. In truth, Shirosaki is forcing Nakajima to bully her for her own pleasure, and uses ice picks to torment Nakajima if he displeases her, while also threatening to kill him if he quits or tells anyone the truth. The story follows Nakajima as he attempts to escape this toxic relationship and figure out just why Shirosaki is doing this. But with all the other rampant bullying in the school, Nakajima finds himself in the role of Bully Hunter, stamping out the rival bullies who threaten to get in the way of his own arrangement with Shirosaki lest he be killed before he can find a way out.
This manga contains examples of:
- Big Bad Wannabe: Katou, introduced in the second arc, is a bully who is set up to rival Shirosaki in cruelty, and presents a lot of problems to protagonist Nakajima and his ally Aoyama, to the point that he single-handedly screws up their plan to defeat Shirosaki for good. Then he traps Nakajima and tortures him — only for Shirosaki to appear and save Nakajima (just because she wants to continue tormenting him) and turns her ice picks on Katou instead. The torture is so severe that it mentally breaks him, and the next time we see him, he's done a Heel–Face Turn.
- Bully Brutality:
- The story is dedicated to showing the horrors of bullying, and every single bully is shown inflicting horrific tortures onto their victims, least of all Shirosaki, who has the added crime of making Nakajima publicly bully her under threat of death if he refuses.
- In a twist, Shirosaki became the way she is because she was so disgusted by bully brutality in the past. She saw a close friend die from particularly harsh bullying, and vowed to make herself the only target because then no one else she cares about would get hurt. Too bad she makes that same person cow to her demands like a bully victim.
- Bully Hunter: Tanaka is introduced as a staunch anti-bullying advocate, and when he thinks that Nakajima is the one in control of his relationship with Shirosaki, he tries to put a stop to it. Unfortunately, he is the least effective of all the characters in the series and is constantly the butt of jokes. Nakajima plays with this trope, as while he is up against crueler bullies he himself if forced into a bully role by his own sadistic bully.
- Darker and Edgier: Compared to the book it's inspired by. Where Venis in Furs is a consensual BDSM romance, Venus Puts Furs on Me is about a person forced to act as a bully by his alleged victim.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: The first chapter establishes Nakajima as a heartless bully who picks on the shy, submissive Shirosaki, who can do nothing but cry in fear as he does things like beat her, make her drink her own piss, and tell her she should die. The end of the chapter reveals that Shirosaki herself is forcing him to do all this to satisfy her sadomasochistic desires, and tortures him if he doesn't do so. Notably, Katou, when trying to deduce who is making Nakajima bully Shirosaki, never considers the possibility of Shirosaki herself doing it because the very idea of a bullying victim masterminding her own torment sounds absurd.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Despite everything that happened throughout the story, Nakajima is finally able to live out a somewhat normal school life and most of the crazy cast has been tamed.
- Entertainingly Wrong: In the school trip arc, Kouta realizes that Nakajima is being ordered to bully Shirosaki, and tries to deduce who could be the real mastermind. He makes the reasonable conclusion that it is Aoyama, a Yandere in love with Nakajima who sees Shirosaki as romantic competition. All this is true except for her being the mastermind — as he soon discovers, that person is none other than Shirosaki herself.
- First-Episode Twist: The first chapter makes it clear the story is about the horrors of bullying, with Nakajima portrayed as a heartless and brutal bully who picks on sweet girl Shirosaki, and Tanaka being the heroic protagonist who will do everything to save the poor girl. Then the last scene shows Shirosaki physically assaulting Nakajima and demanding he continue bullying her when he wants to back out, revealing that the victim and aggressor are reversed, and the story will actually follow Nakajima as he attempts to escape her abuse.
- Lacerating Love Language: It's heavily implied that Shirosaki Hana's sadistic behavior towards Nakajima is her trying to process a crush towards him.
- Loving Bully: The "heroine", Shirosaki Hana, is a very twisted version of this. Behind closed doors, she's a violent, sadistic jerk to one boy, Nakajima, in particular, and harms him whenever things don't go her way. "Her way", surprisingly, is getting gratuitous bullying and public humiliation, courtesy of him, just so she can be happy. The story implies more than once that her aggressively sadomasochistic tendencies are her way of processing a crush on the boy, with several arcs devoted to her trying to get him out of reach of other girls like her as he is her toy.
- No Romantic Resolution: The series ends with Nakajima not officially ending up with anyone. However, the epilogue heavily implies that he gets with Shirosaki.
- Psychotic Love Triangle: Nakajima finds himself stuck between three mentally unstable love interests. The main "heroine", Shirosaki, is an abusive Yandere who forces him to publicly bully her and tortures him if he doesn't do it to her liking. Aoyama, another Yandere, actually wants to save Nakajima from this, but only by killing Shirosaki herself, and she admits to not caring about other people — all that concerns her is becoming Nakajima's "bride". Midoriya, probably the most stable of the three, doesn't threaten to kill anyone, but ever since Nakajima saved her from a gang of bullies, she keeps pretending to be bullied so he will comfort her and has threatened to kill herself if he stops protecting her.
- Reverse Relationship Reveal: The first chapter casts Nakajima as The Bully and the antagonist of the series, with Shirosaki being his meek, helpless, submissive victim who can do nothing but cry as he assaults and demeans her. Then the end of the chapter cuts to them alone in the school at night, where he see her assaulting him- turns out she's been making him bully her to satisfy her own sadomasochism and torturing him with ice picks whenever he tries to back out, and he's the one reduced to crying during their late-night sessions. The story actually follows him as he attempts to escape from her.
- Trapped in Villainy: Of a sort; Nakajima only bullies Shirosaki, regularly subjecting her to all sorts of humiliation and violence, because if he doesn't, she will, at minimum, torture him with her ice picks, and has flat-out threatened to kill him if he quits bullying her.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Repeatedly, a character is carrying out some plan in mind, explains what that plan is to the reader, and then promptly has that plan go wrong in some way. For example, early on Nakajima comes up with a plan to get an Engineered Public Confession from Shirosaki by getting her to torture him and having Tanaka capture it on camera through a window, and explains all this in his inner monologue. It turns out that Shirosaki anticipated this and covered the only window so no one could film from outside.
