[CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS]

Heartbroken, after watching Banana Fish, I wandered online and I asked to the mighty google, “please, can you give me a manga like Banana Fish but with a happy ending? I beg of you, mighty google.”

And the mighty google said “After us a savage god”

This is a long one, a 17 volumes and complete manga, and I recommend reading all the warnings before even approaching it. The manga contains domestic abuse, grooming, assaults, suicide, murder, prostitution, drugs, violence, an adult taking advantage of a minor, unhealthy relationships, all the worst of the worst. There are no graphic scenes, but just the allusion to them is to be considered graphic in this case.

This is the story of Jeremy, who is a teenager living only with his mother Sandra, and one day meeting the man his mother is dating. Sandra’s boyfriend, a British man named Greg, uses Jeremy’s love for Sandra to abuse him. Sandra has been left heart broken and suicidal after the death of her first husband, and she cannot now imagine a life without Greg. Afraid that Sandra might fall into a depression again, Jeremy accepts to stay silent about the abuse.

The whole first part of the manga is about Jeremy, living under the power of Greg, now moved to the UK with him and Sandra, trying to escape by moving to a school, by threatening Greg, by contacting a psychologist, by clearly screaming for help to his friends, who seems to see that there is something going on, but cannot imagine it is as horrible as it is.

The manga starts with a flash forward: Jeremy has done something to Greg’s car and the man has died, in an accident. He is finally free, but unfortunately Sandra has also died, and this is enough to break the last of Jeremy’s strength. Ian, Greg’s own biological son, starts to suspect that Jeremy has killed Greg, and starts to investigate.

The story is drawn beautiful. I cannot even state how many pages were just heartbreaking metaphors of the kind of anxiety, despair and depression Jeremy feels through the manga, the way he feels so trapped that murdering Greg is the only way he can escape the situation. He falls and falls into the abuse, until his world is completely changed, and I admit I had to skip some chapters because it was just so heartbreaking.

Jeremy was absolutely heartbreaking. The author did an amazing job in rising the stakes, but especially in showing the hints Jeremy was basically screaming at his school mates, at Ian, the way the people around him should have understood what was happening. And I enjoyed the realistic way Ian starts to find out of what is going on.

Unfortunately, the second part of the story was the opposite of the kind of happy ending I needed. When I saw that the rest was not the recovery of Jeremy, with the help of Ian, his brother, and some professionals, I just left it, I couldn't continue reading about Jeremy falling from abuse into an unhealthy relationship.