Omori Manga Ch. 2 Review - Devil in the Details

Written by Rei Caldombra 8/5/2024 Video: https://youtu.be/5cfvCtsokrY

Previous chapter review: https://www.blogunderalog.com/blog-collection/omori-manga-chapter-1-review 

Back for chapter 2 of the Omori manga. I think this is another good chapter, but it has some issues this time around for me. I also saw some of the discourse and thought I would give my own perspective on some of the issues people have with the manga so far. So I’ll be injecting some of that in this chapter, including returning to chapter 1. There will always be heavy spoilers for my reviews of Omori chapters.

To cover the events of this chapter, we first go through the playground segment in Headspace. This is a notable showing of the quicker pace that the manga is going at, as we completely skip hide and seek. It is fully omitted, as BOSS’s reason for starting the fight is because of not being invited to the picnic rather than to the game. It’s a shame that as of now at least, the new readers won’t get to meet the others. They aren’t truly important to the story, but the NPCs add a lot to the flavor of the world. We then go to the scene of everyone heading to Basil’s house, with the scenery looking beautiful. It proceeds like the game, ending with chilling visuals as usual. I also think this is meant to give us a taste of the SOMETHING that Basil sees, which you can tell better than in the game.

We then head back into the real world, learning that the Headspace segment was shown while Sunny was blacked out. Sunny going in and out of Headspace while in the middle of real life is portraying his dissociation in a different way than the game. This is a substantial change and I can understand people quickly being adverse to that. But like I said in the previous review, I want to continue seeing how this plays out before calling this bad and am still not fundamentally against this being a different experience. I do acknowledge that changes like this are potentially worse for people new to Omori than to returning fans though. But I don’t think anything has gone as far as to make the manga bad. Once Sunny wakes up things play out as usual, ending with a scene I will get to at the end of the review.

Now I will be getting into some criticisms from me and addressing some from others. Let’s not get Furious and remember to CALM DOWN when engaging in disagreements and making critiques. Take the time to think things through and read/listen fully when it comes to the manga and other people’s opinions. We all want to enjoy things but inevitably see things differently. Don’t fall victim to trolls, bait, and people who go to extremes just for interaction, clicks etc. It is not my intention to call anyone dumb, not a real Omori fan, or prove people wrong for smug satisfaction. My goal is to give my opinions on the subjective stuff and attempt to clarify how I see things that I believe are more objective interpretations. To be clear I am not claiming to be an expert at reading manga and deciphering visual details and direction, I can be wrong too. Most people are not experts, and people will see things differently due to their own opinions and ways of thinking. But there is often objective truth to the ways things are told, you absolutely can be seeing things incorrectly. Some of the blame can go to the artist not doing a good job portraying movement, but sometimes readers are just not following it correctly. However, how confusing something is visually is also up to the eye of the beholder.

I’ll start by talking about the main fight of this chapter which will include some criticism of how the fight is presented, then return to the main fight of the previous chapter and go on the defensive for the fight presentation. I added some drawings on the pages to better show how I’m seeing things. Hopefully this is understandable and helps.

Starting with the good on the BOSS fight, I like the fundamentals of how the fight is portrayed. Am I the only one who heard the attack sound effects in my head, with the Omori’s attack doing the critical damage sound due to how dramatic his attack is shown? I love that we still see the damage numbers. Even though we are no longer experiencing this as a game, in Omori’s head his fantasy is still game-ified. I went to check if the damage numbers we see from everyone are accurate and they seem to be which is awesome. BOSS’s design also looks great, he really stands out and looks like a cartoony enemy. This is exactly what I wanted to see from Headspace.

My criticism is about the effects of the attacks on BOSS. The bruise left by Kel seems like it switches sides. It is first shown on the same side as Basil, but then it is on the opposite side. He only hits him once based on only seeing the one text box before Aubrey hits him on the same side as the first. We do see a bump on Basil’s side on the next page, but that was from Hero after the panel where he has two bumps on the same side when there should only be 1. Unless I am confused and misinterpreting things, this is an example of a visual detail being incorrect. Hopefully, this is a one-off mistake that won’t happen again. It’s still a fun scene, but the blunder does leave a mark on the record as the first legit mistake for me.

Now onto the fight with Aubrey of chapter 1 where there is not mistakes from the artist in my opinion, people are genuinely incorrect in their interpretation of what happens in the fight. They have the misconception that Aubrey knocked Basil to the ground by hitting him with the bat. What really happens is Aubrey brings her bat next to Basil’s face to intimidate him, then takes that moment of him being caught off guard to trip him. I will explain how this scene goes down through my eyes and hopefully aid in the confusion some people seem to have.

Note that she is holding the bat on her right side. She swings the bat to the right (opposite of Basil) and backward (indicated by the movement lines at the end of the bat going backward), then sweeps Basil’s legs using her left leg to trip him and send him crashing to the ground. She never hits him with the bat. I feel this was made clear by her leg being outstretched where Basil’s legs were before. If this is not the case, why would she be standing on one leg after swinging a bat that was inches from Basil’s face? If she just hit him with the bat why would the bat be behind her head the moment where Basil goes down? It would be closer to where her leg is.

Things gets into a criticism I disagree with, which is saying that Aubrey is flanderized, exaggerated, etc in the manga. In my opinion she is not being more extreme in her actions than in the game. Aubrey does not bash Basil’s head in with a spiked bat, and would never do that. She did not intend to severely hurt Basil in the chapter 1 fight the same way she did not intend to nearly drown him when she pushed him into the lake later in the game. She is a physically aggressive person, as we consistently see in Headspace and the real world. And in the real world she is severely unwell, acting out due to her life that has only gotten worse and worse since Mari’s death. In the real-world battles, which are intended to be treated as truly happening, she never hurts anyone to the point of serious damage, nor does anyone else outside of Sunny in the first fight. They just get knocked out of commission, shown by Kel getting the anime swirly eyes that denote someone being knocked out but not in a life-concerning manner. The point of the first fight immediately ending after Omori uses the knife is because that caused serious damage. Nothing Aubrey does to you in those fights does that. We knew she bullied Basil in the game, we just see it here directly in more detail which makes it feel worse. I think her actions in the manga fit her personality in the game.

One of my compliments to this chapter and how the manga portrays Aubrey’s personality goes to the extension of the scene where Aubrey throws out the photo album shown at the end of the chapter.

The original scene in the game is very quick and does not denote much emotion to me. I’ve said that the manga provides more opportunity to portray emotions through faces and body language, here we are seeing that. It is made very clear that she is not happy pushing everyone away and throwing away the album, but she is controlled by her anger and regret. You can see her disdain for the state of the album and how it’s driven her and her friends apart, her hesitation to throw it away, her anger taking over and making her violently throw it in, and her sadness as she closes it and walks away fully aware of what she is doing. I love the detail that after looking at the picture including Sunny, she holds her hand over the bandage on her arm where Sunny cut her in the first chapter. She also heads to the church, where they will find her next. Without the opportunity to explore in the game, I think it makes sense to make everyone’s locations more clear. I do think showing a map of the city would help the viewers new to the series. The game didn’t either, but the player ends up making a mental map while running around. This scene in the manga evokes a lot of emotion for Aubrey which the game lacks in that same moment. Aubrey’s turmoil may not be presented the same way and could be argued as worse due to the pacing, but scenes like this really work. This is a great scene that does what only the manga can very well.

We have reached the end of the chapter so I will end things off here. I am still enjoying the manga and plan to continue following it and talking about it. Let me know if you think the drawing I did on the fight images is worth doing again when getting deeper into visual detail. I’m not a huge fan of internet discourse and do not directly participate in it much, but I do pay more attention to the community when it’s something I care about more. Lots of people can be nasty and reading/listening to it doesn’t amount to much a lot, so I don’t want that in my space and generally don’t seek it out. When it comes to my community, discussion is welcome as long as people are being polite and substantive so everyone can have an informative and healthy dialogue. Let’s all get along even in our disagreements. Thank you for reading!

Next Chapter Review: Omori Manga Ch. 3 Review -Meaningful Gestures — Blog Under a Log

Previous chapter review: https://www.blogunderalog.com/blog-collection/omori-manga-chapter-1-review 

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