History Manga / BoysAbyss

** Ms. Shibasawa slowly becomes a rare analytical version. When she becomes obsessed, she stalks her student/sex friend Reiji Kurose, constantly tries to persuade him to leave his family and friends behind so he can live with her. However, she knows that her behavior will come off as inappropriate, so her attempts to isolate Reiji include taking official means and convincing others to rid of her perceived threats to their 'relationship'. When he attempted to break up with her, she invited his mother to a parent teacher-conference in an attempt to separate them by having him agree to go to an outside university. [[spoiler:Shibasawa also destroyed Chako's last ticket out of town by informing her school of her attempted sex attempt on Rei, which kicks Chako out of the student council program she needed to qualify for a prestigious university and demolishes her teacher's recommendation for said school. Even Shibasawa's bold and blatantly suspect move of attempting to ''buy Reiji outright'' from his mother for ten million yen, comes with the caveat that the mother must use some of the money to find a facility or shelter for Reiji's grandmother and older brother respectively as well as move out of their original home. This plot ensures that whatever family ties or concerns keeping Reiji bound to the town are safely severed, leaving herself as the only person in his life he can lean on.]]

* {{Yakuza}}: It's heavily implied that the town has a community of gangsters beneath the surface. Gen's father owns a construction company, which in real life is seen as a common front for yakuza, and [[spoiler:he is the one who helped bury Mr. Kurose]]. It's also implied that the people who Yuko's father was indebted to are yakuza, [[spoiler:which is outright confirmed when a flashback shows that one of the clients Yuko has forced to have sex with had gangster tattoos along his arms]].

* GreaterScopeVillain: [[spoiler: Yuko’s father/Reiji’s grandfather/Reiji’s father can be this, considering he was not only involved in abusing Yuko, but he was also involved in conceiving Reiji. Reiji’s conception led to Yuko going through a lot more suffering than before. And despite no longer being alive, his abuse played a role in how the family became dysfunctional. So he’s the cause of all the drama among the family.]]

** Thoroughly disappointed and disgusted by Ms. Shibasawa's behavior, Reiji tells her that he would like "Ms. Shibasawa" the teacher back instead of "Yuri" the lover. [[spoiler:She answers this request by going to Chako's school and reporting her near-sexual assault of Reiji to them, under the guise of a good teacher protecting her student.]]

* JerkassHasAPoint: What makes Shibasawa so effective as a toxic influence is the fact that she's ''right'' about a lot of the things she says to Reiji. She agrees with the notion that he needs to get out and away from the town, that Reiji thinks too little of his entire living situation, and that he needs help. However, she thinks that all can be fixed if he simply stays by her and never pursues other girls.

* TookALevelInJerkass: Post time-skip, [[spoiler: Chako has [[TookALevelInJerkass fully degraded]] into yet ''another'' toxic manipulator obsessed with keeping Reiji to herself so she can die in a lover's suicide with him akin to the tragic heroines of Esomori's books. But when Reiji doesn't follow through thanks to Gen's intervention, compounded by the announcement of a live-action adaptation of Esomori's best selling novel with Nagi Aoe in the star role, Chako flips out and marches towards the nearest tabloid office she can find to expose Nagi's marriage to Esomori and hit the latter with a FalseRapeAccusation using the selfie she took with him while he was unconscious. This inevitably causes a shitstorm of a controversy that torches Esomori's reputation while he's [[YourDaysAreNumbered on his deathbed]] and capsizes Nagi's career as an IdolSinger due to the affair violating her contract, which leaves ''[[TheOldestProfession pornography]]'' as a JAV Actress Nagi's only real business prospect moving forward.]]

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: [[spoiler:By the three month timeskip, Sakuko's weight is dangerously low, and she's nearly skin and bones since she rarely eats meals. The morning she walks out of the newspaper office, she collapses on the street. Not surprising when she's spent the night in Tokyo exerting herself far beyond the sedentary lifestyle she's had stuck in her room, combined with the aforementioned health issues.]]

* AllLoveIsUnrequited: Eventually, Sakuko, Shibasawa, and [[spoiler:Gen]] are revealed to be in love with Reiji, but the latter only has eyes for Nagi, whose feelings on ''anything'' are a mystery. [[spoiler:Played with in Sakuko's case, as she only developed feelings for Reiji after she hit her personal DespairEventHorizon and admits as much to him.]] In Yuko's case, Gen's father had a big crush on her, but while he gets to have sex with her in the present Yuko has never felt an ounce of love for the guy.

* AdultsAreUseless: Practically every adult in Reiji's life is ''worse'' than useless. They're actively harmful and toxic towards Reiji. The parents of the other kids aren't much better; Chako's father washes his hands of her and her mother goes along with whatever he says, for example. The only exception is [[spoiler: Shino’oka/Tokiwa, who was able to get Chako out of committing suicide, convincing her that she can choose how her story goes and does not need to rely on Reiji and Esomori.]]

* AdultsAreUseless: Practically every adult in Reiji's life is ''worse'' than useless. They're actively harmful and toxic towards Reiji. The parents of the other kids aren't much better; Chako's father washes his hands of her and her mother goes along with whatever he says, for example. The only exception is [[Spoiler: Shino’oka/Tokiwa, who was able to get Chako out of committing suicide, convincing her that she can choose how her story goes and does not need to rely on Reiji and Esomori.]]

* AdultsAreUseless: Practically every adult in Reiji's life is ''worse'' than useless. They're actively harmful and toxic towards Reiji. The parents of the other kids aren't much better; Chako's father washes his hands of her and her mother goes along with whatever he says, for example. [[Spoiler: The only exception is Shino’oka/Tokiwa, who was able to get Chako out of committing suicide, convincing her that she can choose how her story goes and does not need to rely on Reiji and Esomori.]]

* AdultsAreUseless: Practically every adult in Reiji's life is ''worse'' than useless. They're actively harmful and toxic towards Reiji. The parents of the other kids aren't much better; Chako's father washes his hands of her and her mother goes along with whatever he says, for example.

* IncestSubtext: Yuko is never actively incestuous to Reiji, but as we slowly learn over the course of the series, her obsession with him can rival a lover's sometimes. [[spoiler:Everything she's done up to this point was part of a twisted desire to keep him in the town with her, and she fully intended on dying together with him akin to a lover's suicide. She gets pissed off when Reiji calls out for Nagi before he stabs himself, and Esomori pretty much confirms that she was using Reiji as a substitute for himself when he couldn't die with her as teens.]]

* CallingTheOldManOut: After listening to Esomori's backstory, discovering a chunk of the dark secrets Esomori and Yuko had been hiding, and learning why Esomori met Nagi and decided to come back to the town, Reiji condemns the man and chastises him for misunderstanding the young Yuko and using the events of the series as writing fuel. The reason why this would fall under this trope and not a ReasonYouSuckSpeech is because [[spoiler:at this point, Esomori is revealed to not be his father but his influence and presence make Reiji consider him his spiritual father instead]].

* TheDutifulSon: Filial piety isn't exactly praised in this setting. In fact, anyone offering to stay in the town and help take care of their family is portrayed as a person who gave up on their dreams and "matured" into yet another lifeless adult. [[spoiler:Yuko is an example of such a person, and she's encouraging Reiji to do similar.]]

* StayInTheKitchen: Applied to a lot of the town women. Moving out and heading for the city is often discouraged for girls, often using sexual assault in the city and cautionary tales about girls who left and crashed hard to dissuade their desires to leave. Even ''other girls'' do this, as Chako's mother and Yuko's great-grandmother can attest, leaving generational trauma and making their children perpetuate the cycle of suppressing ''their'' children. In fact, the only girl who willingly left only did so because her husband's job required him to move.

** Sakuko's father never wanted her to go outside of town, constantly rejecting her even when she had the academic prospects to back her up. [[spoiler:After the incident with Reiji, she has finally given up leaving town, but now she's not going ''anywhere''; her reputation at school is ruined and she's become a {{Hikikomori}}.]]

* SuprisinglyRealisticOutcome: [[spoiler:By the three month timeskip, Sakuko's weight is dangerously low, and she's nearly skin and bones when she undresses herself and has noticable eyebags, hinting that she's not at all healthy. The morning she walks out of the newspaper office, she collapses on the street. Not surprising when she's spent the night in Tokyo exerting herself far beyond the sedentary lifestyle she's had stuck in her room, combined with the aforementioned health issues.]]

* TilMurderDoUsPart: [[spoiler:Yuko reveals this was the ''true'' circumstances regarding her husband's death. While he was a genuinely abusive jerk at the time and constantly hurt Yuko and Reiji, Yuko herself manipulated Gen into killing the husband and the father into disposing of the body. The only reason this happens is because she lashed out at Kazumasa's desire to leave town.]]

* SocialServicesDoesNotExist: There is no one to really turn to in their town. Reiji couldn't get any help dealing with his toxic household , his abusive father had to be run off by the local gang rather than the authorities [[spoiler:(or at least that's what Yuko tells him)]], and other signs of domestic abuse, like Shibasawa's financial and emotional hold on him and Chako's father's abuse of her mother, go quietly past the rest of the town. And let's not get into the [[spoiler:underage prostitution, ''also'' perpetuated by a kid's parents]]...

* TheDutifulSon: Filial piety isn't exactly praised in this setting. In fact, anyone offering to stay in the town and help take care of their family is portrayed as a person who gave up on their dreams and "matured" into yet another lifeless adult. [[spoiler:Chako became this, but Reiji is encouraged not to...which fails, as he's lifelessly supporting the Kurose household after he returns Nagi to Esomori.]]

* AllLoveIsUnrequited: It's a rare thing for any cast member's feelings to go reciprocated in this story. Eventually, Sakuko, Shibasawa, and [[spoiler:Gen]] are revealed to be in love with Reiji, but the latter only has eyes for Nagi, whose feelings on ''anything'' are a mystery. Esomori's female high school acquaintance Shino'oka seemed to have a crush on him as well, but he had a mutual crush on Yuko.