YMMV / Maria no Danzai

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Maria snapping at Taiichiro while going through their divorce, despite being clearly saddened by it. Was she blaming him in some measure for their son's death and feeling sorry for a grief-induced reaction, or had she already decided to carry on her revenge plan and wanted to cut any tie with Taiichiro? And in that case, was it done to spare him the moral conflict or to make sure he wouldn't investigate on her? And there was her reaction to meeting him again at the nightclub. While she's unhappy at the thought of him standing in her way, there is enough ambiguity in her reaction to make a case that she either does not want to hurt him or still blames him for their son's death and is angry at him that he is going to stand in her way as she gets revenge for their son.
• Broken Base: Of course, there's a fairly large slice of readers convinced that by divorcing her husband and leaving him a broken man with no one to turn to, Maria has in her own way gone much too far. She could have course corrected by showing Taiichiro (a police inspector) Kiritaka's accumulated evidence that she had discovered during her mourning period and see to it the gang of bullies be put to justice that way. On the other hand, there's the side of the reader base who are all too familiar with Japanese true-crime stories, like the 40-day torture and death of Junko Furuta, to trust that Kiritaka's bullies wouldn't game the legal system by knowing they'll be tried as minors, or in Okaya's case, use his connections and reputation he's tailored to weasel his way out of justice's reach.
• Catharsis Factor: Typical for a revenge manga that deals with demonic bullies.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Maria takes time out of her work schedule and her revenge plot to answer anonymous emails from the students. One such email comes from a girl whose boyfriend wants to have sex without protection; Maria doesn't advise her to either break up or to stay together, but instead tells her why his attitude is wrong and gives her advice on what to do if she still wants to stay with him.
  • The birth of Kiritaka in the extra content. Taiichiro and Mari were very happy for the birth of their son. The extra content in later volumes has a picture of a toddler Kiritaka too. He's so adorable!
    "Today is the most blissful day of my life."
  • When Atsuki declares that he's sober and the principal cows him into having a drink anyway, Maria distracts him while switching Atsuki's glass with regular water. She had nothing to gain from this, and even got groped for her trouble; she simply did it out of kindness.
  • In chapter 15, OUR SUMMER VACATION, we see an image panel of Yashima a month after Kowase's disappearance; she's shown going to a café with one of her friends during the summer holidays, with a serene smile on her face. It's great to know that after all her suffering with that monster Kowase, she is recovering and happy while Kowase got what he deserved. It is better that Yashima has a genuine happy ending because Maria steps in and helps her while getting rid of her tormentor. It's nice to see one character in this story get a happy ending.
    • Unfortunately, chapter 20 reveals that Yashima is still very traumatized by the abuse she suffered from Kowase and is afraid that the police will investigate her for his disappearance, showing that her previous happiness was temporary.
  • An easy-to-ignore fact is that Taiichiro's partner still stays by his side despite the detective being condemned as an abusive father regardless of the lack of proof. He understands the man better than the rest of the police department to know how much he loves his family and tries to give him words of encouragement.
  • Maria comforts Yashima after the latter confesses to her that she was with Kowase when he disappeared (which the nurse knows anyway). The girl didn't tell the police in fear of being a suspect and because, understandably, she doesn't want him to be found. Maria pats her head and says that what happened to Kowase is a secret between them, making Yashima realize that the nurse knew about her relationship with that monster. It shows the positive impact Maria has on her and how much Yashima trusts her for her compassion.
  • Even after Shikimi socially isolated him from the rest of the students, Kiritaka still had one friend left in Yuda, the boy he saved when he first became Okaya's target. Yuda was so grateful to Kiri for saving his life that the two would often study together at his place, with Yuda often becoming concerned for Kiri's health upon noticing his bruises.
• Iron Woobie: Kiritaka puts up with the constant torture he suffers at the hands of Okaya and his friends because one, he doesn't want to worry his mother; and two, because he's patiently waiting to collect dirt on Okaya before he can unveil his bullies for the monsters that they are. Unfortunately, he doesn't live long enough to do so.
• Moe: Baby◊ Kiritaka◊.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • Chapter 3:
    • After being abused non-stop by Kowase for who knows how long, Yashima finally takes a stand and dares Kowase to post her shoplifting and sex videos online — she'll pay him back by telling everyone of all the nasty things he did to her. Even if her future is ruined, Yashima has decided that it's better than having to put up with Kowase for one more day.
    • Maria saves Yashima by kidnapping Kowase and taking him away to ensure he never troubles anyone ever again.
  • Chapter 10: After Shikimi sends Iijima to beat up Maria, she easily handles all three of the thugs following him.
  • Chapter 20: With only a single clue pointing towards his existence and a hunch based on Yashima's own trauma, Maria successfully deduces the identity of the mysterious third party responsible for Iijima's death.
  • Chapter 24: Kinugawa uses a picture of Taiichiro's family to catch him by surprise and beat him to a bloody pulp. After he stops moving, Kinugawa tries to collect the picture from Taiichiro's hand; he immediately grabs Kinugawa's wrist and warns him not to touch Mari. The man is covered in his own blood and has a glass shard in his eye, but the love he still feels for his ex-wife is more than enough for Taiichiro to shrug off the pain.
• Moral Event Horizon: To be blunt, Okaya and his demonic friends have already skipped rope with the line both by the time the manga starts and before the events of the story as we see their crimes in the present and in flashbacks, which show them to be irredeemable monsters whose torture and deaths are cause for celebration. Below is a list of their most unforgivable acts.
  • The point of no return for Okaya and his friends is when they threaten Kiritaka with a porn video that has Mari's face edited on top of the actress, then use it to blackmail him into jumping to his death. For their sick amusement. It is made clear that they don't care that he broke his legs to the point where you can see his bones sticking out, and when he dies, they are afraid of getting in trouble and eventually frame Kiri's parents as being Abusive Parents and Kiri himself as having committed suicide so they could avoid paying for their actions. It was made clear in the story that Okaya and his friends have zero remorse for causing Kiritaka's death and move on with their lives, destroying other lives along the way.
  • Even before THAT, Okaya and his friends thought it would be a fun game to strangle a classmate over the toilet with a rope while betting how long he'll beg before the poor kid can handle all the torture he's put through. And because Kiritaka swooped in and saved said classmate, this event led to him becoming their new target.
  • Tsubasa Kowase would take pictures of his female classmates' underwear and sell them on the black market; he would also use blackmail to abuse shy girls knowing they would not fight back as they were too docile to stand up to him. He eventually tried to drown his latest victim, Yashima, and it was revealed that he once forced Yashima to have sex with him, with the implication being that she may not have been the first.
  • Kumiru Shikimi would isolate people by framing them for crimes; she isolated Kiritaka from their classmates by framing him for stealing her gym clothes, ensuring that he would endure the bullying and abuse she and her gang inflicted upon him alone. She would also scam lonely men by pretending to be older and acting like a caring girlfriend before revealing her age and having her thug beat them, something that she cruelly calls "fishing".
• Nausea Fuel:
  • Okaya stomps on Kiritaka's bento lunch, waits for cockroaches to start eating it, then tries to force-feed them to Kiritaka while explaining in gruesome detail how many eggs cockroaches can lay, how quickly they grow and reproduce, and how likely it is that Kiritaka's stomach will eventually burst open from a cockroach infestation.
  • The way Shikimi meets her end. She is Thrown Down a Well where she lands into a puddle of honey. As she looks around, she sees numerous roaches, centipedes and other bugs approaching her, attracted by the honey. She is wearing nothing but a night gown, has her hands tied behind her back and there nothing she can do as a centipede slithers inside her ear, a cockroach moves inside her mouth and the other bugs begin to get inside her clothes and move to the rest of her orifices. Shikimi can do nothing but scream in agony, saying she is sorry as she suffers a lonely and painful death. The bitch deserved it.
  • Kinugawa takes the trope to a new extreme when he strangles Kiritaka in a flashback while he's in the middle of throwing up, choking him with his own vomit.
• Spiritual Successor: To Juujika no Rokunin:
  • Both protagonists dedicated their life for revenge against satanic bullies for killing their family in the most deserving and gruesome way possible.
  • The respective bullies' leaders, Kyou Shigoku and Nozomu Okaya, are both the Big Bad and The Sociopath who are way worse than the gang as they are responsible for killing the protagonists' loved one(s) as young teenagers and don't care about their group.
  • The manga has sexual scenes, though Juujika no Rokunin has more unhinged ones.
• The Woobie:
  • Kiritaka is bullied gruesomely (to the point it borders on torture, like with the above force feeding example), tries to hide the truth from his mother and suffers a Cruel and Unusual Death. His death breaks his parents and sets them apart, and motivates Maria into being a Bully Hunter.
  • Maria finds her son's corpse, realizing he was Driven to Suicide. Because Japan's justice system is a flop when it comes to punishing bullies she takes matters in her own hands and singlehandedly punishes the kids that caused it.

---