Manga Review
For my review this month, I read the short manga, The Gods Lie - Kamisama ga Uso wo Tsuku in the original Japanese - by Kaori Ozaki. It's only a single volume in length, so it doesn't take long to read if you find yourself interested. That being said, that is a double-edged sword. We'll get into that more at the end though.
So, The Gods Lie. Very intriguing title, what's it about? Solid bet, not what you're expecting based just on the name. The Gods Lie follows two characters primarily, eleven-year-old Natsuru and Rio. Natsuru is a football fanatic with dreams of becoming a pro one day but his life takes an unfortunate turn when his unskilled but nurturing old coach is hospitalised with cancer and is replaced by a guy who knows his stuff but is, frankly, tough as nails to the point of just being a dick to children. Rio is a girl who seems very mature and put-together for her age on the surface, but the cracks start to show when it is revealed that she is actually living alone with her brother in a run down house while her father is away and has been for a long time.
The plot really kicks off when Natsuru, tired of being belittled and beaten down by his new coach realises that he can't handle going away on the team camp with him. When his mum inadvertently pressures him to go though, he ends up spontaneously faking sick and spending the coming time living with Rio and her younger brother instead. The story then follows the two of them as they bond, learn more about each other and are gradually forced to confront the - sometimes really dark - realities of their situations.
There is a lot to praise about The Gods Lie. So, I'm going to start off by saying that the premise is treated with a very realistic lens for the most part. In particular, Ozaki does a great job of writing very believable characters. Natsuru is a naive and immature boy who makes rash decisions in the heat of the moment without thinking them through. Rio is a girl who seems very grown up on the surface, but in reality is in way over her head and in denial about the truth of her situation. As the story goes on, it becomes very apparent that she too is just a child doing her best in a world she doesn't really understand. The supporting characters get far less time in the spotlight but also all feel more-or-less believable. The main exception to this is Natusuru's mother who feels more like a bad caricature a lot of the time. She does serve her role in the story though.
The story also does a good job of how it handles consequences. Both Natsuru and Rio are forced to grow and learn lessons by the events of the story and the end results of everything that happened for them are handled in a way that feels realistic - something a lot of stories like this would not do.
That is not to say that this is a work without flaws. Actually, despite everything it does so well, I'd say it has some very noticeable problems - even without touching on a rather uncomfortable gag I'd really rather not go into. The main flaws are twofold: the manga is hurt by juxtaposing Rio's much grimmer and more compelling story with Natsuru's more grounded but less engaging one - especially since the story is primarily told through Natsuru's PoV. That isn't to say that this is the end of the world and it was clearly done to help preserve some of the mystery, but neither of the twists are particularly hard to guess and following Rio as at least an equally shared PoV would have made things more compelling and would have leaned more into the thematics that Ozaki was trying to convey.
The second problem is more noticeable. While The Gods Lie does not need to be a long story, it definitely works better keeping it short, it is still too short for what it's trying to do. The manga is meant to be a melancholic tale that is ultimately about the lies we allow ourselves to believe - especially the ones we tell ourselves. Unfortunately, five chapters just wasn't enough time to adequately explore those themes and they ended up feeling shoehorned in… which isn't really ideal for the main theme espoused by your story. The latter chapters also felt quite rushed compared to the much slower pacing of the first two. Ideally the lead-in would have been a bit quicker while the meat of the story would have been given a lot more time to develop so the themes could be explored properly. I think spreading it out over another two to four chapters would have helped a lot.
Where does that leave us? Well, upon finishing The Gods Lie, I was left with a sense of disappointment. Not because the story itself was bad or because I didn't like the art or anything like that. The story itself is really good - conceptually beautiful even - and the art is great. I truly did enjoy reading it. What was unfortunate about The Gods Lie is that it didn't live up to its potential. Instead of being left sitting there pondering the deep thematics and the well crafted characters, I was left sitting there going "oh, that's it." The God's Lie is an A+ concept with C+ execution. In the end I ended up giving it a 6/10. Definitely give it a go if you're interested, but don't let your expectations get too high. It's a good piece of work but it could have been much better.