Manga Recommendation: Maria no Danzai/Judgement of Maria

Story contains NSFW content here and there. This story isn't for the faint of heart and for those that are sensitive about graphic things.

Hey guys! Been a while since I've talked about stories I've enjoyed, but I want to brag on this particular one due to how unique the premise is. Ive been following it since May of last year, and its been a helluva ride. 

Maria no Danzai

So basically this is a revenge story, but there is a huge twist. The one enacting the revenge is a boy's mother. So the story is that there is a guy named Nagare Kiritaka, and he ends up catching the ire of a group of five bullies lead by a single person. They are torturing some poor guy in a bathroom stall by pulling him upwards with a rope around his neck. Kiritaka sees this and steps in, interrupting their amusement. This enrages the ringleader and they start going after him instead of the other guy, dishing out all sorts of horrific forms of bullying ranging from feeding him cockroaches, to stomping on him with needles. 

At some point, this reaches its breaking point when one night, Kiritaka gets a text from a member of the bullying group with a deep faked sex video of his mother being used as blackmail material. He is told to meet them at a cliff, and he does show up. Its snowing that night. 

The ringleader named Okaya starts taunting him with the video, and Kiritaka snaps at them, telling them to shut up. This then leads to the ringleader threatening to upload the video if he doesn't jump off that cliff. Kiritaka breaks from despair and jumps, leading to him falling on a road down below and getting hit by a truck. The bad part of it is that his mother tried to find him, and sees her son die before her eyes.

This incident breaks Kiritaka's mom, and changes her forever. She goes from being loving and happy to being jaded and bitter. She feels like she is responsible for his death, until one day she finds countless files on his computer showing the bullies terrible deeds. Videos ranging from him being physically beaten to the bullies threatening to torture animals infront of him. It then connects in the mom's mind that the suicide note left behind by her son was forged, and he was being tortured this whole time.

This revelation breaks her, and then kickstarts her plan to take out vengance on her son's killers.

A timeskip occurs and she becomes a nurse at the school her son used to attend through various means. From here, the revenge begins. As the story progresses, Maria has to outsmart obstacles, and even be careful about her every move, since every bully she takes out, the stakes get higher and she potentially has the police (her ex husband is involved with the police) on her tail.

CHARACTERS

Maria: The main character. After her son's death, she undergoes a crazy transformation using plastic surgery to take on a different appearance. With the evidence of her son's bullying, she carefully investigated each and every bully, and carefully plans out her every action, using the bullies weaknesses against them and executing them based on their style of bullying. So far she has take out two of her son's bullies, but as her path of revenge continues, she battles with her mental health, occasionally showing cracks in her stoic personality. She goes through insane means to achieve her goals.

The antagonists/bullies

Okaya Nozomu: 

Ringmaster. He is a textbook psychopath who somehow subdued the other 4 due to fear and respect. He is implied to be from a wealthy high status family, and in a volume extra, apparently his family owns multiple companies.

Kowase: 

A creepy dude who makes money off of gacha games and the like. He loves to prey on female students and blackmail them with creepshots.

Shikimi: A rude girl who loves to target adult men in love hotels and lie about her age, then proceeding to blackmail them for money along with her gangster co-worker she collects money with. She has no real friends aside from her fellow bullies, and loves to cause trouble

Kinugawa: Tall muscular dude with blonde hair. His method of bullying is flat out physical violence and abuse, using his strength or things such as spiked boots or whips.

Akiji: Most mysterious bully. No one knows what he does, but its implied he is the one closest to the ringleader Okaya.

Misc antagonists:

The principal: He is a creepy sexual predator who likes to target women working around him, or try to peer pressure his fellow staff into shutting up about incidents at the school. He's in it to falsely boost his schools status amongst his peers.

Gangster Ilijima: A man who Shikimi worked with and extorted money with. He's associated with a band of quasi-gangster thugs.

The ex-husband detective Nagare: The man Maria broke up with to pursue her path. He begins to investigate the deaths of the bullies after the first one dies, and the investigation ramps up after the second one is taken out.

So far Mari is 2 bullies in, 3 more to go! The story is only getting better, but its a biweekly release with some breaks! I'm a huge fan of this story due to its unique premise, and how the main character isn't just a 2D torturer, but struggles with her mental health and death of her son. It makes her a bit more human.

Btw, enjoy the insane artstyle. Its very expressive XD