Here’s my take after reading 33 chapters of the psychological vampire drama Happiness by Shuuzou Oshimi.
The story is about the timorous high-schooler Makoto Okazaki who’s the favorite target of the school bullies until one fateful day when he is bitten by the “vampire” Nora who uncharacteristically leaves him to decide his fate; “living” or dying.
Nowadays, every media is saturated with vampires and it has already reached a point where people got tired of the concept. However, you should not let that turn you down with Happiness.
My first impression on reading this was “It feels similar to Tokyo Ghoul.”; however, reading further, Happiness is no Tokyo Ghoul and vice versa.
Happiness focuses on the characters’ motivation and actions rather than what the vampire aspect can provide to progress the story.
Characters, especially Makoto and Gosho still have a long way to develop their characters but after the time skip that opened the recent volume, I can say that I am slowly being more connected to each of them.
The art is good for the presentation of the story it’s dark, gloomy, and has that nostalgic feel even though you have not been to the location, setting, and experiences of each of the characters.
It has still yet to develop at this point so I could not say more for the story although I am enjoying every chapter I have read so far.
So with that said at this point, I would give Happiness 8 bloody corpses out of 10.