Japanese: カリスマ
Romaji: Karisuma
English: Charisma
Chinese: 異教主
Original Author: Shindou Fuyuki 新堂冬樹
Series Composition: Yashioji Tsutomu 八潮路力
Artist: Nishizaki Taisei 西崎泰正
Status: Complete
Volume #: 4
Oh man, I can't even decide if this series is a scarily accurate portrayal of humanity or just melodramatic. A lot of the plot is ... sick and perverted. Things get graphic, sexually at times. People die. This is definitely a seinen series (designation for adult men).
Okay, I'll stop tantalizing you. It's about cults and how they break people down mentally and the ensuing consequences. Lost interest yet? Read on. If you are actually interested, don't read too far here. Instead, go find the series and read that. You'll get a much better deal that way.
It starts out with a little boy being dragged out of school and beaten up by his mother, who has taken up a new religion and sees everyone as the devil. When her husband comes home and starts talking about institutionalizing her, she goes nuts and stabs him with a kitchen knife, looking for "the demon that possessed him and is making him talking such terrible things." She then stabs herself because she believes she was contaminated. All of this happens in front of the little boy's eyes.
Fast forward some years. There is this wonderful family of three. The housewife is from a very wealthy family, is very beautiful, and stays young 13 years of marriage and a kid later. The husband is quite plain, not rich, not super good-looking, just your normal salaryman, and still can't quite believe his luck that such a pretty princess married him. The couple is very much in love. Or lust. Or both. The kid is in elementary school and already under tremendous pressure to enter the star middle school to make sure his career stays on track.
The wife's father has always looked down on the husband, especially after he refused to take over the huge family corporation. The wife rather loves him more for that, because she thinks it's a sign that he's in love with her person and not her money. The real reason is he is afraid to be in control of so many people and so much power. He's just kind of wimpy that way. As a result of the huge differences between him and his wife, he is extremely jealous sexually and mate-guard his wife closely.
The wife hears about this program that parents enter, which changes their entire mentality about parenting and education and helps their children do really well in school. She enters this expensive program with the help of the leader of the program, who has waived her fees. What she doesn't know is that this program is actually a part of a cult, and all the parents who provided testimony are just cult followers who were told they were lying for a good cause. The leader of the cult is a fat, huge, bald man who presents himself as the Savior. The program basically takes all the parents to the middle of nowhere and brainwashes them into cult members.
******* REAL Spoilers Alert**************
The Savior is actually the little boy from the beginning of the series. After the whole incident with his parents, he lost all faith in any higher power and decided to take matters into his own hands by punishing anyone who's gullible enough to believe in a cult. He started this cult where all members are made to feel guilty about their lives and become spiritually dependent on him. He extracts money out of them and has sex with the young pretty female ones, disguising the act as a healing ritual.
The housewife looks extremely like his mother, whom he still adores (pre-cult and pre-murder, that is). He has deep psychological problems (no kidding) and he's still looking for images of his kind, loving mother. Thus he wants the housewife for both a mother and a sexual object.
When the housewife returns home from the program, she is completely changed. Brainwashed and numb, she is entirely converted and turns into a spitting image of the Savior's mother years ago. The husband gets really scared and is contacted by an anti-cult group, spearheaded by a psychiatrist, who isolates the housewife from all outside contact (including the husband) and de-brainwashes her. Meanwhile, the anti-cult group strikes out, releasing videos of the Savior's lavish and debaucherous lifestyle on TV (videos obtained by a long-time undercover follower). The cult falls apart except for a handful of hardcore believers, whom the Savior uses to try to take back the housewife from the anti-cult group. In the final showdown, it is revealed (*gasp) that the psychiatrist is actually the minion of the cult leader who caused the Savior's mother's madness years ago. He's been waiting for years for the wind to die down and resurrect his cult when he noticed the Savior's cult. He decided to wait for the new cult to grow bigger and mature before killing the Savior and replacing him, thus obtaining a large cult with virtually no effort. He was also in love with the Savior's mother, and when he saw the housewife who looks so similar, he decided the wait was over and he needs to take more drastic action. Instead of de-brainwashing her, he had the psychiatrist "rewire" (so to speak) her so he becomes her new Savior.
In the final fight, most characters die. The husband musters up some courage and saves the wife, and the Savior and the old cult leader supposedly burn to death together. The husband and wife return to their normal lovely life. Their son doesn't get into the star middle school but is working hard to prepare for a star high school. BUT! In the final final scene, it is revealed (didn't I say this once already) that the Savior survived the fire and is already gathering followers again. Moreover, he is still looking for the housewife.
***************End of Spoilers... I promise************
The series can go as deep or as shallow as you want. On the shallow side, maybe it's just a thrill ride. There's a lot of violence, a lot of trickery, a lot of corruption, a lot of sex, a lot of plot twists in it. It's fun, it's relatively fast-moving, the artwork is not superb but quite suitable to the content material (the Savior is one grotesque human specimen).
But then, you can say that it makes a lot of social commentary on a lot of social issues and human qualities. Religion, for one. What makes established religions any less ridiculous than the cults? It's probably just my anti-religion-ness talking. (Disclaimer: I'm anti-religion, not against God or gods or anything that can be out there. I'm technically not even an atheist.)
I'm just going to make a list of interesting topics that arise from this series:
* The Savior's retaliation against society
* The husband's obsession with his beautiful wife-- not so different from the Savior and the old cult leader's obsession with her
* The one way the cult was able to reach the wife was through her son: his education, his grades, where he is going to end up... in middle school. You know the pressure is too big when your mom would join a cult if it means you go to a nice middle school.
* The husband's lack of courage. He was ALMOST not going to make it when his wife needed him the most. He loves her, it's true, but he's still reluctant to fight for her sometimes.
Just the extent of personality loss that these people suffer under the cult is astounding. I know I know, this is a work of fiction and who knows how real cults operate in real life. But this series is great in that everything is pretty realistic and nothing is TOO forced. People just can't be themselves anymore. And it is so easy to lose yourself, a lot easier than most people would expect.
Bottom line, don't ever join any sort of suspicious group, not even to just try it out.
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