Botabota
Drip Drip

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"In this world, everyone is made the same. They all have that fake innocent expression on their faces, but the truth is they're all nothing more than animals in clothes. And it's terrifying".

Mako Higari is the protagonist of this story, a 29 years old hygiene freak, with a singular pathology that makes her nose bleed profusely (it’s exagerated to the extent that it's like a crime scene every time) as soon as she comes in contact with something dirty, whether they are objects or people, a condition that limits her life considerably.

With an effective mix of odd and funny moments, this manga shows the ... reality of those suffering from an obsessive compulsive disorder: loneliness. Mako will desperately seek out a partner who will accept her for who she is and help her have a more normal life.
The plot never becomes corny, with the ability to deal with such delicate issues with an ironic tone and at the same time also showing the right amount of drama.

From a bizarre and grotesque incipit, with quite unexpected developments, we arrive in the end with a deeper message of acceptance: in choosing between compulsively repudiating in fear everything that is dirty or wanting to wallow in it blissed, where "dirt" takes on a sinful meaning, which contains deceptions, love and even destiny.

It was a fun read, despite their is restrictions of nudity, Blood and some inappropriate scene. At first, definitely it was a surprise to see such drawing, felt a little awkward to read but, as the chapters progressed it became normal. For the artistic value of the manga, first impression was "well drawn with colour", then the rest are just rough work of the magaka. The main character Higari Mako is the one, story is based around and it gives similar feeling of Tomei manga but with less horror and more real world troubles for a woman with abnormal body.

The title of the manga Botabota, ... word for word translation for 'Drip drip'. Makes sense as the protagonist of the story Higaro Mako having her blood bleed out of her body, every sequence she tries to make interference with someone. Plot shows, woman with burning desire that has been put on a stop due to abnormality. To clean the path of her abnormality and bring her normal life back, she picks fight against her body on daily basis. Mako has been patient of a disease that makes her nose bleed, each time she came in contact with unhygien or uncleaned or dirty. Result of the abnormality makes her a very disciplined person with love towards cleanliness and good hygiene, at the same time negative effect of living a lonely life and nor relationship status. She is rich by her hardworking profession but has nowhere to spend the money neither any reason to keep wealth as they gave no guarantee of always being pure as sanitized. She tries to make out with several woman, but her plan fails she gets nose bleed in massive amount as she encounter them while intercourse. She tries to pull accidental love patch up with males but ends the same way. Cause of her concern could be her mother's forced teachings of cleanliness after the trauma of her parent's separation. She finds little stable in her life when she meets her childhood classmate Tokuma Ryunosuke. She realise only pure love and trust is cure for her nose bleed disease but their relationship doesn't stay long as soon as her nose bleed gets back and come to know Ryunosuke's true fraud story. At last she has seen all of lies with ending her story with trust and relationship.
For short story reader, do check it out.

(SPOLIERS AHEAD)

Story:

Bota Bota is a short story about Mako, a woman that has a condition that makes her bleed from touching dirty things since she's germaphobe. A problem she got from her mother after she divorced her father and soon later was forced onto her as well basically. Even with this situation she's in she still wants to find a true lover throughout the story, which is of course harder than it seems for her.

The story is quite a simple one as you'd expect from a manga with only 9 chapters, but it's still done quite well even since Mako's condition would probably get ... pretty annoying if this was a full fledge manga instead. It leads to a lot of the same outcomes most of the time, but it's interesting getting to see how it lead to such events that look straight out of a horror movie (which is something the manga literally said lol).

Up until chapter 5 we basically have all stories that are ended in the same chapter that they're introduced and all really just end at the same outcome, which is Mako bleeding once they try to have sex. None of them are inherently bad, just stories that give us the same ending of Mako leaving in blood and with no boyfriend.

That being said, chapter 5 is where I'd say the manga picks up the pace and gets more interesting since from there until the end we get a proper story that doesn't end almost immediately as it's introduced. Speaking of chapter 5, it has probably my favorite scene in the manga which shows a bit of Mako's badass side when she forcefully sticks her hand inside a dude's mouth to make herself spray blood all over him.


Art:

The art is inconsistent, sometimes looking very beautiful and at other times being wonky. I still enjoyed it for the most part though since it didn't really distract me from the story, but it did enhance it at the times it looked good.

When Mako and the guy and are planning their marriage there's a cool hallucination the dude has that I really liked and of course eventually ends up coming true at the end of the story.

Character(/Story Pt. 2):

Most of the characters are quite static overall with Mako really being the only one who changes at the end you could say. Though this doesn't really bug me since it's quite short so it's not like there's exactly much time to develop the characters.

Speaking of Mako, she's of course the most interesting and enjoyable out of all of the ones shown since she gets the most screen time. Learning most of the problems she has comes from her mother and how acted after the divorce of the father we never really get to see. It's funny/crazy to see all the lengths she'll go to just to find a lover though, like literally chasing a man out of a hotel with boiling water. At the end of the story she gets semi better about this and becomes more with herself, but we'll get to that very soon.

As previously said, the manga has more of a proper story around chapter 5 since the man introduced will be with Mako until the end of the story, he's nothing crazy besides the fact that we later on find out he's a big asshole which comes to bite him in the face (rightfully) at the end. Mako being basically in a trance over the fake persona he puts on for her, still choosing to be in love with him even though her nosebleed says otherwise for certain parts of it. Once they're finally getting married the guy hallucinates once again which we find out to come true with Mako having blood all over her dress.

The dress now soaked in her blood and crows flying around the church as a nice way to symbolize the death of their marriage (or that's at least what I got out of it).

Mako deciding to (reasonably) break off the marriage with the asshole and going back to trying to find another love while also coming closer with herself in the end and realizing what love truly is.

Enjoyment:

This was an easy read that I personally enjoyed even if I didn't rate it as high as others, it got straight to the point and executed it well too.

Overall: (6/10)

I'd recommend this short story to anybody like me who wants to read more manga but finds it hard to fully commit to the more longer ones.