Title: Brutal: Confessions of a Homicide Investigator

Creator: Kei Koga (Original Story) and Ryo Izawa (Art and adaptation)

Demographic: Seinen

Themes: crime and punishment, serial killers, thriller, horror

Status: On indefinite hiatus but fully translated 

Published By: Tokuma Shoten

LINK

Official Summary:

There is a man who delivers the most painful death to hardened criminals the law can’t judge: Hiroki Dan, Metropolitan Police Department Homicide Division. The son of the former commissioner, he seems to be on a solid career path. But in secret, he’s a serial killer who’s murdered over 100 criminals. An eye-for-eye murder suspense story begins in this spinoff of “Trace: Forensic Scientific Researcher’s Recollections.”

Thinky Thoughts

I nearly bit through my hand while reading the first chapter of Brutal.

I’m not kidding. I had my left hand in my mouth the whole dang time, and I was gnawing away to the point where I had to pull back before I popped something. I couldn’t help myself though, because this is the kind of vicious, dark series I love. It reminded me of what it felt like the first time I read Otsuichi’s Goth – thrilled, anxious, eager. I couldn’t look away then and I couldn’t look away this time.

I was on the edge of  my seat and screaming every single time Hiroki Dan, the main character and Dexter-esque murderer we follow for the series, developed his little eye twitch upon hearing a new case that he felt needed his attention. 

The stories in Brutal are well… brutal. The creators pull zero punches and the content is intensely disturbing from the start. This is a spin-off of Trace: Kasouken Houi Kenkyuuin no Tsuisou, a series where rookie forensic researcher Sawaguchi Nonna teams up with forensic researcher Mano Reiji and they work together to solve crimes… including the murder of Mano’s family when he was younger. So from the jump, this was never going to be a series that coddled the reader. 

Brutal begins with a young man sitting in an apartment, surrounded by mess as he digs into a meal. When the “camera” pans in a different panel and shows some of the things in his room, it’s revealed that he’s a serial killer with a penchant for young victims and the nasty habit of sending their remains to their parents. The main story in the first arc is set after the murderer has been released from prison after eighteen years – because he was a minor, if I’m remembering correctly – and he plans to write and publish a book detailing his two crimes. It quickly becomes a bestseller and audiences, while disgusted with themselves in public, salivate over reading the reenactment of his crimes. 

There’s where homicide detective Hiroki Dan comes in. Hiroki Dan is a quiet and publicly amiable young man who’s risen in the ranks in his local police department. As he and his coworkers watch the news, we see the first sign of his telltale twitch, the biggest sign that someone is about to get got. Hiroki Dan is, by the way, a character I’m frankly obsessed with. He is such a freak, I say fondly. 

His revenge – the justice he takes on behalf of people that can’t do it themselves – always fits the crime. It’s giving… Saw. (I say as a person who has watched exactly one of those films and then needed to go somewhere and cry.)  He’s on some “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” shit and it is stunning.

Hiroki Dan is just so… incredible in his responses. Whatever the criminals do in their original act, he heaps it on them two fold. I can’t describe the deaths without having to describe the crimes beforehand (which are all heinous, the series requires all of the trigger warnings for all of the things), but you will leave each arch like “oh okay, I see why that had to happen that way”. 

At the end of the first arc, you get a brief glimpse into why Hiroki Dan is doing what he’s doing after he goes to confession in a remote town and essentially tries to get headpats for committing murders in response to horrific crimes. 

Dan: I’ve torn the evil apart and burnt it, leaving no trace

The Priest: That’s… You did a good deed

Dan: I had a beloved friend. I want to see him again in the kingdom of heaven. That’s all I ever wish for. That’s why I need to do a lot of ‘good deeds’. 

And it continues to crack me up that he does actually (if vaguely) confess his crimes, apparently at the end of every arc even if they don’t show it, but the priests don’t take him seriously or think to report it because, “As long as he didn’t do anything to you then, it’s safe”. 

Which is true… until it isn’t. 

I think that Brutal is ultimately incredibly pleasing to me – and would be pleasing to the homies if I could make them read it. At the point where the series has stopped, we don’t have a concrete explanation for why Hiroki Dan feels the need to get justice in this way. He’s alluded to two things across the series, the friend who has died before him and a woman he wishes he could’ve killed, but we don’t actually know what happened. And… considering how long this series has been on hiatus? It seems unlikely that we’ll actually find out what actually happened anytime soon.

I am so deeply satisfied by this series even with the weight of the hiatus looming overhead.