Arigatou

From Vol 1

Released 1994, Arigatou (lit. Thank You) by Naoki Yamamoto is a depressing manga about a dysfunctional family, the Suzukis. It ain't for the faint of the heart.

The Suzukis, consisting of the parents, overworked Ichiro and Sakura, an alcoholic housewife, and their two daughters a gang-raped Akiko, and a mentally unstable Takako and the manga is about their lives.

Tropes used in Arigatou include:

• The Alcoholic: Sakura, the girls' mother, is secretly one. Eventually, she replaces her booze habit with cult meetings.
• Ambiguous Disorder: This is more the case with Takako because it's clear somethin' ain't right about her mentally. She seems to be detached, moody, prone to mood swings, and hypersexual.
• Babies Ever After: At some point, from what's implied, Takako had a baby with Kakibara
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Hella averted, for a manga that's not a hentai. Admittedly, it's rather played with, as we see super closeups but we don't see explicit details of the parts themselves.
• Black Comedy: At some points.
• A Date with Rosie Palms: Takako seems to be a compulsive masturbator. In the first chapter, she's shown to be doing just that.
• Dysfunctional Family: Well duh. Ichiro is overworked and hardly home (the story or most of it takes place after he comes home from working overseas), Sakura is secretly an alcoholic, who spends the family money on booze, and the girls have some unaddressed mental health concerns. Apparently, they're so dysfunctional that, by the end of the manga, Ichiro concludes that they can't function together and so they have to split up and it seemed to have worked out.
• Eyes Always Shut: Sakura almost always has her eyes shut and, in one of the few times she doesn't, it's jarring, like at her cult meeting.
• No Name Given:"Glasses Boy" was only known as "Glasses Boy" and it's not like Takako would be interested in gettin' know his name either. His real surname is "Kakibara".
• Offing the Offspring: At one point, after Takako comes home after runnin' away, Ichiro opts to try and kill her. He doesn't succeed in this, no, and they kinda sorta go back to any approximation of "normal" after that.
• Parental Favoritism: As Ichiro admits to Takako, his favoritism of Akiko wasn't right and that he's been alienating himself from Takako, however, he concedes this for prolly wrong reasons.
• Parents as People: Deconstructed to hell and back. It's hard being a parent, yes, but it's harder still when both parents have some issues they won't address. Ichiro wants to do right by his family but he doesn't have the best way of going about it and Sakura, more or less, checked out.
• Papa Wolf: While he's not the best at protecting his kids, Ichiro does come through at different points, like attacking and fighting the delinquents who gangeraped Akiko and going out to look for a runaway Takako.
• Rape as Drama: The first chapter has Akiko being gang-raped, though the encounter did, initially, start off as consensual (or seemed to). She's gangraped again while Ichiro is made to watch.
• Reality Ensues: Being gang-raped would do something to the psyche, as Akiko demonstrates. Besides the repressed memories, she has flashbacks and, at one point, for a while, she becomes agoraphobic.
• Sudden Name Change: Is Akiko's name "Akiko" or "Shouko"? The earlier chapters suggest that her family doesn't really remember her name, half of the time.
• Suicide Dare: In an attempt at tough love, Ichiro tells Akiko to do this. Yeah, uh, what he didn't count on her was her actually attempting.
• Teens Are Monsters: Besides the group of delinquents gang-raping Akiko, there's a small group of teens that toss a dude off a roof. Kakibara doesn't die but damn.
• Teen Pregnancy: It's implied that the baby Kakibara is holding is Takako's and the latter is implied to be in high school.
• Title Drop: The title comes from Ichiro's last words to his family, "Arigatou"
• Tomboy: Takako, who, at different points, looks more like a boy than she would a girl.
• The Topic of Cancer: Ichiro was mentioned to have stomach cancer. He doesn't survive a third bout with it
• Vague Age: Takako. We know that she's younger than Akiko, who, at one point, was stated to be about 16, and one chapter says that Takako was in middle school. The only thing that's concrete is that Takako is older than 12.

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