Takopi's Original Sin Review: Sixteen Chapters That Will Take Apart Anyone Who Was a Bullied Kid

I read Takopi's Original Sin on the Shōnen Jump+ app the week it finished serialization. I remember the night I read the last chapter because I closed the app and went to wash the dishes, and somewhere between the rice cooker and the soap I started crying so hard I had to sit on the kitchen floor. It is 16 chapters. It is two volumes. It is the most damaging short manga I have read this decade.

I'm Yu. I was a quiet kid who got picked on for years. Some manga reach into a specific cabinet in your head that you closed a long time ago. This one walked into the cabinet, sat down, and asked if I wanted to talk about it.

Quick Take

• Taizan 5's Takopi's Original Sin ran on Shōnen Jump+ from December 2021 to March 2022 — 16 chapters across two tankōbon volumes; VIZ Media collected it as a single combined English omnibus on November 21, 2023.
• An alien from the "Happy Planet" arrives to spread happiness, lands in the life of a nine-year-old girl who has already decided this is her last week, and uses time loops to try to fix what cannot be fixed by a magic device.
• Rated M (Mature) — on-page child suicide, on-page child death, domestic abuse, and bullying. Please respect the content warnings; this is not "dark for fun." It is dark because it is honest.

Story Overview

Takopi is a Happy-chan: a small, octopus-shaped alien from the Happy Planet whose species exists to make people happy. He carries a satchel of "Happy Gadgets" — toys that produce small joys. He lands on Earth and meets Shizuka Kuze, a fourth-grader.

Shizuka is being bullied with a meticulousness that reads like real life: a ringleader, Marina Kirarazaka, who used to be her friend; an absent father; a mother who is exhausted and not paying attention; one dog she loves and one classmate, Naoki Azuma, who is too scared of his own family situation to intervene. Takopi tries to fix her sadness with his gadgets. They don't work. Then he comes back from running an errand and finds her hanging from a rope.

The time loop starts there. Takopi can rewind. He starts trying — every gadget, every conversation, every approach — and each loop reveals more. Marina has a father at home who hits her. Naoki's mother has shaped his entire interior life around being her perfect son. The "bullying" Shizuka is suffering is one of three small children spilling the contents of their lives onto each other for lack of any adult who can stop it. And Takopi, in his desperation to fix things, eventually does something irreversible — to Marina. He has Naoki help him cover it up.

The second volume is the spiral after that. The series ends, mercifully, with Takopi understanding what "make her happy" actually requires of him.

Characters

Takopi — Cheerful, naïve, devoted to a single mission he doesn't have the framework to understand. His arc is the one I keep returning to: he learns that "happiness" is not something you can give a child whose life is on fire. He learns that an outside actor cannot fix this. The species that exists to spread joy is unequipped to handle a fourth-grade girl in the middle of Japan in 2022, and watching him understand that — slowly, panel by panel — is the structural devastation of the story.

Shizuka Kuze — Nine years old. The manga does not flatten her into "the bullied child." She is observant, kind to her dog, slightly stubborn, fully a person. She has decided to die because the math of her life has stopped working. Taizan 5 draws her with the same round-cheeked simplicity as Takopi, which is the worst trick the manga plays: she looks like she should be unreachable by what is happening to her.

Marina Kirarazaka — The ringleader of the bullying. Volume 2 reveals her home — a violent father, a mother who has stopped pretending — and the manga makes the simplest, hardest argument: the cruelty Marina is performing on Shizuka is the cruelty she is receiving at home, redirected at the only smaller body in her life.

Naoki Azuma — A classmate caught between his mother's expectations and what he can see is happening to Shizuka. He is the closest thing the manga has to a witness who could intervene, and he doesn't. The reasons he doesn't are explored carefully and they are not flattering to him but they are recognizable.

What I Love About It

What I love about Takopi's Original Sin is that it refuses the redemption story.

Everything about the setup — the alien, the gadgets, the time loops — is the architecture of a feel-good redemption arc. Cute alien comes to Earth, fixes lonely girl's life, learns about friendship, goes home happy. That book exists. Taizan 5 doesn't write that book. The gadgets don't work. The loops make things worse. The alien commits a killing. The cover-up corrupts the witness. The story refuses to let "happiness" be a problem you can solve with the right tool.

What you get instead is something quieter and more useful. The manga, in its last chapters, redefines what "making her happy" means. It is not "fixing the bullying." It is not "removing the bully." It is not "giving her a gadget to feel good." It is the much harder, much less satisfying work of being a witness to a child's pain and staying with it. By the end Takopi understands this, at a cost.

I cannot read this story as fiction. I have a younger cousin who was bullied in elementary school and whose parents did not see it for two years. The thing the manga gets right — that the adults in a child's life can be quietly absent in a way that is not malicious but is catastrophic — is the part that does not feel invented.

Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The chapter where Takopi finally enters Marina's house and sees what is happening to her there is, structurally, the manga's pivot. Up until this point the story has been about saving Shizuka. From this chapter forward it is about understanding that "the bully" is also a nine-year-old girl whose life has been on fire for longer than Shizuka's has.

Taizan 5 doesn't milk the reveal. The home is drawn in the same flat, plain panel style as the school. Marina's father is just a man at a table. The violence is not staged for spectacle; it's staged the way it happens, which is at low volume and without anyone in the room to call it what it is. Takopi watches, and the simple round-eyed alien face Taizan 5 has been using for 30 chapters of cheerful gadget delivery breaks for the first time.

That single panel — Takopi looking, and not understanding what to do — is when the manga turned from "very good" to "permanent."

Pros & Cons

Pros:

• Two volumes, finished, collected as a single English omnibus from VIZ — a complete reading commitment that fits in an afternoon.
• The "cute art / brutal content" contrast is used deliberately, not as edgelord aesthetic.
• The final chapter is the right ending, not the satisfying one.

Cons:

• Genuinely heavy content; if you are not in a place to read on-page child suicide and domestic abuse, this is not the manga for right now.
• The cute art may mislead casual readers into picking it up unprepared.
• Some readers find the ending insufficiently triumphant; the book is choosing honesty over catharsis.

Is Takopi's Original Sin Worth Reading?

Yes — if you can read it. It is one of the most important short manga published in the last several years. Skip it if heavy content about children isn't something you can metabolize right now; the book will still be there.

Who Is This Manga For?

• Readers of A Silent Voice and I Want to Eat Your Pancreas who want the unsweetened version.
• Anyone who works with kids and wants a piece of fiction that takes their inner lives seriously.
• Readers who like short, complete manga that earn their length.
• People for whom the bullying you saw or experienced is something you still think about as an adult.

Official English Translation Status

VIZ Media released Takopi's Original Sin as a single combined English-language volume on November 21, 2023, collecting all 16 chapters / two Japanese volumes in one book. It is available in print and digital.

Where to Buy

The VIZ omnibus is the only English edition and is the most convenient way to read it. Available in print and through digital storefronts.

Find Takopi's Original Sin on Amazon →

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