So when I found out about the show 'The Glory' everything about it, from premise to the nature of its bullying got me thinking back to another manga title: "LIFE"
Trigger Warning: Anecdotes of Bullying, mentions of assault, SA and SI.
How many people remembered this manga when Tokyopop was at its hayday?
Back when manga was still new to me at 14, I remembered borrowing Fruits Basket volumes and would sometimes see this image as a manga advertisement. All the while, it gave a clear warning it was rated r18+ due to its violence and heavily mature themes. It took me 3 years later to finally get access into reading it. and what I saw both horrified me, and opened up wounds I never thought I had until I read it.
This panel specifically. The moment I realised I was bullied was when the heroine Ayumu had bravely said to her bullies that she would rather be alone than to suffer under these girls' torments.
The story of LIFE contrary to The Glory, was about a girl Ayumu who was estranged from her friend in middle school and went through a point of her grief that led her to self-harming herself. After the estrangement, she had found herself starting anew in her high school, and found herself befriending another girl Manami and hoped to live through her high school years without failure. That was until Manami's crush assaulted Ayumu, creating a horrifying misunderstanding which led Manami brutally bullying Ayumu with every opportunity she gets. From drugs to assault, from self-harm to brutal violence; everything about this manga felt like a survivor's story of how someone who lived through it all.
Everything about this manga, from its beginning to end was one of the hardest stories I've ever read. down to the finish line, some plot threads presented didn't feel as conclusive as any reader may have hoped. But, that was the point of the manga. The title itself, 'LIFE' was intentional, as it felt like the author's cry to the readers to see life in its cruelty, just as she tries her best to aspire hope to those who fell victim to bullying.
I must confess, that now that I am older, the memories of my own psychological scars feels more painful now than it did almost an entire decade ago. Even just the first 20 minutes of the Glory's first episode was already reopening those wounds for me that I couldn't bring myself to even continue it. From the physical scars to the scars unseen, a part of me felt angry to hear the opinion that bullying depicted in these stories are an exaggeration.
Stories like 'the glory' and 'LIFE' are far from an exaggeration when it came to bullying in East Asia or even South East Asia. There was a reason I've come to hate the memories I had from my birth country. And much of the cultures that exhibit such violent behaviours are just the tip of the iceberg. I've seen my brother held down as he was getting kicked by boys who were twice his height. My sister was bullied by boys as a child to the point she hated men for almost all of her entire primary years. I've seen the girl whom I once 'idolized' as my friend corner another girl just because she didn't like her habit of apologising. Throw her bag to the ground and scatter her notes just to prove a point that the girl needed to 'fix' herself. And like an idiot that I was, I earnestly believed I was the one in the wrong for being rejected by my bullying friend just because I kept saying sorry. That girl was the start to my suicidal ideation and to this day, I could never forget the day she mocked my tears as she continued to torment me.
Everything about what is depicted in both the Glory and LIFE may be seen as an exaggeration. Now to be fair, I'll give these perspectives the benefit of the doubt, because all who make such light claims must've come from a place where they haven't experienced the same horrors that the characters depicted have gone through. But that's not to say their struggles are lesser. It's only that it does bite at me when people make this matter lighter than what it actually is.
After I had discovered the real-life counterpart that inspired 'the glory' in the first place, my heart breaks at the confirmation. And it is true that more times, life imitates art, its stories like LIFE and the Glory that proves that art truly does imitate life.
All of this now said, to those who had suffered under such scrutiny, harm and violence altogether. To those who had endured such cruel experiences of being bullied. Hold onto hope. As harsh and as cruel as it is, for as long as you live, you can still find it. You can still find the strength to hold on. Maybe these words come off as hollow, but as I write this, I'm telling myself the same words everyday. There is always a way to get back on your feet for as long as you live. It's just the matter of building up the courage to find strength to stem that tide.
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