Is My Dearest Self With Malice Aforethought Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Manga (seinen), 98 chapters, 11 volumes
Run	2018–2020 · completed
Community score	AniList 8.1
Content	Violence, disturbing psychological themes, murder
Where to read	Kodansha — official

Overview

Eiji Urashima has spent his whole life trying to live down the fact that his father was LL, a serial killer who terrorized the country before being caught. Eiji's built a quiet, unremarkable life for himself — until he starts waking up with no memory of the last few days, a girlfriend he doesn't remember getting, and a bloody bat hidden in his closet. Someone, or something, has been using his body while he's been gone, and the manga spends its run figuring out exactly who and why.

What it does well

The premise is the strongest thing about this series, and Hajime Inoryu and Shota Ito know it — the story gets moving fast and rarely lets up. Instead of stretching the "who's been controlling my body" question out for the sake of it, new information keeps arriving at a pace that makes each volume feel like it's earning its place. That's rarer than it should be in this genre.

What keeps it grounded is Eiji himself. He's not a chosen-one type or a genius detective — he's a scared, ordinary guy who's spent years terrified that his father's violence is somehow inside him too, and every twist in the plot gets filtered through that specific fear. The mystery isn't just "what happened," it's "am I becoming him," and that personal stake is what makes the more outlandish plot turns land instead of feeling like pure spectacle.

Shota Ito's art deserves credit here too. A story built around blackouts, stolen time, and unreliable memory lives or dies on whether the reader can track what's real, and the linework stays clean and expressive even when the narrative is deliberately disorienting. Faces do a lot of work carrying tension in the quieter chapters between big reveals.

Where it falls short

The final stretch leans harder on twist mechanics than the earlier volumes did, and a couple of the reveals only work because a character conveniently didn't mention something they had every reason to bring up sooner. It's the kind of thing you can forgive in the moment but that doesn't hold up much under scrutiny afterward. The supporting cast also thins out in terms of characterization — several people orbiting Eiji exist mainly to supply plot information rather than feel like they have lives of their own outside the mystery.

Verdict

This is a genre thriller that mostly does exactly what it sets out to do: hook you with a disturbing premise and keep tightening the screws until the reveal. It's not going to redefine the identity-thriller manga space, but it's tense, well-paced, and takes its central question seriously enough to be worth the ride.