I genuinely did not know what I was getting myself into with Smile. I expected something dark based on the cover and synopsis, but this was not what I expected at all. There is something eerie about this manga almost from the beginning, and the deeper Yuushi gets into the Smiling Hearts Society, the more uncomfortable everything becomes.

What really got me was how much the Society seems to know. Information about them is strangely difficult to find, people do not seem willing to talk about them, and the manga starts dropping hints that someone connected to the group may have some serious influence. Then they know Yuushi’s real name. They know his phone number. He is supposed to be investigating them under the fake name Mr. Satou, yet it never really feels like he is the one with the upper hand.

The so-called sacred celebration was where that feeling became even stronger for me. Everything is presented with these smiles and this sense that what is happening is completely normal, while I am reading it thinking, something is seriously wrong here.

I also love that I still cannot tell exactly what I am supposed to be afraid of. Is everything happening because of people and the power this organization has, or is there something else going on? I honestly do not know which possibility would be scarier.

Every time I turned the page, this manga seemed to find something else to throw at me. By the end of Volume 1, instead of getting answers, I somehow had even more questions.