Smother Me Review: Is Hiroshi Shimomoto’s Debut Manga Worth Reading?

Quick answer: Yes — if you want a complete, two-volume assassin thriller that treats its violence like a debt instead of a spectacle. Hirohiko Araki, creator of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, personally recommended this debut, and after two volumes, I understand exactly why.

This review accompanies my full video breakdown of Smother Me — watch it below, or keep reading for the complete spoiler-free and spoiler-heavy analysis.

Quick Facts

 

What Is Smother Me About?

Smother Me is a completed two-volume manga about Akio, a boy sold by his own father to an organization that raises children as assassins. Renamed Snake, he operates without hesitation or question in a hollowed-out, fictionalized version of Detroit, until he meets Lynne, a blind girl who becomes the first person in his life who reacts to him as a person rather than a reputation.

That premise alone puts Smother Me in familiar company, think Crying Freeman, Kite, or Gunslinger Girl. If you’ve read any of those, you know this shape already: the trained killer who might still have a soul underneath the training. What makes Shimomoto’s take worth a second look is where the story points its camera. This isn’t really “assassin finds his humanity.” It’s an account of what it costs to be property inside a city run by two factions who both need Snake, and people like him, to stay exactly that: property.

I’ll go deeper on that in the video and in the spoiler section below, but if you’re deciding whether to start reading, here’s the short version: this is not a comfort read, and it’s not trying to be one.

Why the Araki Endorsement Matters

It’s worth pausing on this, because it’s genuinely unusual. Hirohiko Araki, who has been drawing JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure for close to forty years, put his name on the obi strip of Smother Me‘s first volume, praising Shimomoto’s debut for its art and its protagonist.

That’s not a marketing rubber stamp. Araki’s previous picks were reissues of Fist of the North Star and Sho-chan’s Adventure, legacy titles, not debuts. Recommending a first-time artist’s new work is a different kind of endorsement, and it’s a strong signal that Smother Me is doing something worth an established creator’s attention.

There’s also a specific irony worth naming: Smother Me ran in Shonen Jump+, a magazine built for teenage boys, and opens with a father selling his son to be turned into a killer. Most of what runs in that magazine is about found family and power fantasy. Shimomoto used the same real estate to tell his actual readers that the people supposed to protect you are often the first ones to sell you out. That’s a bolder editorial choice than it looks on paper.

The Art: Why Shimomoto Draws Violence Ugly on Purpose

Shimomoto’s linework doesn’t do clean action-manga choreography. It’s rough, nervous, and scratchy, closer to how violence actually feels than how it usually looks on the page. The pattern repeats throughout both volumes: three panels of a job going exactly to plan, followed by one panel of Snake’s hand shaking afterward, which he doesn’t try to hide.

That single reaction panel routinely does more narrative work than the entire job before it. For a debut artist, that’s a mature choice, most first-timers show off technique. Shimomoto holds back until the moment he needs the reader to feel something, and only then does he commit fully.

Spoiler Warning: Full Plot Analysis

⚠️ Everything past this point discusses plot details through the end of volume 2. If you haven’t read Smother Me yet, bookmark this section and come back after.

The real engine of Smother Me isn’t the Snake/Lynne relationship, it’s the city. Detroit is split between two factions who have each inherited the other’s generational damage. One wants absolute control, the kind of order that ends daily violence by making everyone afraid of the same authority. The other wants to preserve the city’s current chaos, because broken is at least a system they know how to survive inside. Both are convinced they’re right. Neither cares whether Snake gets to be a person instead of a resource.

That’s the actual thesis of the book, and it’s why the back-cover pitch, “assassin finds humanity” sells it short. Smother Me is less interested in whether Snake can heal than in whether healing is even possible inside the machine that built him this way to begin with.

By volume two, both factions close in, and for the first time in the story, Snake has to choose something instead of following an order. I’m staying deliberately vague about exactly what that choice is and how it resolves, this is a short, dense book, and spoiling the ending here would cost you most of what makes the second volume land. What I can tell you: Shimomoto refuses a clean win. The ending leaves room for both redemption and collapse right up to the final page, and it never fully tips its hand toward “this was worth it” or “this was for nothing.” Both stay live.

By the time you finish both volumes, the title itself stops meaning one thing. It’s the violence. It’s the organization that raised him. It’s Lynne, and the love that gave him a reason to want something. It’s the city, closing in from every direction. Everything in this book is trying to hold Snake in place, the whole question is whether anything he does actually counts as breaking free, or just breaking.

Character Breakdown

Snake (Akio)

Shimomoto never gives Snake an inner monologue that explains away what he’s done, no pages of guilt, no speeches about morality. You read his interior state entirely through restraint: the shaking hands, the specific jobs after which he goes quiet. It’s a smarter structural choice than it sounds, and rare for a debut artist to trust.

The System (the two factions)

Neither faction in Smother Me is a cartoonish villain. Both have a genuinely defensible internal logic, and neither one is right. That’s a harder antagonist to build than a single strong villain, and Shimomoto pulls it off in just two volumes.

Lynne

Lynne could easily have been a plot device, the blind love interest who “redeems” the assassin is a well-worn trope. Shimomoto avoids that trap almost entirely. Because she genuinely cannot see Snake, she’s the only character building an idea of who he is from something other than his reputation, which gives her real narrative agency rather than just emotional leverage over the plot.

Final Verdict: Is Smother Me Worth Reading?

Rating: 7.9 / 10

What it does exceptionally well:

• Restraint in the violence, every kill in this book carries weight; there’s no throwaway action for its own sake
• Refuses to give either faction a clean moral position, which is a genuinely hard needle to thread in two volumes
• Lynne has real narrative agency instead of functioning as a plot device

Honest criticisms:

• The middle stretch of volume two moves fast enough that a few faction-conflict beats land as plot mechanics rather than earned drama
• Some wider establishing shots of the city look visibly less refined than the intimate character work, a fair trade for a debut, but worth flagging

Read this if: you want a complete story with no multi-hundred-chapter commitment, you want assassin fiction that interrogates the system rather than just the assassin, or you’re curious what an artist Hirohiko Araki personally vouched for looks like on the page.

Skip this if: you need your protagonists to get a clean resolution, or “child soldier trained as a killer” is a line you’d rather not cross even when it’s handled with real care.

Where to Read Smother Me

Smother Me is fully available in English, completely free, on MANGA Plus (Shueisha’s official platform). Both volumes are also available in print. There’s genuinely no reason to wait on this one, the entire series can be read in a single sitting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Smother Me finished, or is it ongoing? Smother Me is complete. It ran in Shonen Jump+ from October 3, 2024 to January 16, 2025, and was collected into 2 volumes.

Is Smother Me appropriate for younger readers? No. Despite running in a magazine aimed at teenage boys, Smother Me contains graphic violence and a child-soldier backstory. It’s handled with care, but it’s not a light read.

Is Smother Me similar to Crying Freeman or Kite? Yes, structurally, all three are “trained killer discovers a self” stories. Smother Me distinguishes itself by focusing more on the system that produces its protagonist than on his internal psychology alone.

Why did Hirohiko Araki recommend Smother Me? Araki personally praised Shimomoto’s debut for its art style and protagonist on the volume 1 obi strip, a rare endorsement, since Araki’s prior picks were reissues of established classics, not new debuts.

Where can I watch the full video review? The complete video breakdown is embedded at the top of this page, with full spoiler warnings before any plot details past the premise.