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Yen Press picked up the mushroom people manga series Doku Doku Mori Mori, and Toxy Noxy Foresty Forest is here to get people thinking about how dark and dangerous doesn’t mean bad and nice doesn’t mean good. The series is all about the misconceptions people can develop and persecution certain groups can face. Meanwhile, all of this also applies to the artistic direction and how you literally can’t judge this book by its cover and often adorable art.
Editor’s Note: There will be some minor spoilers for the first volume of the Toxy Noxy Foresty Forest manga below.
Tamagotake and her family are mushroom fairies that live in the forest. They’re peaceful, edible variety and seem like an ordinary colony. One day, poisonous mushroom hunters bring in a captured Tsukiyotake. He’s a poisonous mushroom that’s also quite rare and desirable due to the fact that he glows, so they keep him alive. However, something goes wrong. Tamago wakes up one day to find her parents and everyone in the village slaughtered by Tsukiyo. She decides to make her life’s goal avenging her family by killing him. However, what actually happened that night isn’t so straightforward.
As a name like Toxy Noxy Foresty Forest suggests, the focus is on poison mushrooms like Tsukiyo and the things they encounter. However, as we see from encounters with him, Tamago (who later renames herself Aggy), and other mushrooms we meet, that hazardous nature doesn’t mean they’re bad. Tsukiyo is genuinely depressed and is forced to live as a warrior to survive. He’s often genuinely helpful and is protecting Tamago in the forest. Tamago herself, though introduced as a peaceful, edible variety of mushroom fairy, immediately turns to violence and holds a grudge. A later Toxic Sasako mushroom just wants to find a place where she can safely sing and perform. The people who are “bad” don’t always honestly seem that bad, while the poisonous mushroom hunters we see seem universally bad.
This idea of appearances being deceiving applies to Toxy Noxy Foresty Forest itself. Most of the mushroom characters here are absolutely adorable. Tamago has big, cute eyes and a sweet spotted dress with matching bow that falls into the gothic lolita style. Sasako is both elegant and beautiful. However, we see corpses in the forest. It’s often incredibly cute.
However, there’s a lot of violence and bloodshed. There are toxic mushrooms that are deadly, even if they don’t want to be. Violence runs rampant in the forest. Tamago herself has dedicated herself to revenge and carries the man-made glass shard as a dagger. Tsukiyotake often needs to resort to violence, and likewise is often attempting or contemplating suicide. It’s much darker than you’d expect at a glance.
Toxy Noxy Foresty Forest feels like it’s a manga series that constantly hammers home how you can’t make assumptions based on how something looks. The cast of poisonous mushrooms we encounter and meet aren’t always terrible people, but they’re unfortunately in bad situations due to their unintentionally hazardous abilities. Likewise, gentle, edible mushrooms aren’t guaranteed to be good just since they aren’t overtly dangerous. The characters and designs look adorable! However, the story itself is anything but.
Volume 1 of Toxy Noxy Foresty Forest is available, and Yen Press doesn’t have a release date for release volume 2 of the manga series yet.
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