Ranked #1055

Confession (Manga)

An accident befalls long-time friends Asai and Ishikura during their trek up a snowy mountain amidst a blizzard. Ishikura is badly injured and believes that he won't survive long enough for them to find help. So he chooses to disclose a painful secret which he's reserved only for his closest friend(Asai).

Luckily enough, they find and inhabit an empty cabin immediately afterward. Ishikura's been saved! But Asai can't stop thinking about his friend's shocking confession and paranoia begins eating away at him as the two wait for people to rescue them. Or at least one of them.

This is a 300 page manga but it only took me a little over an hour to get through. It definitely kept me interested until the very end because I just knew there had to be a twist to this story(and there was).

The start is promising and the atmosphere is set with a heavy sense of foreboding immediately after Ishikura's confession. After this, the story is told from Asai's point of view. He becomes increasingly more suspicious of, and even frightened of, his friend. He monitors every subtle action and movement that Ishikura makes. This might sound annoying but it was surprisingly well executed, at first, in building apprehension. The reader will also be likely to wonder about the background story behind these two friends. It is brought up but not elaborated on enough to make them interesting characters. There is too much focus on the air of distrust and not enough on the characters' relationship with one another. I thought very little of Ishikura in particular. The character is one we've all seen before but that character is pretty boring here. Overall, I was very disappointed with the characterizations as I had expected characters who had more depth considering its 300 page length.

The artwork is just above average. The characters don't have memorable appearances, except maybe for Ishikura(if you have good memory, anyway). The characters don't have a lot of facial expressions for some reason. Although I did laugh a couple of times at Asai's freaked out reactions.

I saw a lot of promise in this manga. Especially from a psychological perspective. But it does not go in depth into the characters' lives and it only serves to resolve a conflict which few readers will genuinely care about due to its length. The twist near the very end didn't add anything positive to the already average story. The conclusion left no impact on me, personally.

Confession has an intriguing premise and even had me reading non-stop until I finished. But what does any of that matter if I wouldn't mind erasing it from my memory and having the little time I spent reading it back? This is yet another work that I'd not hesitate to categorize as wasted potential. Oh, and I lied when I said the confession was shocking. It really wasn't...:P read more