Hisakata no Oto

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TL:DR

You'll like this if you're a real Japanese culture buff. Honestly, it's not very good as a story by itself so I'd only recommend this to a very certain kind of person.

The story and the characters are not really important considering this is really a showcase of Japanese Islander culture. And it is excellent at that. It was quite interesting. The author states that it's not a showcase of any specific island culture but a mishmash of all they've lived in. The author clearly has a real passion for what they're writing about. It's great to learn about the various customs and folklore that accumulates ... in isolated islands. The writing is accentuated by phenomenal art that will really draw you in to the fantastical culture and world the author builds.

And now, relentless critique:

As bizarre as this sounds, I feel the more fantastical elements detract from the real pleasure of learning about islander culture. This might just be the only thing I've read that would benefit from being more like a text book.

One issue is that, as the author states, it's a mix of different cultures. If I was interested in this sort of thing, I would want a more accurate reflection of the actual cultures being written about.

I know I said that character and plot isn't important but I do need to talk about them, because they actively detract from the experience. The characters are extremely shallow and the plot is strange. The main character is a sceptic who comes to terms with the supernatural things happening around him. Except, as written above, these are cultural things taken from real cultures, who may not believe these things as actually real themselves. It's a very strange choice, especially considering the world presented in the manga doesn't quite map onto any real world culture. The other characters are really rather pointless, I don't care about grandma's last minute drama or anything the other characters have going.

I feel like this manga really should have just been a non-fiction book (maybe with illustrations) detailing the author's own, clearly extensive, experiences with islander culture. The fictional parts and the odd mixing of cultures don't do this manga any favours. I just can't find what the fictional elements add.

If you are curious about Japanese culture (you godless weeb) you will like this but there isn't a lot on offer for those here for an actual story, hence why I can't recommend this to a wider audience and why my personal rating (5) is much lower than the 7 I give in this review.

Overall: 7/10 (very conditionally)