Rakuda Tsukai to Ouji no Yoru

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This manga was mind-blowing for me. The first two stories were wonderful. Rakuda Tsukai to Ouji no Yoru (the first story) danced through the themes of romance and comedy, as well as explored deeper concepts such as personal duty and belonging, such that the reader is left with this lovely and rich tale of love. Moreover, the characters, with their realistic personalities and innocent approach to love, were delightful.

As for the Rakuda Tsukai ga Kieta Asa (second story), the author provides a different take on love, one which is entwined with sombre and sad ideas, like the consequences of broken homes, such that ... a really rich, intriguing story is formed.

What really made this manga for me, though, were the stories which followed the initial two. These shocking (at least for me) psychological stories about twisted relationships and broken people just blew me away. Despite being so short, enough history and character depth was given so that readers could really understand their actions and why they became who they were. This in turn caused these themes within these stories to be presented more realistically, and thus, with greater intensity.

Lastly, I loved the style of art within this manga, and when teamed with narration such as that of the first story, I found the manga to be enchanting.

Overall, I believe this author is pretty amazing for being able to be so versatile in what stories they can tell. Furthermore, they are a really good story teller, due to how coherently they constructed their characters and how well the stories were paced. The artwork was also beautiful, as was many of the ideas explored (even the sick, twisted ones). Overall, I enjoyed and was very impressed by this manga. It was very good (8/10) :)

Mod Note: This review was initially posted for the one-shot, Ibitsu na Kakera, and was subsequently merged into Rakuda Tsukai to Ouji no Yoru.

Story and Character (7/10 & 6/10): When I saw this manga labeled as psychological and tragedy on mangafox, I thought how bad can it be? After all, it was written by Ogawa Chise who churned out two of the cutest yaoi manga - Gosan no Heart and Kono Ore... It was not too psychologically disturbing, but it shocked me nonetheless. Anyways, the story as a whole has been done before, but it has a pretty interesting and disturbing twist. The characters were ... a bit 2D, but for a one shot, Ogawa-sensei did a pretty good job of fleshing them out.
Art (8/10): I love Ogawa-sensei's art, and the art in this manga is no exception. Beautifully drawn - I expected her art to clash with the story line (since I only read her fluff), but it goes really well and actually accentuates the depravity of characters.
Enjoyment and Overall (7/10): I have a thing for twisted and sad manga, so even if it wasn't what I was expecting, I still loved it. If you're looking for fluff, steer clear. If you're looking for an interesting and dark short manga... pick this one up.

I have been in this site for something like 3 years and I never wanted to write a review, until now. I just finished this manga and I got so... angry? confused? I don't even have enough vocabulary to describe how I feel right now. This anthology is a collection of oneshots that vary A LOT in tone, so I think it is best if I go through each of them separately.

1 & 2: this is one of the best one shots I have ever read. There is this one guy that travels through the desert and rescues a unconscious man. This man happens ... to be kind of a prince, and brings his savior to his palace to spend some time. This is the one shot that it is in the cover, ambience is great, character development too, really amazing.
3: one guy is a quite and calm swimmer, he has a crush in one other guy that is really popular with the girls, and famous for dumping them after they developed feelings for him. Nothing uncomon in this oneshot, cool story but nothing outstanding.
4: And this is the moment where we started going down the rabbit hole. From now on, the stories are NOTHING like the ones before, I even thought it was written by a different author, there is a lot of rape and incest. Here we have 2 brothers, the older one is really envious of the intelligence of the younger one. The older founds out the younger has a enormous desire for his body, and starts torturing him because of it
5: Famous actor is a misanthropist that has sex with his son whenever he is angry with women
6: A crossover between 4 and 5, where actually nothing important happens, that's it, exists only to show that the other characters know each other.

Summing it all up, if you want something sweet, go for 1, 2 and 3, if you want something dark and twisted, go for 4, 5 and 6. As an anthology, this one is really inconsistent, besides having a deceitful synopsis (and obviously some trigger warnings are lacking). English is not my first language, so I'm already sorry with any gramatical errors this may have.