Okuru Kotoba

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Wow honestly this manga impressed me quite a fair bit with it's storytelling. The twists and turns is honestly something I DID NOT expect even from this manga making it all the more enjoyable.

The manga starts off with our mc dying and believing his childhood friend Chiaki was the reason he died. The story peels away like a onion as we get to see many diverse characters fleshed out in only 16 chapters which was really impressive for me while still pushing the plot forward. The pacing was surprisingly good for a short manga such as this one. You wouldn't feel overwhelmed by how the ... story goes by and still feel in tact and attached to the interesting characters. The suspense atmosphere is well done for the first few chapters as you are able to feel the surreal and tense moments in the manga.

Art itself is pretty decent , don't really have much to say on this.


The characters are what pulled me in for this story , the author managed to put several characters in and manage to do them well. We get to delve into the different perspectives of the characters while explore their backstory to how they become who they are today which is again pretty astounding and remarkable of the author since this only has 16 chapters. You get to see their struggles and how they all play a part to what happened in the manga making all of them relevant to the story.

To conclude i would highly recommend this manga to anyone who loves twist and turns. This manga has interesting characters and a satisfying ending to fill your needs.

Very underrated manga. Not really surprised by the ending, but for a short manga with only 3 volumes, I think this manga was beautiful enough.
It has a background story for every character and made you understand what is really happening this whole time.

The story was not rushed at all I think. At least it gives you reasons why the character did everything he / she did. This was my first time reviewing manga btw, so my review maybe cant be understand full enough to excite you to read this manga.

At first I wanted to read this at web, but I cant ... find the completed chapter anywhere, it only upload 5 chapter at most. Thus, I bought the manga at the store and when I finished it, I was surprised enough that there were no website that upload this chapter completely.


This section afteward contains ending of the story which means spoiler.

I write this because someone asking me to sums up the manga end. So I thought for you guys who wanted to know the ending but cannot read it because of the limited chapter the scans have on web and I guess there are no official manga at the store outside my own country and Japan.


So here we go, to sums up it's happy ending.

So Sahara and Mittan still alive, they are in coma condition at hospital
Chiaki was not the one who pushing Sahara, It's Sahara own decision, and if you asking why that's a long story to explain.

So Sahara, Chiaki, and Mittan were childhood friends, they get along so well untill there is one event, where Sahara and Kenta (Mittan's older brother) school got football competition. At that time Mittan, hugging and asking Sahara to play with her while they cross the road but, Sahara rejected her and asking Mittan to wait for Chiaki to come. He asking Mittan to stay still and don't go after him...while Mittan still in the middle of the road. And so Mittan got accident. When Chiaki comes to pick Mittan up she saw her lying down on the road..bleeding a lot. Mittan's family accused Chiaki for killing Mittan for not calling the police or ambulance when there is telephone box nearby.. because Chiaki shock heavily and didn't know what she should do when there is accident like that.

Chiaki's was a type that always depending on Sahara, because Sahara always there for her when she was in bad condition or situation. It begins when Chiaki Grandma die. She indeed felt sad of course, but she didn't know how to express it through facial expression. One thing she remember was her grandma told her to smile even when she felt sad. So in the funeral, Mittan smile just like her grandma told her to do so but people around her keep insulting her saying she was weird and creepy but Sahara was there and convince Chiaki to ignore them. And so Chiaki always depending on Sahara for every situation she faced, that's why when Mittan caught on accident, Chiaki can't do anything.

Back to Mittan's accident, at that time Kenta was on football coompetition alongside with Sahara. He got a call that saying his family was in accident. So Kenta went to hospital and Chiaki was there too. When Kenta's family accused her, she got a mental breakdown of course but Kenta stop his parents insult to Chiaki and told Chiaki to go home. The day after, Chiaki went back to hospital to visit Mittan, saying that she wanted to take responsible because of her fault, taking care Mittan even untill Chiaki growing old. But it's too late, Kenta said that Mittan "died" yesterday. So Chiaki said to Kenta that she wanted to die alongside with Mittan. Kenta calm her down and saying that it wasn't her fault. He said that Mittan's go to magic world (Kenta tried to comfort Chiaki, because she liked to watch magic girl anime which Mittan liked too) and Kenta said that she shouldn't be sad, it's a good news that Mittan's become a witch in magic world so she should smile (Kenta's trying so hard because she afraid that Chiaki would suicide) and so Chiaki "smile". Kenta told Chiaki to keep quiet about this accident and don't tell to anyone even Sahara.

At one point when Sahara and Chiaki went to hangout, they talking about Kenta's transfer to other school, Chiaki accidentally said about Mittan's accident. Sahara's quiet for a while and Chiaki said "no, it was nothing". At this point Sahara already knew about Mittan's accident but didn't know about whether she died or not. Sahara just burried that thought deep down in his mind, as if he doesn't know single thing about that.

At one point, when Chiaki being at fault because of something that she did, she said that it was Sahara decision, but Sahara denied that. When they went home together after school, Sahara begins to blame Chiaki. Sahara begins to blame his close friend as he emotionally explode because he thought that all of his close friends blamed him for what they did. Sahara thought that their behavior were not good, he said to Chiaki as if that all of you were depend on me too much not realizing your own behavior killing you. From that point he never wanted to be blamed. Everything his do, every word he said, he didn't think through. He may look doing something for the sake of others, but he didn't clearly think enough. He thought as if it's fine, just chill out dude. And so he already kill his own heart.

Time skipped to Sahara's accident, at 1st chapter we know that she saw Mittan. The truth is he unconsciously went for Mittan at that road, as if he was searching for her this whole time. Sahara actually knew from where Mittan got accident, little chance for her to survive. Sahara didn't want to realize that, because he was afraid. "What if Mittan died because of me, because I left her alone, what should I do?."

All this time Sahara had been afraid. Affraid of hurting his friends and himself, afraid of being the blamed one because of his decision,afraid to take a step forward. This is the reason why he didn't want to remember any event from his past. He begin to questioning himself if all of this was his fault.

When he met Mittan spirit again he asking her if this was his fault. He didn't want to get blamed so he blame Chiaki (at this point I still thought that Sahara was a piece of shit) untill Mei comes to give Sahara some of her thought. He told Sahara to properly face this problem, face Mittan ahead. And so after Sahara and Mittan spirit properly talk this out, their spirit comes back to their own body. Mittan almost died for real if Sahara didn't properly faced it on time and Sahara might even died too (if I am not mistaken). Sahara already awake from his coma while Mittan still not awaket yet but her condition wasn't that critical anymore (because her soul already come back). So the story skipped to graduation time while Sahara and Mittan still treated at hospital. All this time Chiaki went to visit Mittan and on that graduation time when she come to visit Mittan, Mittan was already awake alongside with Sahara accompany her. Chiaki cried so much and so the story end.

That's it I guess for the ending summary, hope this will satisfied you guys enough and hope one day the scans translate this series.

Correct me if I was wrong at some point of the story, thankyou.

P.S: sorry if I got many incorrect words, I never write this kind of summary thought.

Ever since I first read this manga, it has been one of my absolute favorite manga. Certainly, most elements have been seen before, but the presentation and the story is what makes this series one of my favorite manga. That said, I will attempt to keep this review as neutral and objective as possible.

The story is centered around a fairly simple premise: One day, the high-school student Sahara Makaji is hit by a truck, after seeing the ghost of his childhood friend, Asuka Michi. Following this, everyone assumes that Sahara is dead, including Sahara himself, who believes that his other childhood friend, Aikawa Chiaki, pushed ... him. At the end of the first chapter, Sahara confronts Chiaki about this, asking "Why did you kill me?" The rest of the story is basically about Sahara trying to understand why he died, Mei trying to get Chiaki to admit to killing Sahara, and the rest of the characters trying to cope with losing their friend. Practically every chapter, except Chapter 1 and the Final Chapter, has a flashback to events that took place 10 years earlier, which mainly helps with character development.

The art shifts a lot, usually shifting multiple times on the same page to set the mood for each frame. Most of the time, the art is typical manga-style, but occasionally it shifts to more simplistic and sometimes even "chibi"-style. And then, there are the horror-style close-ups of Chiaki. The characters' designs are mostly consistent, but slight changes occur when time passes (they obviously grow bigger over the 10 years between the past and present, Mei's hair changes from black to white for some unexplained reason (she probably dyed it, or suffers from the Marie Antoinette Syndrome... Both explanations are probable)), yet it's still easy to recognize the characters in the past. The biggest weak spot would be the fight in chapter 5 and 6. It just doesn't really look like they're actually fighting, but rather like Mei is really bored posing for an artist...

The characters are just great. While most of the characters fit typical archetypes, their behavior is really realistic, and the main cast is easy to relate to. About a third of the first chapter goes with showing what happens at the site of the accident about half an hour later, with the characters being introduced one after one. The rest of the chapters are largely spent on developing these characters into well-rounded, interesting individuals with their own interesting quirks.

I personally enjoyed "Okuru Kotoba" a lot. It's one of the only manga I've ever read that had me hooked from the first chapter, and never let me down as the story progressed. I can read it over and over again and still notice new details I missed the first time or that had simply slipped from my mind. Additionally, some things that make no sense early on (like how Mei dropped her phone into the middle of the street in chapter 2) are explained later on and in the end, even the ending isn't all that big an ass-pull as it first seems, if one just recalls earlier events. Don't expect any serious amounts of fanservice, though. Aside from very few panty-shots in Volume 1 (Chapter 1-5), and a few glimpses of Mei's cleavage in Volume 2 (Chapter 6-10), the fanservice is literally non-existent.

I can strongly recommend this story to anyone who loves a good manga with lots of drama, mystery, suspense and tragedy(?). Keep in mind that at the time of writing this review, the manga hasn't been translated yet, so it is only available in Japanese, but it is fairly easy to read. Personally, I think this is one of the best manga I've ever read.