And then there are some things that just shatter all these essentially made up paradigms. Surrealism was one of them - I had fun reading Baudelaire, Lautreamont, Steppenwolfe etc etc. I devoured anything digressive and acidic for the novel ways in which they broke down my filters of perception and subsequently reshaped them. But as with everything, even though I changed (and keep changing), the violent yet delightful experiences which changed me started fading away. This manga, even if only for a few precious hours, made me feel as alive as I did back then, albeit in a completely different way.
Story/Characters: (10/10) (contains mild spoilers)
The title can be a little misleading for those who expect some sort of an adaptation of Baudelaire's work - it does use some themes which recur frequently, but it essentially is a bildungsroman at heart, following the lives of the Baudelaire obsessed protagonist who goes through puberty in a thoroughly singular fashion, thanks to a classmate that brings out his wildest impulses by sheer force of will, showing him a world beyond literature and hooking him on to unhealthy doses of feeling alive. I've come across reviews where the behavior of the teenagers is viewed as 'uncouth' and 'mystifying, unrealistic, or even downright insane'. I beg to differ. Hyperbole is definitely utilized, but it seems more like a very peculiar combination of somewhat unlikely events rather than a lone man's venture into fantasy land (think Bonnie and Clyde) - in short, sensationalization of reality for added impact and a heightened sense of pacing, which drops when the second arc of the story favors a more mature approach. I realize this made a lot of people unhappy, maybe understandably so considering it is never fun getting off a roller coaster. But I feel like it nicely captures the shift in energies and moods - you could even liken Kasuga to a postwar Japanese survivor who wanted to go all out in a blaze of glory but survived while the ideals he fought for were turned to ash around him. The conclusion is very subtly done - you can clearly feel the author struggling to part with the characters he put his soul into, nevertheless realizing the importance of ambiguity as the most 'natural' conclusion to a bildungsroman - now the characters can make the choices - not that they are going to be any less difficult to make, but those struggles demand a completely different treatment - the metaphors driving the story can no longer sustain it.
Art(10/10)
There's none of the typically manga 'weird faces for relief' stuff here. The facial expressions, even when bordering on the unreal, are extremely well done - everything from the body language to the eyes, the slightly surreal sequences - everything fits perfectly. Since I'm not very qualified to make objective judgments in this department (or perhaps any department), I find it unlikely that everyone will like it similarly.
Enjoyment/Overall (10/10)
When I started reading this somewhat late into the night, I did not expect much. I'd been binge reading manga for the last couple of weeks, and even though there were many that were unputdownable, this was much more. Appealing to the intellect and to emotions buried under a veritable pile of rubble wasn't in the menu, but this manga served it. It might be weird to say, but in some ways it healed and brought some unfinished things to conclusion. Unlikely that I'm going to forget about this soon enough, though I won't particularly recommend it for that specific purpose. Read it with an open mind, and you won't regret it.
