The moment you start reading, you’d notice the art is off the charts. Unbelievably good looking. Furthermore, the author uses it very well to create atmospheric scenes.
Secondly, the writing is excellent. The premise is interesting and the plot around the premise works well. There are many interesting characters that are likely to invoke a strong emotional response on your part and they do grow causing you to change your opinions. Almost all of them have personalities and personality quirks which are almost impossible to find in mainstream manga like this and I was very impressed to find them here.
So we have a manga with strong art, story, and characters…isn’t that basically everything that makes a manga? Well, there are much more nuances than that, but it doesn’t make a difference because Yuureitou often gets those too.
Long manga (of which Yuureitou can be counted among) often have a problem of ‘wandering plots’ in which the main plot lose focus in favor of numerous subplots that merely moves the story along in no particular direct. Yuureitou suffers from this slightly, but manages to overcome it for the most part by keeping a fluidly changing story. That is instead of keep a single goal/point that remains the same the entirety of the story, the author changes the goal/point repeatedly.
That’s uncommon, but a big positive. Manga has a habit of keep a single narrow focus through the entire story, but by sidestepping this, Yuureitou adds realism and works to keep the story interesting without making it seem like it’s losing focus.
Even when the manga goes far out of its comfort zone, it does so extraordinarily well. Yuureitou is a very drama heavy manga veering into horror at times. At one point, the manga tries its hand at comedy for several chapters and you’d think it would be bad at it considering everything else…except it was hilarious. I found myself laughing repeatedly. That blew me away.
If there is any negative in this manga, it’s that the author sometimes likes to jump ahead in story a bit too much without smoothly transitioning making things seem a bit abrupt. One quickly catches on or is able to form an educated guess, but that shouldn’t be necessary.
Still, in the face of such overwhelming positives, a small thing like that can easily be ignored. Yuureitou is, for the most part, one of the most perfect manga I can think of. Complex story, excellent art, amazing characters, and everything is tied together well.
Overall, I highly recommend this manga and it would be an enormous shame for anyone to miss it.
