One thing that I learned from this manga... Sakiko is too precious for this world. She's the Best Girl in this manga BY FAR. As well as the Best Character in extension.
The story is quite good and bad at the same time. The story beats, the plot, was fine. But the execution and the pacing was kinda bad. It definitely didn't aged well.
The premise was pretty unique (for the time) and the problems that was thrown at the main cast were good and kept the story interesting because of the mystery. But it really felt cheap because some of the plot threads were entirely dropped without really any explanations. I mean, it's a horror manga so some supernatural sh*t without explanation is something that we should expect. But my God, the amount of sh*t that happens "just because" kinda took me out of immersion. It really felt like things are happening for the shock value, and not because it's integral to the story. Like, some of the plot threads could be taken out and this would still go the same way as it ended without any problems.
The characters are not bad. They aren't great by any means. But there's one character that took me by surprised because of how much I loved her. Yes, Sakiko. She's pretty much the only reason why I continued reading despite the not-so-good story of the manga. The other main characters were very flawed but I also enjoyed them. Though Shou was on the edge of being a Gary Stu ngl. That's the only aspect where I kinda feel iffy about the characters. The other kids and adults were kinda boring and was just there to serve as shock factor for the readers, so they ain't good characters.
The art was solid. It serves its purpose of being scary and not being too overly gory. It certainly added to the experience because the art isn't gory for the sake of being gory. Well... most of the time lol.
Though I really think that the art aged poorly, I respect how the panels conveyed the situation and the severity of the events was in this manga.
Overall, it's a nice read if you turn off your brain. It's made in the 70's so this isn't suppose to be overly complicated and sh*t. It's made to question ourselves as the manga's message is pretty deep and there's a lot to dissect here that mirrors what is currently happening in our world.
Though even if the message and themes are deep, it doesn't excuse the poor execution of the story. Hence my score. I still recommend it though.
(5.75/10)
