Such an incredible and heartfelt manga. It’s rare to find manga that completely grips you from the first chapter and continue to have a chokehold on you as it progresses.
The artwork -first of all- is incredible. It’s the first thing you’ll notice when you start reading. The author captures the lonely summer atmosphere with luscious thick colours rarely seen in Japanese manga, and even in black and white the art consistently amazes me. It mixes both surrealism with the familiar manga art style and the results are a blend of unique, unforgettable illustrations.
Yoshiki and Hikaru have the dangerous, paralleled dynamic crafted delicately by incredible environmental storytelling and profound inner thoughts. The way the manga deals with loss is clever and beautiful (Think the Babadook but if the Babadook was your friend whom you may or may not have homoerotic tensions with) , with the dialogue being almost poetic, and those paired with the immaculate illustrations is what makes the manga stand out not just as a manga, but as a piece of art.
10/10 highly recommend, and highly recommend to go in spoiler-free. A really, really profound manga that excels on almost all fronts, from art to character dynamic to plot.
