Apparently, Mori is modeled after a real life person, Katō Buntarō, and if the manga is true to self, then damn does this guy live a miserable life. I highly doubt that, though. It's much more likely a highly embellished story, but regardless, the author fails to create a successful connection between Mori's personal development and his rock-climbing career. Most of the time, you have extremely tragic or haphazard events that happen to Mori in order to stipulate a psychological reaction from Mori. This can be seen in almost every event that Mori comes across. Whether it be his personal past with witnessing an unfortunate suicide, his teacher dying to save Mori, Mori encountering women trying to take advantage of him, people obsessed with him, or him witnessing the death of people that he mountaineered with, it's all very artificial and manufactured to garner a serious reaction from an already reclusive, gloomy person that uses mountaineering as an escape tool rather than doing something about his life and personality.
Unfortunately, trying to construct a coming of age story just doesn't work too well when every event Mori encounters seems to be more like something straight out of a drama. Like, apparently every person that does rock-climbing just happens to have hidden mental trauma and then they unload their trauma right onto Mori before dying or disappearing. There's just too many events being thrown at him and not enough self-reflection. There's nice imagery here and there, and the occasional throw-away cheesy theme of the act of climbing mountains and how you give yourself up to it as you do so, but even after a hundred chapters, I don't empathize with Mori, much less any other character in the story.
Again, onto the good point. The actual act of rock-climbing is great. There's a lot of focus on how people climb mountains competitively, in harsh environments, and how even small mistakes will spell great danger. The sheer willpower and exertion that people take when trying to scale untrodden terrain or routes is clearly shown through the pages. This is done through amazing artwork, paneling, and storyboarding. I only wish that the story was good to pair along with it.
