Reviews

For much of the run of this series, it felt mainly like tragedy porn. We've all seen stories like this, both in anime and elsewhere: everything goes wrong, people die and are mangled, and it's easy to walk away from it feeling like all the writer wanted to do was make you sad. Up to the last couple of chapters, I would have said it's just that: well done tragedy porn, and no doubt given it a lower score. It's the same problem I had with Grave of the Fireflies, only more gratuitous and without much insight into why things are happening. Frankly, this series takes a very dim view of humanity and, accurate though it may be for many, it's not a way to score points with me.

There's something more to this, though, and it's not just some really amazing panel layouts in certain chapters, an art style that allows characters faces to say what the little text won't, the occasional brushes with color that bring life to the otherwise often dreary layouts, or the strong found family relationship that pervades much of the series and becomes a sort of life vest to keep you afloat through some pretty rough waters, though all that certainly helps.

So, what brings this up to an 8/10 for me? The series did two things that threw me in a good way. First, this series is virtually devoid of exposition. That's no easy task, especially with the general lack of dialogue in this series. That becomes more obvious as characters develop, and it really makes this one stand out. Second, the ending of this series is excellent. It didn't go how I was expecting and it wasn't saccharine, finding a way to make it realistic in this world and for these characters while giving the reader something meaningful to take away. So while I can't say I enjoyed the majority of this read, I can say that it stuck out to me often enough to elevate itself.

All this being said, this is not a series I'd necessarily recommend. It's a great work, but much like other series that engage in this kind of terribly dark storytelling for much of their run, it's not for everyone. If you can slog through the very difficult and dark parts of this story (all of which are brilliantly laid out and deftly told), you'll find that it's more than worthwhile to see it through to the end. If you can't, I don't blame you.