One of the trickiest things to explain, about Nijigahara Holograph, is the story & plot because it is hard enough to comprehend, let alone articulate it in words. The manga is like a montage of the lives of different people, who are all interconnected in some way. There are numerous themes but the ones most prominent are on the unfairness of life and the redemption that follows, upon choosing the right path. The story itself focuses on one troubled person at a time, giving the reader a peek in their lives and what they went through during their past elementary school days. This puzzling set-up certainly gets you thinking however the story has no flow whatsoever and is all over the place. It would have been better if events were in some kind of chronological order, yet you wouldn’t get the same experience any where else.
There are quite a lot of characters through the duration of this short manga but the three that leave the biggest impact are: Komatsuzaki (a violent guy who’s unpredictable actions seem to be directed by something), Suzuki (a troubled guy with disparaging views of those around him) & the girl that seems to be at the centre of it all Kimura (a sort of sacrificial lamb figure). All the characters face personal struggles, with the mental & verbal dialogue adding a whole new depth to each of them.
Unlike most seinen manga I have come across, this one goes for semi-realistic & semi-surreal artwork. That may not make much sense but having finely drawn characters & environments amalgamate with various entrancing imagery is truly mystifying. The artwork isn’t exactly made to look attractive, as it mainly expresses the writer's view of the imperfect creature that is humans.
Overall Nijigahara Holograph is an engaging manga that showed the brutality and unfairness of life. This manga is so surreal that you may find yourself staring at a page, wondering what it’s supposed to portray or what the butterflies are supposed to represent. This really isn’t a manga to enjoy but rather something to think about, by piecing bits of the story together. For those who are actually struggling to understand the thoughts that are being put across in this review would have no chance in comprehending this bizarre manga.
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