Jan 13, 2015
After reading multiple comments and reviews about how much of a masterpiece this is, I just had to give it a try for myself... and I am extremely disappointed. I feel like I wasted my a good few hours of my life.
Here's my disclaimer: I'm not saying this story is bad in any way. The art is decent, the plot is better than most manga, and so are the characters. But it is not a masterpiece. It is not some kind of "Catcher in the Rye". It's a cliche story that happens to dwell a little bit deeper.
As for the theme and lesson in
...
the manga, I learned nothing. It shed no light on me. I felt nothing but anger, rage, and fucking annoyance towards the main male lead and various characters. All I got out of it was the overused cliche that being a good Samaritan will bring joy, that being a loner is the worst thing ever and friends are the best thing in the world, and that everyone can be redeemed, but those themes are used so many times and repeatedly told by so many people that the depth in its meaning has worn away.
One of the problems I have with it is that the characters talk like they're writing a fucking essay to please a teacher by trying to sound intelligent. Here's some direct quotes: "In my deduction, there's no solid evidence linking you... the foundations for..." (bits are left out to avoid minor spoilers) When was the last time you heard someone begin with, "In my deduction..." or use the words "the foundations for..." outside of speeches and essays?
Furthermore, the main lead shows no sign of intelligence whatsoever (despite him supposedly being very much above average in smarts), other than the fact that he can carry out plots perfectly without a single ounce of suspicion and use his Light Yagami deductive reasoning. (which by the way, does not work in the real world) His taste for books has nothing to do with the story whatsoever, and the book discussions he had were pointless and empty. The only way one can argue for him being above average in intelligence is admitting that everyone else in the story are DUMB AS FUCK. After all the shit he pulls, which, if I may add, are harassment-- SEXUAL HARASSMENT, he's not in fucking juvenile hall and the school took little measures to look into them.
Because his actions and personality are controversial, it's easy to perceive them as depth, but they're not. A good character is a character that is realistic and three dimensional. Having a few quirks does not create three dimensions, and actually, if the quirks are misused, it can backfire. With this in mind, I can argue that Kurosawa is not a 3-D, realistic character because his former character flaws are completely overwritten with his redemption (which was fueled by the most stupid, random plot device ever) and his actions that negatively affected himself and others all become resolved.
Every part of this story was all for a single point: the main lead's character development(which was terrible and crashed his entire character). His flaws served no other purpose and the same goes for the other characters; they exist only to fuel the lead. His development was pure wish fulfillment.
Then there's the ending. That's what did this story in for me. The god shitting ending. I can't go into details though, because I don't want to spoil it.
This story is NOT controversial. It's deeper only by an inch from the usual. Again, I'm not that saying you shouldn't read it, and not saying it's bad per se, just not... brilliant and definitely not a masterpiece as all those mangahere comments claim.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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