Kei Sanbe

I picked this up on spec in a bookshop because the cover looked pretty cool. I was expecting probably a story about being a primary school (middle school in Japan, I suppose) kid. This is... not that. Very much not that. It took me a long time to get to grips with what it actually is, because it's both unexpected and complicated (and in Japanese). To cut a long story short, the protagonist has a strange "rewind" ability that lets him skip back in time to prevent disasters. However, the story show more has two other major plot strands, which complicates matters. One is his ongoing attempt to understand his inability to connect with people, and to revive buried memories of the past. Later, a third strand appears involving a dangerous criminal. As the volume finishes, these three strands have converged into a single pulse-pounding story. I was slow reading the first half, taking a good while to understand where things were going and so to get immersed in the story. I read the second half without stopping, and the last quarter without breathing. I am tormented by the fact that almost certainly no copies of the next volume exist in my country. I have not been this excited about a book for ages. show less

Pacing, characterization, art, and plot development all show great promise so far, judging by this first volume of the series. I'm rather attached to the protagonists, and even to some of the people they have to hunt. I feel sympathy for one protagonst's concern for the other and for some of his targets as well; I feel sympathy for some of the evident "alien perspective on a familiar world" confusion of the other protagonist as well. I find some of the supporting characters quite relatable show more as well, and appreciate the way the writer humanizes the victims of the plague even as they become horrifying monstrosities inimical to human life around them. The art is some of the best I've seen in manga, the world is richly textured in its cultural detail and beautifully rendered on the page, and the institutions of the world present a strong sense of versimilitude that helps suck me into the story's events. The only slightly jarring aspect that seems to wedge a cartoonish manga trope into the story is the slightly overwrought character of a sort of lower-ranked contemporary of the (apparently) primary protagonist.

I eagerly look forward to reading the next volume. show less

A very interesting concept about an angsty surviving twin who suspects the twin everyone thinks is dead might be alive, and the struggles one goes through to find a (presumed dead) loved one. The concept alone is gripping, and the relationship the two brothers have also gets more an more interesting as the series would go on. It's a fine read, but it's also trying REALLLLLY hard not to be ERASED, as the mystery our protagonist tries to solved is handled with fists slightly more than careful show more planning and strategy. Definitely feels like it's trying to be darker and edgier than ERASED considering that the protagonist is in high school instead of elementary school, but in trying to be darker and edgier, it's really what they do with the concept and how they handle the main character's trauma reading, rather than the events that actually occur in the story... show less

Even though this volume sort of telegraphs its plot twist regarding the serial killer, it remains pretty gripping and manages to put in a second twist that makes full use of the crazy time-travel aspects of this weirdly compelling series.