Me being the cynical cunt that I am, I think I have an automatic urge to find problems and flaws with popular works such as this, that stop me from enjoying myself to the fullest extent compared to a relatively unpopular average rated manga - whose hill I have chosen to die on many a times. On to the review.
I feel like an important distinction to make is the difference between the first 19 chapters… and the rest of the manga. I read a popular negative reviews that stated that these chapters are much better than the rest, to which I somewhat see why - not that I agree. The first 19 chapters provide a much different tone to the manga that quickly gets shifted into something darker and more sinister more befitting of the narrative. However I would be lying if I said the fantastic world building, character introductions and setups for mysteries didn’t entice me like no other manga has recently - only for 2/3 of the these elements to be dropped minutes after they were introduced.
The worldbuilding continues to be stellar throughout but the characters in particular took a massive hit in terms of my general interest in them, especially those set up as important only to be cast aside in favour of newer ones. Those 2 newer -important- characters in particular were rather underwhelming to me and I felt they didn’t get nearly enough development on time for us to get attached to them before they were whisked away by the plot. It just felt like they affected Phos far more than they affected us - to-the-point where I didn’t really care about them being gone. Following up on the point of poor character development, even the existing ones that I gave praise to received criminally little time actually in the plot, despite this fact they all had pretty great resolutions to their arcs, it’s just that we didn’t- really get to see them get there, they were just given a couple panels every now and then without any actual dedicated time.
Continuing on a more positive note regarding the characters: Phosphophyllite. Oh my god what an amazing main character. Regardless on how you feel about their change after episode 19, you cannot deny that what came of that was overall a fantastic experience. Starting off clueless about the world yet wanting to make a difference, to an absolute clusterfuck of a mess by the end of the story, The gradual changes she goes through throughout the story are equally impactful as they are horrifying, seeing her slowly losing her sanity lead to some of most impactful panels in the whole story. It was absolutely incredible to read and easily the highlight of the entire manga.
I talked a lot about characters here because that is my only real complaint with this manga, everything else is just nit-picky aspects that slightly bothered me; the story’s fantastic, the art starts off a bit incomprehensible but definitely makes up for it with aforementioned panels - The world building is something special though, it’s concise and fleshed out to an incredible extent with there being only 3 main locations the story takes place in really illustrates how well the writer explored these areas to keep us engaged.
This was definitely worth reading and I would do it again in a heartbeat, but I think I need something a bit more light-hearted now.
Thanks <3.
