by Jeshia on November 20th, 2011, 1:26pm

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User rating of this review - N/A out of 5
Story/Plot - 5 out of 5
Characters - 4.8 out of 5
Drawing Style - 4 out of 5
Enjoyment - 4.6 out of 5
Overall - 5 out of 5

Click here for series information

Plot/Story
From the beginning, this is a morbid plot, with a man being murdered by a baseball bat right in front of the heroine's eyes and the male lead walking past the scene, calmly wiping blood off his shoulder. She later discovers he is not human in the way he appears to be, and his clone, with the appearance of a 10 year old boy, who was created to be killed to further a research experiment is out for blood. So it's a gripping thriller with plenty of death drenched in psychological insights.

Characters
Wonderful. The female lead is cool, collected, but has her own insecurities toward her "researcher" mentality and personality, traits which are essential to the plot. Yes, she cries a quite a lot, but under the psychological pressure of young boy forcing your best friend to commit suicide by supernatural means, who wouldn't? On a lighter note, the manga-ka does try to lighten up her seemingly boring personality with some justified outbursts and mentioning facts such as her having 30 failed omiai's. The balance between her character traits is well-executed, keeping the reader from finding her calmness irritating/boring or her anger or depression too overdramatic.
Akiba, the male lead, I have to say, is wonderful. He begins as a heartless boy, but you discover that's only because he doesn't know what love is. He's also, by the manga-ka's standards quite good-looking. He's a little bit serious, but he and Mine make a great couple.

Only reason this didn't get a perfect score? I felt that the side characters were kind of ignored development-wise, though this is covered up quite well by them being "pawns" of the evil person.

Drawing Style
Author of MARS. Thus, quite good art. Not exactly stereotypical shoujo, but the characters are consistently drawn and ascetically appealing.
Forewarning: There's quite a lot of blood in this piece.

Enjoyment
I love this series, and I think people with open-minded views on life and the different controversial issues of it would also like this series. It is of the psychological genre though, and really gets deep into the human psyche of the individual and of mankind, making it, of course, disturbing. In fact, if you are not an avid psychological manga reader or you have a grounded view on life, just avoid this manga altogether. You will find it too disturbing for you to appreciate.
It's also a very gripping thriller. I read it in one go–– all 82 chapters.

Overall
It is masterfully crafted, heavy with realistic criticisms of human nature and insights into our inner evil and misgivings, which we never correct during out lifetimes. If you like psychological genres, read it. If you want to give the genre a try, read something a little bit lighter first––this one in particular is quite disturbing. The story flows well despite the appearance of having somewhat of an episodic nature, and I never wanted to put it down.
I wanted to cry when it ended, but the ending was well-suited for the piece and tied up all the necessary strings, leaving the reader with bitter-sweet taste.

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