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Description
From Mangascreener:
Suzuki is a troubled boy. He's lived with uncaring foster parents for most of his life, alienated from the other kids at his school, owner of a cynical, unhappy mentality. Komatsuzaki is a violent, unpredictable bully whose head trauma causes him to act in mysterious, inexplicable ways. Arakawa is a no-nonsense, normal girl who pines after Komatsuzaki but can never have him. A teacher with just one working eye. A mother who committed suicide. A daughter in an endless coma. Attempted rapes, murders, extortion, sexual deviance, and a freakish explosion in the butterfly population. All of these elements are whirled together in a story spanning 10 years, a tale of blackness, pain, and apocalypse. And maybe just a bit of hope and redemption. It's a spiritual cross between the misanthropic suburban malevolence of Kyoko Okazaki's Rivers Edge and the eerie mysticality of Donnie Darko.
Type
Manga
Related Series
N/A
Associated Names
虹ケ原ホログラフ 虹ヶ原／ホログラフ Das Feld des Regenbogens (German) Nijigahara Horogurafu Nijigahara/Horogurafu Rainbow Field Holograph
"The story in this manga is unnecessarily obfuscated." "Some of the interpretations presented are pretty clever. But that's really the point isn't it? To be clever I mean. Isn't this just a masturbatory exercise in trying showing how clever you are by drawing water from this stone?" " Did we really need to wade through 300 pages several times over to get to this point? "
I agree with all these statements. Indeed I wonder how it managed to get serialised in the first place. Still, I admire it for being engaging.
I wanted to write a long comment about this manga but then I read tokkuns comment and there isn't much to add. A medicore manga doesn't get better if you make him as confusing as possible, it's the same with other forms of art, just because it is hard to understand doesn't mean it is equivalent with beeing good.
After reading this manga for the first time, I can only agree with most of the users here; it's bloody confusing. Somehow I also missed the sheer brilliance people are talking about. The amount of effort put in to mess up with my mind is absolutely stunning though. I will have to read it for the second time, just to understand if the story is actually coherent or just weird.
Just because you HAVE to reread the story again, doesn't make it good. It's just bloody confusing.
Deep, dark, philosophical, moving, confusing, uplifting. If you get it, that is. I read it twice before I understood most of it. It obliterates previous benchmarks in the genre and transcends the medium. Not for everyone, though.
The art is beautiful as well. I rate it as one of the best written works ever and one of the few that deserves to be handed down to future generations.
I've told a friend in Tokyo to get this for me. I want a copy even If I can't read Japanese...... Actually, I think I'm gonna practice that with all Inio Asano titles hereon.
After seeing some of the stellar ratings this manga has gotten, I was really looking forward to it. Afterwards, I wondered if I had read the same manga as everyone else. I felt frustrated and insulted after finishing the last page. Obviously I'm in the minority, but let me air my dissenting opinion.
The story in this manga is unnecessarily obfuscated. It's told in a disjointed method with several instances in which imaginary "fakeout" scenes occur. It's difficult to understand the chronology without taking notes and re-reading. Some characters are not very distinct, and it's easy to lose track of who is who when the story skips around in time. "Hmm," I wondered. "Does the author have a point in writing this in a such a way. Are my feelings of confusion and frustration supposed to enhance the emotional current of the work? Am I being provoked?" I don't think so. The story is disjointed because that gives it the illusion of planning and it is vague because that makes the ideas seem more grandiose than they really are.
That leads into my next rant: the supposed 'depth' of this story. Where is it? I see a few ideas being brought up; The uncertainty of our perception of reality. The question of whether or not we exert ultimate control over our own existence. Great, but where are the development of these ideas? I'm supposed to pick through this manga several times just so I can speculate at what the author intended? I have a roommate who is a philosophy major; I can have metaphysical questions thrown at me all day. The difference is that in a discussion with him, I actually get coherent, cogent ideas thrown back at me. Picking through this dung heap of a manga to try to unearth a few grains of meaning is not worth it. Don't get me wrong, I did my homework by reading through the lengthy discussion thread on this manga before beginning this diatribe. If you were students in my class, I'd give you an A. Some of the interpretations presented are pretty clever. But that's really the point isn't it? To be clever I mean. Isn't this just a masturbatory exercise in trying showing how clever you are by drawing water from this stone? There's good reading in the discussion. Much better than there is in the manga. Did we really need to wade through 300 pages several times over to get to this point?
Finally, I want to rail a bit on the tone of this manga. The simplest description would be to call it one of despair. The world is a cruel and brutal place. Yeah, I get it. I'm not against dark stories, but some of the lines (and maybe this is more the fault of the translation than the original work) just made me sigh and roll my eyes. How many times do I need to hear the characters expound on the emptiness of the world or watch as they commit horrible acts? Let's get real. This manga is pulp Visual Kei. I've seen tons like it before. It's a vision of a world stripped down to its most raw and vicious - a world of darkness and despair - a story of a protagonist whose life is an endless string of cold acts and dysfunctional relationships - and a half-hearted comment about society and the nature of man slapped on at the end. I don't understand why people eat this stuff up so much. Just because it's depressing doesn't mean it's deep.
Well, sorry about that. That rant was almost less coherent than this manga. I guess I let my frustration spill out a little too much. Anyway, don't take my words too harshly if you think this manga is the greatest thing ever. It's an argument that no one can ever win, because it ultimately comes down to the reader's interpretation (or imagination) of the author's intent. The world is full of opinions, and it would be boring if they were all the same. It would be nice to see the same level of thought put into the deconstruction of any manga; I just don't see the substance present in this manga that others attribute to it.
i feel so lost after reading it... i totally love it and confused by it...but i still don't get it...i understand how things went the way they went but i can't piece it together...
This is one of the best short mangas ive ever read. Deep story with mysterious sad and dark backgrounds. The characters are interesting but also a little bit creazy which makes them unique and individual. The whole mood of this book is just to great. And it leaves plenty of space for interpreation.
This manga demands a lot of work from the reader, but pays it back in full. It's the first time I've ever gone straight back to the beginning after reading a manga and read it through again, and without stopping at that ... quite a trip. Most impressive is the author/artist's exploitation of visual/conversational detail to build up crucial plot elements almost in passing, which gives the whole story a breathtaking economy. But it's a good story as well, in my opinion.
Have to disagree with all three of Laclongquan's points: I don't think the Zhuangzi story encapsulates the "main idea" of this manga at all; would sooner see the "main idea" in the comments of the gentleman on page 291 ... I find that the story as a whole resolves to become something decisively more than a depressing read; and to call the characters weak is an ineffective broadside --- the characters much more closely resemble the cast of a Faulkner novel than any of your typical helpless manga caricatures.
Highly recommended.
(and to bukuwawa ... thanks and hats off for a tremendous job.)
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