All the stories have a trace of melancholia in the absurdity of the characters life. A second reading is most helpful to pick out the different threads and storyline that become one cohesive theme. The art is cute and it's a breeze to read through even with the often heavy themes.

Douman Seiman makes some wonderfully strange mangas, and Melancholia fits perfectly among his other works.

What initially seems to be a collection of unconnected short stories, eventually turns out to be a story set in a single world with a single overarching setting. Most or all of the various characters introduced in the first volume reappear in the second. Some seemingly unimportant side characters prove absolutely crucial to resolving the overarching conflict, and seemingly unconnected characters are frequently connected (sometimes in wonderfully foreshadowed ways).

Finally, since the manga description is so vague, here's a spoiler-y list of some themes this manga covers:



I really liked this manga. I only had a bit of an issue with recognizing some of the character designs - the cast is huge, and sometimes protagonists from earlier chapters appear in only a few panels in the resolution, which makes it a bit hard to remember who exactly they are.

Anyway, except for that issue, this is excellent.

... Last updated on April 12th, 2019, 7:23am