Okuru Kotoba

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Wow honestly this manga impressed me quite a fair bit with it's storytelling. The twists and turns is honestly something I DID NOT expect even from this manga making it all the more enjoyable.

The manga starts off with our mc dying and believing his childhood friend Chiaki was the reason he died. The story peels away like a onion as we get to see many diverse characters fleshed out in only 16 chapters which was really impressive for me while still pushing the plot forward. The pacing was surprisingly good for a short manga such as this one. You wouldn't feel overwhelmed by how the ... story goes by and still feel in tact and attached to the interesting characters. The suspense atmosphere is well done for the first few chapters as you are able to feel the surreal and tense moments in the manga.

Art itself is pretty decent , don't really have much to say on this.


The characters are what pulled me in for this story , the author managed to put several characters in and manage to do them well. We get to delve into the different perspectives of the characters while explore their backstory to how they become who they are today which is again pretty astounding and remarkable of the author since this only has 16 chapters. You get to see their struggles and how they all play a part to what happened in the manga making all of them relevant to the story.

To conclude i would highly recommend this manga to anyone who loves twist and turns. This manga has interesting characters and a satisfying ending to fill your needs.

This manga is incredible, i saw the first chapter a few months ago and i just assumed it was another boring edgy manga but is really not, i did not expect such a complex story from something like this, the characters are incredibly human and nothing is as simple as it seems which is something i really like from a story, i expected to hate a particular character but i really ended up not being able to dislike any of them
They all have a version to tell and they're all suffering somehow, it doesn't attempt to sugar coat it: humans are complex, we can't be ... perfect we have a lot of flaws sometimes ugly ones, we can't be expected to react properly to certain situations or to make the right choices
The way they handle this is perfect, really recommended

Ever since I first read this manga, it has been one of my absolute favorite manga. Certainly, most elements have been seen before, but the presentation and the story is what makes this series one of my favorite manga. That said, I will attempt to keep this review as neutral and objective as possible.

The story is centered around a fairly simple premise: One day, the high-school student Sahara Makaji is hit by a truck, after seeing the ghost of his childhood friend, Asuka Michi. Following this, everyone assumes that Sahara is dead, including Sahara himself, who believes that his other childhood friend, Aikawa Chiaki, pushed ... him. At the end of the first chapter, Sahara confronts Chiaki about this, asking "Why did you kill me?" The rest of the story is basically about Sahara trying to understand why he died, Mei trying to get Chiaki to admit to killing Sahara, and the rest of the characters trying to cope with losing their friend. Practically every chapter, except Chapter 1 and the Final Chapter, has a flashback to events that took place 10 years earlier, which mainly helps with character development.

The art shifts a lot, usually shifting multiple times on the same page to set the mood for each frame. Most of the time, the art is typical manga-style, but occasionally it shifts to more simplistic and sometimes even "chibi"-style. And then, there are the horror-style close-ups of Chiaki. The characters' designs are mostly consistent, but slight changes occur when time passes (they obviously grow bigger over the 10 years between the past and present, Mei's hair changes from black to white for some unexplained reason (she probably dyed it, or suffers from the Marie Antoinette Syndrome... Both explanations are probable)), yet it's still easy to recognize the characters in the past. The biggest weak spot would be the fight in chapter 5 and 6. It just doesn't really look like they're actually fighting, but rather like Mei is really bored posing for an artist...

The characters are just great. While most of the characters fit typical archetypes, their behavior is really realistic, and the main cast is easy to relate to. About a third of the first chapter goes with showing what happens at the site of the accident about half an hour later, with the characters being introduced one after one. The rest of the chapters are largely spent on developing these characters into well-rounded, interesting individuals with their own interesting quirks.

I personally enjoyed "Okuru Kotoba" a lot. It's one of the only manga I've ever read that had me hooked from the first chapter, and never let me down as the story progressed. I can read it over and over again and still notice new details I missed the first time or that had simply slipped from my mind. Additionally, some things that make no sense early on (like how Mei dropped her phone into the middle of the street in chapter 2) are explained later on and in the end, even the ending isn't all that big an ass-pull as it first seems, if one just recalls earlier events. Don't expect any serious amounts of fanservice, though. Aside from very few panty-shots in Volume 1 (Chapter 1-5), and a few glimpses of Mei's cleavage in Volume 2 (Chapter 6-10), the fanservice is literally non-existent.

I can strongly recommend this story to anyone who loves a good manga with lots of drama, mystery, suspense and tragedy(?). Keep in mind that at the time of writing this review, the manga hasn't been translated yet, so it is only available in Japanese, but it is fairly easy to read. Personally, I think this is one of the best manga I've ever read.