Inochi

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Mistakes, we all make them. Some are so small that we are taught in school to merely erase and fix, it changing the whole equation and making is solvable, others so significant that reshape our entire life, muddling up our future.

There are only 4 chapters out as of now (meaning when I wrote this review) and honestly the manga has a nice plot and a driven heroine. Though I was confused as to what direction it's going to take now, since so much happened in such a short time I’m still curious to know how she handles her predicament.

Nobara and Kotori are twins. Though their ... exterior is identical, inside they are as different as night and day. Which results in Nobara being the "loose" twin while Kotori is the perfect one. In the first page of the manga we get a glimpse into the childhood that could and maybe did shape the rest of the girls lives.

The wheels get set in motion on a trip. Moments later tragedy strikes and Nobara’s father dies because of an incident no one could have anticipated but could have been prevented. Nobara is blamed by her mother for her fathers death. Deciding not to cause her mom anymore grief, so she goes to live with her grandmother for years to come.
The only interaction she has with her mom are weekly when her twin and her switch places so that she, Nobara, can spend time with her. All it took was one time and while impersonating Nobara , Kotori gets killed. Nobara can’t tell her mom that it was her precious Kotori that was actually killed so she makes up her mind to let Nobara’s name die and stay as Kotori.

Since the beginning you get a feel for the characters: Kotori’s easy going-ness, Nobara’s pain and sad smile. Suffice it to say we don’t get to fully appreciate Kotori’s role since she is killed pretty early on, but you get to sympathize with Nobara who's small mistakes shape her life.
I wasn’t going to mention this because it seems trivial, but the fact that her cat was named “Puta” which pretty much means “female dog” (the curse word) in Spanish is kindda weird and adds a little humor to a sad scene. Well for me anyway, since I can be pretty immature when the mood is just right.
The mother wasn’t one of my favorite characters, it’s no surprise really, I just think that she was mean to her daughter and although to her it might not have seemed like it, in a teenagers eyes, she did favor the oldest daughter more. She forgot that she not only lost a husband but Nobara lost a father. She was the grownup and yet failed at her role (to protect her daughter). I can only imagine her grief must have been horrible after losing her love and that's why I can understand her reason.

The art was very nice. Normal in a way, average but sometimes average is just as beautiful. There was no apparent laziness in the art which means the mangaka enjoyed drawing it and wanted it to show.

It’s very early to tell but Nobara, or should I say, “New Kotori,” faces a few hard decisions ahead of her. She lost her twin sister and her father. Now she’s pretending to be said sister because her mothers health might not take it if she knew her “favorite” daughter is dead.

It’s never easy to bury your sister and bury yourself at the same time. Let's see what awaits.

Unbelievable. All fives across the board. If this was an Amazon review then this manga would be heralded as a must-read classic. But I'm glad that this place isn't as lenient with the scoring system. This is one of those mangas that gets worse and worse, with nonsensical plot twists and situations that fall out of every pore the deeper you get into it. The story right from the start was already walking on a tightrope, and the sudden progressions of the characters and events that follow pushes it into very dangerous territory. The writer pretty much wrote herself into an infinite disastrous loop that ... she can't even get out of.

The first two characters introduced in the story are identical twins that somehow look exactly alike in the anime world. In fact, they look so much alike that even their own mother can't even tell them apart, and this ridiculous fact is one of the most important factors in the whole freaking story. Even that skanky little boyfriend can immediately recognize the differences between one from the other, but their own mother cannot? Nor can their grandmother? Nor can anyone else in their own family? And I can't believe how this played such a huge role in the story, it was the ultimate deciding factor that became the death of Inochi, no pun intended.

So we have two sisters, Madara and Nobara, they trade places with each other constantly, since no human being is intelligent enough to tell them apart, they play this to their advantage for unlimited amounts of time, all the way up to the point where one of them was killed. Yep, that's what happens here. One of them, while being the other twin, gets killed. So the twin, who is alive, needs to play the dead twin, for the rest of her Life, while getting revenge on the killer who raped and sodomized her. This is just terrible, it's worse than those made-for-TV prime-time dramas, worse than B-flicks, C-flicks, it's worse than just about anything because it takes itself seriously.

There is a superficial enjoyment here though, because the story does pace itself quite fast so you get the feeling that things are moving and the killer is loose and out killing other twins who gets themselves mixed up. Well, not really, but let's talk about the main villain, the killer himself. Now, here's where the manga really fooled me at first because I thought he was a such a cool villain. He was like Light-lite, you know, the "lite" version of Light Yagami from Death Note. Some of the things he was doing definitely took some planning, and he was always a step ahead of the cops, of Madara (or was it Nobara), and seemed like an uncommon, philosophical, smart villain who knew how to murder people and get away with it. He is a cold bastard which I like, there was even one scene in which he visited the victim's family, just to laugh at them. Now how badass is that? But it turns out at the end that the whole charade was a facade, he was just an idiot who fell for the most simplest trick in the book, in the movies, in anime, in the universe, since the beginning of time. And I hate that stuff, if you're going to make a good villain, why not just roll with it? Why does he have to turn stupid at the end just so the protagonist can win?? Makes no sense.

So this is Inochi, there you have it, a manga filled with leftover characters, and a layer of false sense of security that attempts to cover all the plot holes. And speaking of the plot holes, I'm not even mad about those things, because just about every movie, book has them, but what I can't stand is how many coincidences that happen in this manga. Like the cop is walking down sunset boulevard and he just HAPPENS to see the killer getting on a bus, I mean come on, in this day and age I can't believe that type of storytelling still occurs. Anyway, this is the end of my rant review. See below for a condensed version.


Story 5:

Explained above, nonsensical, but fast-paced and somewhat entertaining. I did finish the whole thing in like a week.

Art 5:

Here's my stance. Good art can't save a bad story. But good story can save some bad art. The story was bad here so it didn't even matter. But I will say this, the cover arts are awesome.

Character 5:

The main characters all were terrible, you learn nothing about them other than "I must get revenge on the killer" type of thinking. The villain was cool at first but turned out to be pretty stupid at the end.

Enjoyment 5:

You would want to finish the whole thing just to see how it turns out. There were some good cliffhangers.

Overall 5:

5/10. An average, bland manga.