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Some people might disagree with the high rating (even if they liked the manga) but I just found this story right up my alley and it just clicked with me in a magical way.

With Sono Otoko, I was expecting it to be more about the chocolate (and it was!) but I was pleasantly surprised that the story was developed even further by giving the main character, Jean-Louis, this realness and depth.

The chocolate and sweets were used as metaphors in the story rather than just a source of pleasure. To a man like Jean-Louis, chocolates gave him comfort growing up and he never learned to ... let go. There's so much room and material to analyze Jean-Louis's character here but I don't wish to ruin those moments of realization while reading the manga for you.

Est Em has a minimalist style that is more realistic and different than your mainstream manga art, beautifully colored with hues of orange and coffee brown (the color you'd get if you tried doing watercolors with coffee). It succeeded in giving an atmosphere of its own, sucking you completely into the story.

This was my first manga by Est Em and I'm planning to try out her other work but I really recommend this one~

This is not an easy manga to read and to review.

A big part me was completely disgusted and disturbed by everything that was going on, but another part me was fixated, looking into the eyes of the darkness that's consumed these people.

While the story itself was not that bad, I think that it would have been much better -as well as easier to buy- with more mature characters, instead of high-schoolers in the middle of their high school drama.

As for the theme of the manga: it's all about obsessions; that's the main driving force behind most of the characters' actions. The characters themselves think ... that what they feel towards each other is love when they're only obsessed beyond the point of recovery.

I loved the art, especially the way the mangaka drew Tatewaki's horrific expressions. I swear I got goosebumps all over.

Overall: disturbing, disturbing, disturbing. Only read if you can handle some of the most distasteful, fallible characters.

This manga is an adaptation of three out of nine collected supernatural stories that were published in Japan in the 18th century by Ueda Akinari. The most recent English translation of that collection was published in 2006 for those interested.

I was pretty disappointed with the art and the way the mangaka had adapted the stories. I haven't read the original collection myself, so I don't know if the mediocre quality of the plot of each story stems from that same collection.

For anybody who's read some of the Japanese folklore, the manga would feel very tedious to read because it carries similar themes found in some ... famous Japanese myths. I would have loved it if the character's motives and acts were further explored and painted in a more humane way.

Sadly, the stories are only meant to terrify and even then, they don't deliver.

I think the best thing to do is to go read this manga having only read the synopsis and enter this roller-coaster of a story.

I don't want to get too deep into the details of 'Akumu no Elevator' or the characters themselves but I just want to say that this really makes you think. Or at least, that's what it did to me.

Whenever I hear about those terrifying situations that some people get inserted in and the way they come out as changed people, I get incredibly terrified because it makes me wonder if I would have made the same choices if I ... were in their place. Would we hold on to our morals and ethics tightly to the very end even if we see no other option but to let them go to survive?

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I don't think the writer just wanted to come up with an exciting thriller just for the heck of it. So this is as close as I could get to actually talking about the story without crossing into Spoiler Land but I hope whoever's read the manga would understand:

One of the characters could have cut the losses and stopped things from spiraling out of control but that person's hesitation caused everything to get even more complicated, although doing The Right Thing could have made it better, this manga shows that people rarely do what's seen as right when it comes to saving their behinds and coming out clean.