Back to Merkuriy's Profile Merkuriy's Profile

Honestly this is probably the best manga I've ever read (albeit, I'm not some mass reader of manga, I only have a few that I've fully read).

The character design, backgrounds, and usage is probably the greatest thing about this manga. The story itself is very complex, but at the same time very traditional and simple. The characters transcend this and help bring everything weaving back together.

It was wild throughout the story seeing characters that were only lightly mentioned in just say, the first 30 or 40 chapters show up again in the latter 50, or small minor characters change over the years in ... the manga. It was really interesting to see how they changed, what they were doing now, how their loyalties lied, etc.

While I give this manga a 9/10 for art, I think that's only because I'm comparing it with manga or anime that is some of the best for artwork in general. If I wasn't doing that, this would easily be 10/10 for art. The strongest part with the art would have to be the emotions that Urasawa was able to convey, and how they impacted the entire scene.

This felt so much like a novel and something that easily transcended what a normal "manga" is capable of. I look at most manga as a story-rich comic book essentially, which I don't think is too unfair, but this was much more than that. On top of that, Urasawa went out and recorded songs that were in the story, in the original volumes he would give out hints and such with physical items, it's all really cool.