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“But the world isn’t just one thing! To each his own world!”

Strange, no?

Well first impressions, I would, in fact, call it pretty strange. And as the story progresses, it only gets even stranger as the echoes of the Jomon period come forth with the town’s vile underbelly disemboweling itself onto the scene in a swirling maelstrom of distrust and violence. It’s sort of reminiscent of a work I’m surprised to see hasn’t been mentioned in any other (to be fair I only check MAL) reviews. That, of course, would be Mark Frost and David Lynch’s incredible TV series: Twin Peaks.
That unraveling mystery that only seems ... to get stranger and stranger, that constant stream of strange suspects and accompanying red herrings mixing up the audience, that idyllic small town secretly embroiled in droves of the evil and disgusting just under the surface, that chasm forming into another world bringing forth its evils, that horse.

Yes, I was really caught by how much I was reminded of Twin Peaks (and even seeing what I believe is an actual homage to the show) while reading this manga. However, I must mention that a derivative pile of slop this is not. Through similar themes of the aforementioned vile underbellies and the like, comes a story of external perfection’s crumble, the fear of a changing world, what the hell even is reality and who the hell are we? Do bear with me if I turn out to be a dancing fool.

Minus my stupid connections to a TV show, SOIL is a very unique story with existentialism at its core. Again, no spoilers, but that constant questioning of everything lends to an experience of genuine intrigue kept up until the end. I’m no good at mystery solving and all that sort of thinking as I failed Umineko When They Cry, but I can really say that your interest won’t just drop off when things get too weird. Sure, everything’s getting stranger and stranger but it all makes sense. That is to say, you can figure out what’s going on if you just try.

Not wanting to get too deep into the whole meat of the story so that I don’t ruin it for anyone, I guess I’m supposed to talk about the other aspects of the work.

Art. I’m no artist so I don’t have much to say here, but it works. Without any shading, the art can look pretty simplistic with many of the characters coming off looking pretty strange. In my opinion, this style pairs in its simplicity as the eerier aspects of certain characters are elevated by the relatively normal look of everyone else.

As the story goes on though, the increasing detail and complexity of the backgrounds and the like (especially when a certain thing happens to the whole town’s look) made it harder to parse and muddled in a way. Though this could be sort of intentional as paneling nearing the end would be these whole hectic sequences of different images throughout the past and present.
Yes, art of characters, what a time to talk about characters. They’re fine. There’s a lot of them, but it never feels like an overwhelming deluge of information since the defined ones are, well, defined enough to be distinguishable and such. Everyone looks and acts distinct enough that there’s never any confusion on who’s who and never any times where I thought “Wait, who the hell is this again?” It works.

To not to go on too long, SOIL is pretty damn good overall. It’s an interesting mystery with good visuals and structure that keeps it engaging throughout. The reveals work and everything makes sense if you just take a second to think. Really, it sort of spells it out in the end anyways. Of course, not everything can be known but that’s it, that’s the point. To quote a quote the manga likes to quote, “For the truth of the universe can only be described with a single word… That word is… Mystery.”