About the Mangaka

Not really a lot of info on Hasegawa Keisuke the author, and nothing on Nanakusa unfortunately. Keisuke does however have a rather snazzy website, but be warned it’s both in all Japanese; and is flash heavy. Though it does look nice!!

About the Manga

I’ve had this sitting on my shelf for months and had never considered reading it, since frankly the story just has no appeal to me. I’m not even sure when I bought it. I packed it by accident on my last hospital trip, mixing it up for the Strawberry Panic novels. Stuck in hospital with nothing else to read, I found myself reading it, and equally odd found myself liking it.

The structure of the story reminded me a lot of the Kino no Tabi novel from Tokyopop I reviewed a while back. The way that each chapter was it’s own individual story, rather than a long line of connected ones.

This is both a good and a bad thing, it’s good because you can easily take a break from the story at chapter ends without losing anything. Usually when taking a break with stories, I find I need to go back a page or two to get a back into the ‘feel’ of the story. In this case, where the stories are individualised, this isn’t the case.

The down side of course is the fact that with chapterised stories, the flow itself can feel disjointed and sluggish. In stories this is usually a bad thing, thankfully this isn’t the case in this volume.

Keisuke writes a series of heart touching stories over the course of this volume, the last one with Towa practically had me in tears. Yet it’s never overly soppy or silly, it has the perfect balance for a series of this type. This is unusual as this was Keisuke’s first foray. Usually they struggle to find their ground, he doesn’t this time around.

What I liked about this volume is that he didn’t focus it entirely on death, in fact several of the stories deal with living, rather than dying. The Flower of Wounds: Low Blood Pressure is one of my favourites, and has my favourite line in the entire novel: “I’m putting you in charge of world peace, and the fate of my curry.” I nearly peed myself laughing over that, especially given the context it was used.

I liked this story because it showed Momo in a different light, that she wasn’t only about taking souls, but also about saving them as well. I really liked the ending of this particular story.

However the last one, Open Your Eyes, was so heart wrenching it turned my laughter to tears. The way he blends his stories is also one of Keisuke’s talents. The final story is the shortest, yet is probably the best written, and shows that sometimes things won’t always go the way they’re planed.

Very little is revealed about Momo in this volume, in fact it’s not until the last story that we’re given any solid info on Momo and Daniel. To be honest I hadn’t even noticed the lack of this information until I read it. Usually this lack would be fatal in a series for me, but in this one Keisuke manages to keep you hooked without it. That said I hope volume two reveals a bit more, otherwise I think it would get a bit stale.

Another area this volume excelled was the use of art. The cover is cute, almost to cute for me. However the colour panels used for the chapters are awesome, as are the black and white ones through out. Sure the art style is one that I’m not usually fond of, as I feel it tends to be overly cutesy, in this case though it fits perfectly and as a result the damage is muted.

The downside of this is Seven Seas small form releases. Sure these may be the official sizes for Japanese releases, but I don’t like them. They’re to small, and for people like me with large hands they’re hard to hold comfortably. Seven Seas seem to have forgotten the in the west, we tend to be larger than those from Asia.

Overall though I have no qualms about recommending this series, especially since Seven Seas seem to finally have sorted their distribution out, a year after the problems started. Will this go on my Essential Read list? Not yet, to early to really say after only one volume. I’ll give it a few more volumes to see if it keeps going as well as it’s started out.

Where to Buy

• Brits: The Book Depository
• Yanks: Amazon.com
• Canadians: Amazon.ca