Henshin no News

nathandouglasdavis Dec 10, 2022

7

The vast majority of these stories in this collection involve the topic of death, often with suicide attempts. None of the suicide attempts are actually successful, with the person who's about to die get saved in some sort of poetic way. The stories also often devolve into absurdity--perhaps starting out relatively normal, if a bit bittersweet, before ending with events that feel most at home in a dreamworld. My favorite chapters happen to be the two which had no undertones about death, though I'm not sure if that's why I liked them more. Those are the first story (which is about a kid who's trying to break out of feir cyborgial, studious routine and the girl at the bookstore who talks to fem normally) and the last story (which is about two young adults in a driver's ed class, the odd stunted growth of one of them, and the secret feir mafia-like family is keeping). All of the middle stories are still pretty good, but I think they might've just leaned more on the depressing side of things and less on the whimsical side of things for my personal tastes. If judged on an objective scale (if such a thing is even possible), the artwork should probably be deemed bad. But I actually liked it quite a bit. There's simplicity, but also details. It can be overly sparse with the backgrounds at times, but I don't actually mind that in this case because it helps create a mood. Sometimes, there will be a random gritty picture mixed in. And some of the faces are pretty monstrous and wonky in how they're designed. It's cute and fun.