Yasuki Tanaka

*I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.*

Hello Fellow Readers

I was ready for mystery and horror but what I got was confusion. Summertime Rendering was a little hard to follow as the story progressed, more and more things kept happening, but there wasn't an explanation for why. I think Tanaka was trying do was have the reader discover things as the protagonist Ushio did but like him I was just lost the entire time.

I will say that while I did not like the over sexualization of all the female characters, the art style was good and the shadows were creepy as well. I do like the ending to this and it makes me actually want to read the second volume.

Overall, a rough start that hopefully gets better with the second volume… (mere)

This series has so many twists and reveals it tires me out just slightly more than it intrigues me.

And anytime I start to think I could almost let myself like this a bit, it goes and pulls some cheesy fan service. This time around they actually made up-skirt panty shots of a 15-year-old girl a critical plot point. Who does that????

I'm still on the fence about this series and may or may not pick up the next volume at the library if I see it there. At the very least, I would think I'll have forgotten all the many intricacies of this convoluted plot by the time another volume came out, but this one helpfully included a six-page recap, Maybe they plan to do that regularly until they're up to 90% recap and 10% new story by the final volume.… (mere)

This messy supernatural thriller plays with time and doppelgangers on a small island off the shore of Japan's Wakayama Prefecture, just south of Osaka. Shinpei Ajiro, a 19-year-old, returns from cooking school in Tokyo for the funeral of one of his foster sisters. The possibility that she was murdered kicks off an overly-complicated plot that allows the creator to dump in frequent twists and turns -- so many that I started to weary of them after a while.

The fan service that mostly targets a 15-year-old girl is unwelcome and the various crushes between the foster siblings and their small group of friends are more cringe than romantic.

I have another volume on hand from the library, so I'll give that a go, but I'm pessimistic that I'll ever make it to the end of this tangled web.… (mere)