Worlds Inside Books

The premise was amazing and I had high hopes for the book. Unfortunately, the execution wasn't that good in my opinion. The truly amazing cover and the blurb suggest a great hunt and gory mysteries. The problem is that none of it is actually in the book. Well, there is some gore, but it can hardly be called a mystery. Each chapter is a case for the main character to solve and they're all more or less connected. However, the chapters are way too short to develop the characters enough to make them at least a bit round and this lack of development affects the plot as well. What could be a great mystery if each case were longer becomes a group of almost magical deductions because the investigation is never shown or otherwise explained. The result is that I never cared about any of the characters. Not even a little bit, which is a shame since precisely the emotions play a big role, if not the biggest role, in this story.

I suppose that this complete lack of roundness and the resulting apathy for the reader reflects the point of view of the main character in a way. I don't know if this is what the author wanted to make the readers feel because there is no indication for it, as, for example, the plot is not exclusively told from the point of view of this character. It was a funny coincidence though that apathy is a good word to describe the main character's life. He's not human and his destiny is to hunt tsumitsukis, demons that take over the body and soul of some people, for all eternity, so he never gets close to anybody, with the exception of his talking wolf. Sadly, we don't see much of his interaction with this wolf either. We only know that they are somewhat friendly, with the animal acting as an older colleague.

Tsumitsuki does get a plus point for having an epilogue explaining who the main character is and how he became who he is. It was really needed after reading one disappointing mini plot after another.

This manga is a stand-alone, but I wonder if it started as something much longer that the author had to shorten later. I didn't know that there wasn't a second volume when I finished, but I thought that there was one. The whole manga has a prologue-feeling. While it disappointed me a lot as a stand-alone, it would be a great first volume of a series.