Final Quarter Quantity 1 by Ai Yazawa
Final Quarter is an appropriately spooky manga for October, but it surely begins with a well-known story of angsty love between a Japanese schoolgirl and a foreigner who likes to lurk round Shibuya taking part in the guitar. Mizuki is fighting a change in her household’s circumstances and turns into entranced by Adam’s music. Adam latches on to Mizuki as if she’s a life preserver, they rapidly develop shut. This sort of self-destructive romance is finished a lot a lot better by Yazawa herself in her later collection, so seeing an analogous story compressed right into a chapter with much less time to grow to be invested within the characters made me simply need to yell at Mizuki “Run Away Lady!!!” fairly than hoping for a fortunately ever after situation.
Mizuki’s story is reduce quick and Final Quarter shifts to exploring the ghost investigations of Hotaru and her classmates. Hotaru meets a mysterious ghost lady in an deserted mansion. The lady has few reminiscences of who she is or why she’s tied to the mansion, besides she retains taking part in the identical tune again and again and has sturdy reminiscences of a long-lost love. Hotaru begins to research, and pulls in a few of her mates, who’re fairly startled after they see that the ghost that solely Hotaru can communicated with is able to influencing the bodily surroundings of the deserted home. Hotaru nicknames her ghost Eve they usually strike up a heat if considerably disconcerting friendship.
Yazawa’s character designs are as at all times on-point and classy, and it’s good with the ability to learn earlier works of hers and examine them to Paradise Kiss and Nana. There’s an actual sense of vacancy and distance as Eve continues her diminished existence within the mansion with solely half-remembered emotions tying her to Earth. The dynamics in Hotaru’s pal group are participating as they throw themselves into determining what occurred to Mizuki/Eve, however Adam very a lot stays a cypher. I’ll be curious to see how the story continues to develop.
