Today we continue on our “choose your own adventure” of reading books by creators you know and about whom you were cautiously optimistic.

Path #1 was high hopes lead to success! Path #2 was low expectations lead to success! Today we are on Path #3. So let’s get set the storyline.

Iruma Hitoma has had some significant success with his novels. In 2013 I read Adachi and Shimamura (安達としまむら), Volume 1 in Japanese and was not impressed. Since then I have read several other of his books with varying opinions. Of those, I only found one worth reviewing, Shoujo Mousouchuu (少女妄想中。) Overall, I consider him an inconsistent writer. So when he was picked for the Bloom Into You novel series about Sayaka, I was not well pleased. Trust me, this is relevant.

In the end, the three Sayaka volumes were excellent. I have reviewed all three here in English and Japanese and consider them a fantastic spin-off to a decent series. But this did not stop me from considering Iruma inconsistent. Because Sayaka was not his character and he was working with an already-established storyline and character and with that character’s creator. In the end, the series was fantastic and it had a full measure of everything I felt that Iruma’s writing lacks.

So, when Iruma and Nakatani said they were teaming up again, I was cautiously optimistic. Can Nakatani bring something to the project that will fill that deep void in Iruma’s writing?

So here we are at Path #4. Bad End.

I tried, I really did, but the problem with Iruma’s writing is that as much as in, say Adachi and Shimamura, we’re locked inside the heads of two girls, and have to listen to their thoughts, they never thing about anything, they just think. “What is this, I don’t know,” is not interiority, it’s fluff.

In End Blue, written by Iruma Hitoma and illustrated by Nakatani Nio, each scenario appears to be about someone returning to “that town” again for the first time in a long time. Kana meets up with Miyabi, whom she met that once. Seri runs into her old lover Ao, but ends up with her younger cousin, Mei, in a not-really-okay ending.

Every story I finished wondering what was it about. The writing feels like an RPG – she does this, she does that. No one has any interior life. No motivations, no anything, unless it fits the action. And they don’t think about things, they just think.

What are reviews for, she wondered as she wrote a review.  Then she shrugged and guessed someone else needs reviews or they wouldn’t be written.

I can cope with that kind of writing a little bit, but at some point I give it up as a bad job. It’s a sucking vortex of ennui. The illustrations for the books are pleasant and, if the characters has any personality, might fill in details, but if I told you the book took place at an airport and these people were strangers who met and parted, you’d find them to be as accurate as they are for people coming back to “that town” and seeing people they know.

I was really looking forward to this book and I hope that, if you read it and enjoyed it, you’ll let us know, but for me, it’s a bad end.

Ratings:

Art – 7 Nice, but since the characters have no personality, it’s just nice pictures
Story – 4 A murderer shows up. I still don’t know why. No one is murdered. I’m not joking.
Characters – 4 They could have been one character because they all talked/thought the same way, except for Kana, who I hope ends up okay. Miyabi doesn’t seem that good for her.
Yuri – 9 We are told that people are lovers and they sometime admit to it
Service – 7 Sadly, yes, the entire first story. “Can I touch it?” For fuck’s sake Miyabi.

Overall – 4, maybe 5.

By the point of the book where I gave up, the only character I could sympathize with was the bird.

Path #4, I died of dystentery, or boredom. Either way, I’m dead. This book was disappointing.