Shuichi (or was it Shinichi?) Kagaya is a seemingly-ordinary
student who doesn’t want to stand out.
This is because he’s suddenly started becoming a monster. We don’t know what this monster is or why he
changes into it, but it looks to me like something out of “Bendy and the Ink
Machine”. He is also granted an amazing
sense of smell, which is how he one day discovers a local house fire with
someone inside. He uses his monster form
to save the girl, but leaves behind his phone before making the decision to do
so. As it turns out, the girl has the
phone and confronts him over it, admitting to him that she’s interested in
monsters.
He meets her to try and get his phone back, but tries to
play off what she saw as a hallucination.
He is forced to admit the truth, however, when he must use his powers to
save himself after the girl pushes him off the roof. The girl demands to know his secrets and she
introduces herself as Claire Aoki. Then
a curveball is thrown when Claire invites Shuichi homes and tells him that the
fire was her own attempt to kill herself.
And another is thrown when she reveals that her sister is another
monster who killed their parents. When
the sister left, she left Claire with a star coin, which a mysterious new enemy
monster girl comes hunting after.
She claims that the coin can be exchanged for power, if one
is willing to lose everything else. Our
heroes bid a quick retreat, during which it’s revealed that Shuichi is an
unwilling combatant like Kaneki from Tokyo Ghoul, despite how much the
bloodthirsty Claire eggs him to fight.
It is only when her madness is combined with Shuichi’s
strength via a mysterious zipper on his back that the beating (I mean “battle”)
begins. A few weeks later, the two enter
into a brains+brawn relationship to defend themselves from the other monsters
that are undoubtedly out there.
While the story itself is unique and the characters all have
their various nuances that help them all stand apart from each other (plus I
loved all the fanservice we got from Claire), there are also a few problems
with it. First of all, the blurb on the
back makes it sound like Shuichi is a member of a hidden clan of monsters, like
the vampires in Twilight. Instead, he is
struggling alone, with no community to support him or to explain what’s
happening to him.
And, speaking of explanations, the magic that makes this
whole story able to take place is also ill-explained. The villain’s flashback before she dies tells
us of a befuddled-looking pretty boy who appears out of a vending machine with
the same star mark on it that we saw on the coin. He tells her that he’s lost his many star
coins and that he’ll grant her a wish if she helps him. Is this how she became a monster? The volume also ends with a flashback to what
is presumably Claire’s older sister, meeting the same man and claiming that she
wants to make a wish for…Shuichi?
Still, all in all, I feel that Gleipnir’s good points have
far outweighed the bad (at least, at this point), and that I will continue to
follow the series as it slowly-but-surely releases in the English.
Manomidori, signing off.
