Morte

(no spoilers) At the start of the story, we follow Sasha's point of view. It seems like a normal drama story at first, but when the point of view shifts to another character, that's when the story reveals its true purpose. I really think this story is very well written. At the beginning, it’s not so interesting, but it develops very well from the middle to the end. The way the author presents the characters, giving an initial impression of them and then revealing new information that changes that impression, is really cool. Another strong point is how the story naturally unfolds towards the end. It wasn’ta forced ending; everything connects. You can tell the author really knew what they were doing. It’s a good story and you will feel strong emotions in some scenes. Be cautious if you are sensitive to strong content, such as suicide.

After reading The House in Fata Morgana, I looked up for another work by Hanada-sensei, and consequently I found out about this series of light novel called Morte. I’m wondering if outside Japan the volumes were only published in Brazil, because I haven’t seen data about Morte being translated to any other languages than Portuguese, also none fan-translations whatsoever. I hope that changes if my doubt is authentic. That said, Morte has 3 volumes published and more than one main character, and the author used this to enrich the narrative, especially on the first volume to deliver us how the characters feel about themselves and howthey perceive what’s happening around them. It was amazing to see the events happening from more than one perspective. In my opinion, the story’s elements were delicately put to grasp the reader’s attention and emotions. Speaking of emotions,the story is seasoned with emotional moments, even the supporting characters have depth in their personality and they will play a big role in the development of the plot, every character connection is meaningful. I can’t forget to say about the main themes the story will present us: numbness,doubt, despair, suffering, Love and “Morte”, the last represents in the story as a rare condition that leads people to commit suicide. The word Morte means “Death” in some languages, so even the title suggests that feelings will be touched. Another thing that I’ve appreciated the depth is how the settings are described, It was a good sensation to me imagining the places and landscapes as they were being narrated, there were a lot of cultural/local references of the space where the things take place. I think it’s a subjective point of what I’m going to write, but I enjoy when real names are used in a fiction work, like names of brands, famous people and monumental places. Usually, these things help me immerse even more in the ambiance. So far my text only contains my opinion with positive points, so here’s now the things that I thought it could be better from my point of view in this very paragraph: The first one is about the back cover, both volumes two and three delivered for me a text that said too much, giving me an idea of what could happen when I was reaching some important events. Maybe this won’t happen when other publishers release the volumes. And the second one is about changes that took place at some point. The author even said about his intentions with that changes on the afterwords of one of the volumes. I saw the potential in that modification and I enjoyed them in general, but more than that, I enjoyed the way these things were before that. I will wrap up my review saying that I really enjoyed reading Morte from the first word until the last written letter. Having the opportunity, I definitely will give it a re-read in the future. I would recommend this light novel to pretty much anyone who likes to read, except people who feel really bad when there are sensitive topics on the content, especially related to suffering.