My Capricorn friend

Edit: I wrote this immediately after I read the manga so I am writing this disclaimer to say that I have tempered my opinion a little, but not too much. I'm not sure if this is the best work of fiction ever, but I think it's one of the best manga I've read and was genuinely a flawless reading experience. Now for the review. I just finished this about ~90 seconds ago and I can already tell you that this is the best manga I have ever read, and maybe the best work in any medium. This story is utterly concise, simple, and beautiful. Each character, place, person,thought, expression, and event is wonderfully developed to give the reader a sense of attachment to the setting and characters, which is so outstanding for such a short work. You should read this manga ASAP, unless you are able to somehow get your hands on a hard copy. In that case, it's worth the wait, because you're going to want to hold this single volume tight to your bosom once you've finished.

Had to read this over several months because of the slow chapter translations, but I didn't mind one bit rereading it from the start over and over again. It's a really nice mystery story and surprisingly anti-climatic, but that's also part of the charm. For only seven chapters, the characters felt very fleshed out and complex, just like real people, and their choices and motivations were understandable. The art and pacing of the story is also very beautiful and well done. It's a great manga, sadly only one volume long, but since it's also pretty short it won't harm to give it a try, soI recommend to read it slowly and carefully!

I'm here to write a review that I have been putting off for more than two months. Yagiza no Yuujin, or "My Capricorn Friend", which I call "Capricorn" when I aggressively recommend it to my friends, is a story about a mystery, a mystical veranda and a bloody baseball bat. It's also a story about scapegoats, escaped goats, and regret. Let me start by saying that I desperately read this manga. I remember consuming the whole volume, stopping only when the story did. I then went on with my day, went to sleep, and read the whole thing again the next day. We start by hearing aboutYuuya's veranda, and about how, sometimes, weird things get caught in it. And then the story starts. Every convo, no matter how trivial, is foreshadowing. Nowadays it is not often that we are presented with the same information the "detective" has, but it is the case here. Every piece of information counts, and it all comes together in a brilliant, vibrant way. I can't stress how powerful this manga is. I wish I could, but I would risk spoiling it. So I would just want to recommend it to anyone who is interested enough to read my silly review.

tl;dr: A short manga with a pretty generic take on bullying with a reasonably well told mystery attached to it. This manga has two major facets, both of which are decent, but both of which also feel like they’re somewhat lacking. In a very broad sense, the manga is about the protagonist, Matsuda, feeling a sense of guilt after something terrible happens which he feels is a result of him merely looking away from bullying that was occurring around him. At this point he feels a responsibility to help the victim of bullying, Wakatsuki, but it’s already too late and Matsuda needs to deal with that.The manga explores the feelings and roles of various characters that are affected by the bullying and its aftermath, though ultimately only three are properly focused on. I think focusing on a small number of characters makes sense as this is such a short manga, but even with that it still didn’t feel like it spent enough time on them. It does enough to get you to care about the characters, but it didn’t really feel like it fleshed them out enough. Ultimately, even though it built up the foundation to be quite a bit more, it felt pretty superficial and it didn’t really seem to say anything beyond the standard bullying is bad, has wide effects, and you should step in and stop it before it’s too late. Thus, it felt like a lot of wasted potential. In addition to that, there’s also a mystery that pops up, though it doesn’t become apparent until well into the manga and after a lot of what will be important clues have already been revealed. The mystery is pretty simple, but it’s still interesting to watch as it’s unraveled. It was interesting to see how the various characters fit into it and see what earlier seemed like minor details pop up in a new context with major importance. There were some incredibly forced elements that were pushed into it in order to make the plot work, such as the protagonist just happening to have a sister that’s married to a high-ranking police officer that can provide him with secret information or the protagonist just happening to have some supernatural veranda where random things like newspapers from the future pop up, but even with them the mystery felt pretty well written. The ending too was well written and fit the manga perfectly, but at the same time I absolutely hate it and wasn’t satisfied with it in the slightest. The art is decently solid and works well enough for conveying what it has to.