Zombie Maria

TL;DR: Short manga with a story that had a lot of potential, if it had taken twice the amount of pages to tell its story. The art style, however, is perfect. Zombie Maria is a short one-shot Manga about a boy that goes into a forbidden forest to commit suicide. Once there, he meets a zombie girl who, determined to make sure he keeps on living, stops the boy from killing himself time after time, until he seems to go into the forest not to kill himself, but rather to meet her instead. The story is told in only 45 pages, a length that contributed to thefact that the characters are fairly flat, Chekov's Guns are obvious, and the plot twists feel almost like Deus Ex Machina. The art style, however, is beautiful. It's almost Tim Burton-esque, a style that goes very well with the theme of death that thing manga is about. Amusing to see is that Misao, the boy who is alive, is drawn more angularly to fit with the dark themes, where dead zombie Maria is drawn more traditionally Manga-round. This makes sense, as Misao is depressed and suicidal, where Maria is happy and appreciates life. Overall, I enjoyed it. I feel like this story would have been better if told in a single volume as instead of a single chapter, but it was good nonetheless.