血の轍 1

I'm writing this review while I'm at volume 9 and it can be considered a review to up to that point.

I privately considered 押見修造 to be rather overrated, but this manga has completely turned me around on him. His visual language, the way he lingers on the smallest details and uses it to pace the scene, it's incredible. The same story from another artist, might not even hold my attention. Just for that I will give it easily 5 stars. The art here to me, is more important any other aspect. All manga is visual storytelling but it is doubly true here. Most of the storyteling here is done through art, not dialogue. There are long stretches of pages with no text at all. There are many, many pages where you only see the characters faces, hands, eyes, and only one word spoken.

Which means, on one hand, it can be argued it is even simpler than something like yotsubato, on the other hand, when there is dialogue, it can feel like a huge difficulty spike. I don't think this is a good choice if your goal is primarily to learn rather than to enjoy the manga itself. However while other manga volumes take me a week in this I can read several volumes a day without feeling exhausted. So in a way, it is also motivating.

tl;dr:

+good manga

+mostly very easy to understand

-some difficulty spikes

-not a lot of text

+easily accessible official version to double check your understanding