August 29, 2023

A masterpiece of a series ends mostly with beginnings. We see the earliest days of many of the town's strange inhabitants and how they became who they are today. This series has been an incredible ride, it's the best reading experience I've had in Japanese and my favorite storyline and characters I've read in Japanese as well. What makes this series so special is it truly stays surprising the entire time. It's sort of like Twilight Zone in that there's usually a twist, but the twist is always different. A lesser series would have gone fully dark and brutal, but this series is sometimes brutal, sometimes wholesome, and sometimes just funny and the fact that it never eases you into one style or another is the key to keeping you wanting to see the next story. While there isn't really a "climax" in the traditional sense, everything does come full circle really nicely by the end and I can't think of a better way to send this series out.

This final volume is mostly the same language difficulty as the first two, which is to say it's pretty smooth reading more or less. There is however one chapter here which completely threw me for a loop, where the characters are trying to reenact Japanese New Year's traditions but keep misinterpreting them because their records are smudged and worn. It's basically a lot of puns and while I have been lucky with some of the puns in this and other stories, this was the one where I had to throw my hands up and find a fan-translated version to walk me through, but thankfully it's just a gag chapter and not really lore important.

This series was one of those great moments where you really feel the reward of all the effort you put into learning a language, and was incredibly satisfying to finish even if it is short. I'm so glad I found this and I really want to read the rest of this author's work.

Gradings:29
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