i liked the story with its homoerotic undertones and multiple personality suggestions. it’s somewhat characteristic of the lovely nipponese style of treating sexuality. i enjoyed the first volume but i don’t know if i’ll go in search of the second one so soon.

this is really good non nippon made manga. svetlana has a great handle on the style and her drawings are incredibly expressive. switching constantly between the mini characters and the characters drawn more anatomically correct. it works so well. it’s a pleasure to read. of course you have to enjoy this the cutesy romantic comedy genre and the comic book convention depiction. it’s sensitive and full of comic relief at the same time.

the artwork is compelling. good use of exaggeration. its good to see non japanese made manga. i wouldn’t mind reading the whole series but it’s mostly entertainment. i little soul. but not my first choice.

it is somewhat dark. boy with crush on mysterious girl. but i’m not compelled to read the second one.

story interesting still. i read it because i read number one and wanted to see if it got better. but the below acceptable artwork really keeps me at bay.

interesting story. lame artwork.

smooth wordless narrative. how could you talk about leviathan? archetypal monster… subconscious? all lies underwater, big and beautiful monster. allconsuming monster. is it monster indeed?

the drawings are very expressive. lots of lines, sketch like lines. lots of landscapes. each one of the chapters begins with a quote that has been translated in french, english, german and japanese. interesting choice of languages.

tongue in cheek war spy stories with lots of sadness and cigarettes added. the stories are told in a discontinuous way allowing you to piece the whole story. as if you were a spy too. kind of clever. kind of entertaining. but hardly a mind blowing experience. good graphic narrative.

i like the way this book jumps between times. as if saying: a memory of things so horrible cannot be continuous. it’s a tale of madness and humanity, neither one of those concepts being completely linear. the book it’s dark and sad. the introduction does a good job at telling you the story of the massacre.
i think it’s a really good sign when comic books are talking about serious things (not that they haven’t done it before). but this is serious stuff. seriously painful.

my friend Joe handed me this book and said “this is one of the best comic books i have read ever”. i was very surprised, joe is a total comic book geek (decades old i’d say). so i took a good read at this. and guess what? it’s beautiful. it made me cry. it’s delicately narrated. i little distant, but it’s a “sensible distance”. or sensitive. it’s full of those “comic book moments”, i mean, do you ever see something and think “that could have never been done in a movie, or in a book, or in a song…” i mean, there are things that fit perfectly into their format. it’s not like, say, a movie is a better format than a short story. it’s more that they have their particularities and there are effects that each one of those formats is capable of and the other is not. and with a disputed genre/art form like comic books i’m always tempted to find those “moments” and say: see, see: comics are unique, they have a way of their own, they can do things unachievable by other means. so this one book does it all the time. beautiful instant one page cross referenced palimpsestual story telling/literary criticism.
and its dark. oh so dark. read this and then pass it with blankets by craigh thompson for a glimpse of the subtleties of american lives.