This has a strong start. And, from what I can tell, a pretty interesting overall concept, despite the fact that some stories don’t seem to quite gel with my reading of it, most seem to.

In a small town the natural form of a spiral appears and we are being told the story by Kyrie initially. Looking back on these events and reflecting on what all happened. Each issue is a different event, basically, of the spiral asserting itself onto an individual that goes mad or dies; either way they are subsumed by the spiral.

This is really interesting for about 2/3 of it because it works as a really effective social commentary. Often showcasing social power dynamics being inverted and highlighted as unnatural and a kind of inevitable domination of people who tried to initially assert their dominance over the marginalized.

There is a fairly consistent emphasis on showing the terror of not really understanding nature, and how powerful a force it is over humanity, even though we like to think we have power over it. The cyclical structure over time nature asserts is, in retrospect, on a completely different scale than even humanity can assert. And so these sort of literalization of natural effects that are misunderstood or not completely, empirically codified keep occurring, much to the determent of the various characters affected each issue.

I really enjoyed that meta aspect of it. It’s also really well drawn. The art is impressive. The whole thing looks and feels fresh and not at all derivative, though I’m reading this stuff specifically because I don’t know much about horror or manga. This is out of my comfort zone and understanding.

What I had difficulties with, and this may be because I’m such a laymen with this format and genre, is the inconsistencies and strange structural choices at the individual level as well as the larger arc. Things are introduced and completely disregarded later (eg. the Lighthouse, searching for the parents). The main characters, boyfriend and girlfriend—even though we have no idea why or how this relationship formed and they don’t seem particularly enamoured with each other at all—sometimes won’t appear in each other’s issues at all, and feel shoe-horned in at other times. Endings to the issues are abrupt and extremely awkward, often giving way to an issue that is obviously canonically connected but refusing to acknowledge certain events at a character level that took place.

It’s overall quite odd and didn’t work for me. Maybe that choice was to heighten the uncanny tension that builds, but it felt like it deflated it, if anything. What is permanent? Why does it move from these separately contained things, loosely connected, to the multi part structure of one specific story. The tone shifts and it becomes gonzo and bombastic and less concerned with the previous themes. The plot feels razor thin and the dialogue throughout, to be kind about it, is uneven. Much like Remina, it’s a really cool and fresh idea that doesn’t feel like it’s well executed and kind of tarnishes the ground work at the start.