After years of no contact, Senri’s mysterious bond with his twin brother Kazuto seems to have been reestablished and he’s once again able to see through his eyes under certain circumstances. Senri isn’t sure what changed and while this doesn’t change his overall goal, to find the “fire man” who killed his parents and kidnapped Kazuto, he realizes that Kazuto seems to be working with the man now, and working in an unsavory line of work as well. Senri isn’t the only person who wants a piece of them, both the police and the underworld are after the two of them as well, and they might be better informed than Senri is about their whereabouts, magical twin connection or not.
I remember being rather meh on the first two volumes of this series and while I found myself warming up more as I went through volumes 3 and 4, it’s still not enough to make me want to catch up to the most recent release. The story remains remarkably slow and rambly (although it has gotten smoother over these first four volumes) for a creator who has already been working for decades and I have to admit that I still find Sanbe’s art to be just rather ugly when it comes to the characters, especially the women (so perhaps it’s a good thing that there’s practically no reoccurring female characters). Neither of these aspects are a dealbreaker for me on their own, and can even be a strength for a series, but since the plot of this story is supposed to be a tight thriller, with unease constantly present in the reader, both of these elements really worked against my enjoyment.
Not many of Sanbe’s works are in English, this title and Erased are the only ones that have caught my eye, and I have to wonder which of these two is more indicative of his work overall. Erased was a tight thriller where the magical (time-traveling) aspect was core to the story, here the magical (twin involuntary telepathy) aspect could be re-written without any major narrative changes and honestly many other parts could be too. It was certainly nice to see Senri and Enan make progress towards finding Kazuto but at the same time it felt like the story could have basically started here without losing too much (besides Senri’s backstory).
Perhaps readers who are bigger fans than I am of gritty thrillers will really get into this series but as someone who prefers mysteries to thrillers, there’s just not enough here to make me pick up volume five any time soon.