Go With The Clouds, North-by-Northwest begins with our main protagonist, Kei, and his car is turned over on the side of the road in a desolate area. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why, until the story finally explains that oh, Kei was chasing a guy and trying to get him to see someone.
I think you can see where this sluggish start is an issue.
The prettiness of the characters and backgrounds and the one girl who randomly shows up at his car (with Kei well unaware) aside, North-by-Northwest starts off slowly. The basic facts are Kei is a 17-year old Japanese detective living in Iceland, making ends meet with tasks such as helping an old lady track down a guy to setting up Katla (an actress taking a temporary break) with his grandfather. However, he’s soon unable to reach his brother, Michitaka, and soon is unable to reach his uncle in Japan. Sensing something is wrong, he urges his grandfather to go back home with him to find out what’s going on. What they discover will most certainly shake the relationship he has with not only his brother, but likely everyone else around him.
By far the most captivating storyline (outside of the one girl whom I’ll explain in a bit) is the mystery between Michitaka and what he’s become. From Kei’s perspective, he’s known him since childhood as a pretty sweet, nice kid that wouldn’t harm anyone. So from Kei discovering he’s not in Japan to all the odd things he’s done over the past couple months at home, this adds to the real mystery of who he is. How Kei searches for him — he can interact with certain objects (like cars, he can actually hear them speak words) was genuinely interesting, and using that to deduce the situation was pretty cool.
While that is a general storyline for now at least, the subplot involving Kei and that one girl Lilja, whom he’s happened to meet three times in the worst ways — her naked in the river by coincidence, her pulling her underwear down in the bathroom after not being told she was in the bathroom (and being given vodka by Katla), and her on top of him drenched because of the rain…Except for this last one, this was back when he fell asleep in his overturned car. When he woke up, he thought it was a dream. Whether or not Lilja will ever tell him this happened (or if he’ll even remember) who knows, but it’s pretty clear they’re going to be heavily involved with each other moving forward…especially considering the stance she takes at the end of this volume, since it runs counter to what he knows.
At this point, the only things of note is this storyline with Michitaka because the mundane stuff was pretty rote in volume 1. But I’m expecting North-by-Northwest to continue to explore this storyline while also drawing really lush, vibrant designs and backgrounds, so I’m looking forward to reading volume 2 when it comes out later this summer.