(Rainbow Field, a location within the manga) is a heavy book. Its thick black cover and roughly 300-page girth are a sign of things to come: this is a black, bleak story, complicated and convoluted. I...more

(Rainbow Field, a location within the manga) is a heavy book. Its thick black cover and roughly 300-page girth are a sign of things to come: this is a black, bleak story, complicated and convoluted. It is a story that you can read again and again, and notice new things each time. It is a story that you need to read again and again to puzzle together. It is a story heavy with symbolism and maddeningly intricate. Suzuki is a troubled boy. He’s lived with uncaring foster parents for most of his life, alienated from the other kids at his school, owner of a cynical, unhappy mentality. Komatsuzaki is a violent, unpredictable bully whose head trauma causes him to act in mysterious, inexplicable ways. Arakawa is a no-nonsense, normal girl who pines after Komatsuzaki but can never have him. A teacher with just one working eye. A mother who committed suicide. A daughter in an endless coma. Attempted rape, murder, extortion, sexual deviance, and a freakish explosion in the butterfly population. All of these elements are whirled together in a story spanning 10 years, a tale of blackness, pain and apocalypse. And maybe just a bit of hope and redemption. It’s a spiritual cross between the misanthropic suburban malevolence of Kyoko Okazaki’s Rivers Edge and the eerie mysticality of Donnie Darko. (taken from Mangascreener)