Aug 02, 2024
Congrats on finishing two volumes! Been a great ride so far, I’m excited to see what comes next.
I’ve already expressed my grievances before, but now that the volume’s over I’m gonna go over my total thoughts of volume 2 as a whole now that it’s over.
First of all, the overarching story itself is definitely keeping me interested. Deviating from the all-too-easy “evil government is evil and a government” idea and having multiple layers to the conspiracy is a good call, and helps keep some of the mystery aspect that made volume 1 interesting going into volume 2. Especially as the villain has already won in a sense, and the heroes are trying to salvage an already terrible situation instead of saving the world in the nick of time. It’s a good way to achieve that “hope in a hopeless world” feeling that’s so prevalent in the dystopia genre.
That being said, as I mentioned before, I think you need to slow down and flesh out the bits you’ve already introduced before adding more and more plot lines. Miyazaki’s rebels and the infiltration into high society was already more than enough for one volume, adding the plot line with Kit’s father on top makes the volume feel like a lot of ideas crammed together with little substance. The first draft is you telling the story to yourself, so this isn’t a huge problem now, but if you redraft this story in the future I would recommend giving this volume a big overhaul or possibly splitting it completely in two.
Another issue that I’ve had in this volume is that the world feels less lived-in that it did in volume 1. In the first volume, Kit felt like a cog in a machine of millions of people. Now it feels like the world has started to revolve around him, Ko and Ekko. Events only happen due to their relation to the main characters, and not because this is a world full of people living out their lives.
I think this mainly boils down to the secondary and background cast becoming more and more like plot devices. In volume one, the teachers and students were described in a way that made it feel like a real environment full of real people, but in this volume even characters like Miyazaki and Bear simply feel like objects used to push the main trio into plot advancement or character development. Other than a couple bits of the high society subarc, like the woman with loaded dice, there have been few times where it felt like there were characters that existed simply because they existed instead of just being there to serve the plot when needed.
That being said, I’m still very much enjoying the story. The world building is definitely the strongest aspect, I think you’ve successfully instilled an image of an oversanitised and dystopian Japan in my mind, which is an impressive feat. In other words, keep up the good work, just be more mindful of pace
