Butterfly

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Writer/Artist: Yu Aikawa

Year: 2002

More Info: Baka-Updates

Manga Review (Volume 1)
After reading the first volume of Yu Aikawa's Butterfly, I still don't know quite what I read.

The plot is unusual enough that it's worth explaining the series' premise. Ginji is a disaffected teenaged boy who keeps seeing the ghostly image of his brother. Ginji's brother hung himself several years ago, so this is what Ginji sees: his brother's swinging body. This is strange enough. Thankfully, there are no "As you know, Bob" conversations about this; Ginji's friends tread lightly around the subject, and Ginji certainly doesn't want to talk about it.

Then the paranormal investigation plot kicks in. A strange young girl walks up to Ginji and asks him to help her with a seance. She eventually overcomes his reticence, but the seances are not what they seem.

This primary plot follows standard seinen guidelines. The hero doesn't know what's going on, but those around him do. Those characters drag the hero into an episodic framework, in which simple problems can be solved in about 3 issues.

Meanwhile, there's an odd, almost shoujo sub-plot involving one of Ginji's female classmates. She likes him, while he pushes her (and everyone else) away. As she learns more about him from his schoolmates, she learns about his past and the fate of his brother, which disturbs her. Indeed, this volume ends on a tease about the brother's suicide, implying that the next volume will reveal much about why he killed himself.

I'm of two minds about this romantic sub-plot. It adds complexity to the story, as well as a different perspective on the hero. However, its subdued, elegiac tone jars with the seinen, paranormal investigation tone of the primary plot. They don't simply contrast; they jar.

The art features clean, relatively sparse character designs, with a lot of shading and tones. The style bounces between serious and comedic from panel to panel. It never quite goes all the way to super-deformation, but it can be quite over-the-top. This occasionally felt overdone, but never enough to completely pull me out of the story.

Interestingly, two girls in the series is drawn to look almost exactly like Sakura and Tomoyo from Card Captor Sakura. I wonder if this is meaningful. Neither character fills a similar role in this story.

Overall, this first volume introduced just enough odd mysteries with just enough odd plot twists to intrigue me (much like the Naoki Urasawa's first volumes). I look forward to seeing where it goes.