K no Souretsu Review

The art style of K no Souretsu is unique. Thin, with very sharp lines and a goth aesthetic, KnS isn't for everyone. Take Frank Miller's high contrast work (little to no shading or tone) of stark black and white, add occasional touches of the color red, and dial back the line thickness quality by nearly 90 percent, and that's the general look. In fact, much of it looks so delicate, and yet other times, the linework is strong and harsh. The angles and cinematography of KnS is also equally jarring at times, not unlike many J-horror movies. Extreme tilts, close-ups, and carefully arranged panels make up this story, as it ambles from one vague point to another.

There are occasional asides to poetry, such as a poem by Mother Goose, and a Grimm's fairy tale (The Juniper Tree, accidently attributed by the translators to Mother Goose instead). These splash pages do not have complete relevance to the plot, but add to the mystique and occasional creepiness to the overall feel.

Each chapter is also extremely short (excepting The Spiral Staircase and the extra stories at the end), often averaging at 9 to 15 pages in length. By the time the chapter has revealed another pearl of the plot, the shell snaps closed on the chapter and begins again, opening slowly, in the next. It may seem infuriating to some, who expect their plots to be precise and obvious, but as a mystery story, the slowing of time in sometimes mundane scenes heightens the drama. Even in the end, you're not given all the answers, nor explanations for everything. Nearly every character introduced has their own unanswered mysteries about them (who is Wanibuchi's "they" he fears, why does Uozumi spend so much time in his bathtubs, what is Morkwall, etc).

With its excruciatingly slow start, KnS's ending, more to the point, the Parlour Scene, will come rapidly, so that the ending comes as such a rush, both emotionally, and in pacing. That's not to say that the ending isn't satisfactory; in fact, it seems efficiently satisfying, though it leaves lingering questions. These questions are answered in the longer Extra Chapters (1-3), that each deal with K more directly. They function more than an epilogue, and are actually more like the background story you do not see (K's history, an extra character that does not show up in the main story but is pertinent to K's story as a whole, etc). While you may have an inkling of what happened to K and why in the main story, you do not get a sense of WHO K is until you read the extra chapters (in particular G's Passing, and the aptly named yet intriguingly placed final chapter Intro), and moreover, you only get to know the motive behind K's death through the second Extra Utero. While these chapters are essential for one to understand the whole body of KnS, my only criticism lies in the final page of the final chapter Intro, where the splash page all but destroys the delicate tapistry of K's life, death, and aftermath in a single and blunt statement that sums it up a little to tersely (it in fact does bring full circle what one character begins to say in the main story, but at the same time, I didn't feel it needed to be stated). In fact, had it been my way, I would have left off this page entirely to preserve the wonderfully intricate pacing and set-up of this story.