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  TheGruesomeGoblin

  50/100
  Why do a horror romance manga and start doing an action manga partway in? Why? This was a mess.

  This is the part where I would warn you that this is a FULL SPOILERS review… you know, if there was anything to spoil. Who cares

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  Itoshi no Ko, Charlotte is an axed a rushed 2019 horror romance manga by Tomo Nagawa. Sorry, did I say horror romance manga? I meant action manga.

  

  …To be transparent with you, the reader of this review, I’ll fully admit I’m actually kind of bitter on this one. The premise of this manga was promising. Simple, but promising. Two orphans confess their feelings for each other and oh no, one of them dies in a traffic accident! Whoops!

  

  I will be a little nitpicky though and say that... like I know it was for a punchy opening but... couldn't the accident have gone on another page separate from the confession? "NO, WE HAVE TO RUSH TO GET TO THE ACTUAL MANGA. WE CAN'T BOTHER DEVELOPING THESE CHARACTERS OR THEIR RELATIONSHIP BEFOREHAND AT ALL. THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IN ROMANCE MANGA IS THE CONFESSION SCENE ANYWAYS."

  

  The survivor, Will, is struck with horrible grief. But he doesn’t give up on his tragically cut short love! There’s a way to make things right! Just bring Charlotte back!

  Death be damned!

  

  The confession, the accident, bringing her back from the dead... this all happens within the first ten pages of the manga. Forget rushing, this is speedrunning.

  With this premise, you have a manga that could go in all sorts of directions! It could be a romance slice of life but you know, with a zombie! Or maybe Will actually had to do a bunch of dirty evil shit to actually be able to resurrect Charlotte and he’s keeping secrets from her and the grief of losing her once has turned into an overwhelming obsession to keep her at all costs.

  

  You could do that one if you want to actually really lean into the horror direction. Hell, you could even double down on tragedy and just have the manga be about people eventually finding out about Will’s necromancy and deciding to burn both him and Charlotte at the stake!

  

  These are just a few directions the manga could have taken from the top of my head. You want to know the direction the manga actually took?

  

  A generic squad of action characters from the church show up and go “oh no, that’s a zombie. You have to come with us to the church!” and I’m not exaggerating that when these characters first showed up I fucking audibly groaned. Because I could already see what was going to happen next.

  They were going to take Charlotte to their church and there was going to be an argument about whether or not she should be allowed to exist because zombies are bad but oh she obviously still clearly possesses humanity!

  Oh wait, what’s that?

  

  There’s monsters attacking the city! Charlotte, what are you doing??? You’re actually helping us even though we were considering destroying you??? I guess, you can be allowed to exist but you have to help us out on our action filled adventures!

  

  …I was mostly right. Except, they don’t ever actually make it to the church because the manga got axed so the action squad just says fuck it and tells Will and Charlotte that they can just go home after they help them deal with the bad guy. I get it. The author himself was worried about even getting a third volume.

  

  But you would think the characters would still actually at least step foot into the church.

  Why even have the moment near the beginning of the manga where like Charlotte scares some villagers with her zombie antics if you’re not even going to bother playing up the danger of zombies? Oh, well you helped people out on the train so I guess you’re fine, you can go ahead and just go home. Hopefully you won’t go full rabid zombie and bite someone. Actually, do the zombies even work like that in this series? Or can zombies only be created with the bullshit magical books? Whatever, it doesn't matter.

  

  By the way, that moment with the villagers was the first gigantic burning red flag. Because the fact that the villagers acted like a zombie was a common hazard was very noteworthy. I even remember thinking, oh, maybe it’s a zombie apocalypse! But I also thought… what if… what if rather than zombie apocalypse it’s just generic fantasy world and zombies are a common thing because demons and monsters also exist? Oh no…

  

  To be fair, the villager literally said when they were setting out that they'd shoot any monsters or zombies they came across dead. But I read that line as him bragging that he could handle anything they came across in the wilderness, not that both of these things exist in this world to the point where EVERYONE knows about them.

  

  Look, I know how this is coming off. it’s not that I hate action series. Quite the contrary. However, if your manga is supposed to be about a guy bringing his loved one back from death, then that should be the primary focus. At least give them a few chapters together before bringing in the generic action character squad.

  They were actually given a whole third of the manga. It just doesn't feel like it because the remaining two thirds of the manga just feel so much longer...

  For pretty much the rest of the entire manga Will’s worthless. He may as well as not even be there.

  And I don’t mean that in the sense of he doesn’t fight

  

  so he literally has nothing to contribute to the action scenes because Charlotte also doesn’t fight but as in like after the church squad hijacks the manga he and Charlotte barely seem to even get a scene together without these fuckers also there.

  

  The way he was acting at the start of the manga really made me think he’d be wholly against the idea of letting Charlotte go even anywhere near the church (considering they want to kill all zombies such as Charlotte) but he sure did seem to give in to the church squad pretty quickly! Almost like he needed to so the manga could happen! Golly, what a coincidence! My favorite reason for something happening in a story is solely because the plot needed it to happen!

  So after the train arc, the church characters decide Charlotte's a good zombie and Will probably wasn't doing all the nefarious shit they suspected of him. All he did was bring someone back to life and they weren't a mindless shambling zombie. No big deal! In reality, it's not that Will was unique or did any special shit to bring Charlotte back, he just used a magic book which like I guess summoned a demon who is actually the owner of the book. And also, there's five of these books for some reason.

  

  Why? I don't know. Maybe the manga was supposed to go longer but the author was rushed to bring to an end so okay nevermind ONLY ONE OF THESE BOOKS CAPABLE OF DOING BASICALLY ANYTHING IS MISSING.

  Volume 2 was like... I wasn't pleased with the direction the manga was going. But I was like alright, if we're doing action stuff, at least it's on a train. That's fun, I guess. Volume 3 though is just like the church characters talking at Will and Charlotte

  "SOMEBODY'S STOLEN THE BOOK OF TABOO AND SINCE YOU USED THE BOOK OF TABOO TO REVIVE CHARLOTTE THAT MEANS YOU'RE IN THE BEST POSITION TO HELP US FIND WHOEVER HAS TAKEN THE BOOK OF TABOO AND IS MISUSING IT TO DO EVIL DEEDS!"

  

  Meanwhile Gorilla who was like an asshole to Will when they first met because he thought he was the evil guy is like "THIS BASTARD USED THE BOOK OF TABOO TO BLIND MY SISTER. MY SISTER'S BLIND! I HAVE TO FIND THIS EVIL PERSON! THAT'S MY REASON FOR MY ACTIONS AND WHY I WAS AN ASSHOLE TO YOU EARLIER!"

  So you really think, oh, since this has basically been all he's been talking about, he's probably going to find this evil person by the end. And big surprise, they do. But then they get away and Gorilla just runs right past them because he didn't think to also look up.

  

  So the immortal bad guy's entire purpose of fucking around with the demon's book is he just wants to fucking die already, and he was going to try bully Will into trying to kill him by using a cursed magical rose to send Charlotte into a neverending nightmare... but Will was like nuh uh and then touched the rose instead... and then Charlotte goes into Will's dreams and sees Will's past and...

  It's already too late. The manga lost me ages ago. I just stood back and watched as this attempt at a lifeline just fell. "NO, I'M SORRY. THIS MANGA REALLY IS PRIMARILY ABOUT WILL AND CHARLOTTE AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP. PLEASE CARE. PLEASE CARE."

  

  Charlotte and Will live happily ever after. The immortal I guess undoes everything he did with the demon's magical book because I don't know how else the Gorilla's sister became unblinded. And oh look at that, the other two church squad characters got together in the end... and everybody's happy. Look, it's a completely happy ending! Everybody knows that a happy ending automatically equals a completely satisfying ending.

  

  ...WHAT ABOUT THE MONSTERS? WHAT ABOUT THE GIANT HULKING DEMON BEHEMOTH WE SAW IN THE CHURCH SQUAD'S INTRODUCTION? HE WAS LIKE TWICE THE SIZE OF A BUILDING. WHAT THE HELL SORT OF WORLD IS THIS THAT THESE THINGS ARE JUST ROAMING ABOUT AND OTHERWISE IT'S A PERFECTLY NORMAL WORLD? WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER BOOKS OF TABOO? WHAT ABOUT THE FACT THAT APPARENTLY NECROMANCY IS A GENERAL THING IN THIS WORLD TO THE POINT THERE ARE TOWNS COMPLETELY OVERRUN BY ZOMBIES? WHAT ABOUT INFORMING THE CHURCH OF A ZOMBIE THAT STILL POSSESSES HER HUMANITY?

  WHAT ABOUT THE MAIN DEMON AND THE IMMORTAL?

  

  The manga's over, but here's the backstory of these two characters who clearly would have probably been a bigger deal than they are in the actual manga if it could have kept going longer... and the backstories of these characters MAKE THEM MORE INTERESTING CHARACTERS THAN ANY OF THE ACTUAL GODDAMNED MANGA I JUST READ WHAT THE FUCK

  but actually no because if you read the author's afterword it's not those characters you saw in the manga that look the exact same as these characters but a completely different set of characters and oh the extra version of the immortal man is raising a young Charlotte for some reason

  

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  Conclusion

  ...I honestly wish I would have read the extra chapter of the demon and the immortal guy, and just not touched the actual manga at all. I genuinely really liked their stories and they could have been part of a much more interesting manga.

  

  But with them coming after this manga... I was kind of overwhelmingly grumpy. Am I going to give this manga a horribly low score because of that grumpiness? Believe it or not, but no. It's not really fair considering that it's entirely me being... ugh, this isn't the manga I personally was expecting or wanting it to be! So, I'll score the manga that I did read.

  And that manga is a 5 out of 10. It's not a horrible manga, it's just... not very good!

  

  My recommendation is if you're looking for horror, it's an absolute no. There's barely any. If you're primarily looking for a romance manga, it's also a no. If you're looking for an action manga with demons and monsters and also sometimes the focus is on a weird and sometimes obsessive guy and a zombie girl who love each other... sure. And also you don't mind endings that feel super rushed.

  As for me though, this is one of those manga that's going to be leaving my memory banks the moment I click save on this review.

  
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