Old rivalries come to a close as new mysteries arise!
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Natsumi Ando
Translation/English Adaptation: Andria Cheng
What They Say:
Twin sisters Arisa and Tsubasa are separated by their parent’s divorce. The twins secretly exchange letters with each other during their separation, and they are finally united after three years. Arisa asks Tsubasa to pretend to be her and spend a day in her school just for fun. At school everyone seems very nice to Tsubasa and everything seemed normal… until she finds a strange note in her sister’s shoe locker.
When Tsubasa hands over the letter to Arisa, Arisa tries to kill herself by jumping out of a window. Arisa survives but remains in a coma. The letter read, “Arisa is a traitor.” After her sister’s suicide attempt, Tsubasa is determined to unravel the mystery behind the letter and her sister’s suicide attempt. Tsubasa continues to go to school as Arisa. Will she find out who sent the note and why it had such an effect on Arisa?
The Review!
As Shizuka awakes, she finds herself in the middle of a picnic being held by Tsubasa and her friends. It goes well until everyone starts mentioning how overrated revenge is, causing Shizuka to catch on and leave. When Tsubasa chases after her, they continue to argue the merits of friendship versus revenge until Tsubasa suddenly throws herself into harm’s way in order to save Shizuka, falling off a cliff in the process. Shizuka goes to get help, and everything turns out okay, leading her to realize how wrong she’s been and prepare to return the phones. Just when it looks like things have reached a happy ending, Shizuka receives a movie from the King, showing Tsubasa changing into her Arisa outfit. As a result, when Tsubasa goes to visit Shizuka, she unexpectedly finds Shizuka’s aunt sprawled on the floor, with Shizuka holding a phone displaying the request “Erase Arisa Sonoda from this world.”
Tsubasa rushes off to check on Arisa, and Manabe tells Shizuka Arisa’s condition, proving to her once and for all how wrong she is. Arisa is fine, but when the King Time message comes in, it turns out that the honored request is to get rid of the holder of the three phones. Manabe takes them from Shizuka to protect her, and is hit by an ambulance shortly afterwards. He recovers, and the King sends out a message saying that he is done with Shizuka.
Later on, Tsubasa runs into Shizuka, who is being escorted away from her house. In order to atone for hitting her aunt, she has decided to go live in an orphanage. Before she leaves, she gives Tsubasa a slip of paper with a website, saying that it contains Arisa’s secret. Upon going to the site, Tsubasa finds a chat log between Arisa and someone named K. Messages appear on the screen, showing that Arisa was thinking about getting rid of anyone who disobeys the King, and K suggesting the idea of King Time in the first place. Unable to leave things be, Arisa decides to try chatting with K. Much to her surprise, K ends up responding.
In the bonus story, we get a look into Arisa and Tsubasa’s relationship as children.
In Summary:
With this volume, Shizuka’s story wraps up and a few new mysteries appear. The lengths that Shizuka goes to as well as the obvious inner turmoil she possesses add up to make a rather interesting volume. However, on the flip side we also see the main characters getting off almost too lightly. Though they certainly appear to be severely injured at a couple of points in the book, we see them up and about with no negative repercussions shortly afterwards. This has the unfortunate effect of turning what at first appear to be rather shocking scenes into almost an assurance that the main characters won’t be seriously hurt. Though this may work for the plot, it unfortunately takes away a bit of the edge of this volume, which is unfortunate as that edge seems to be the series defining characteristic. Hopefully the next volume will get back to keeping the readers on the edge of their seats, but for now this remains a decent yet flawed entry into the series.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A-
Package Rating: B+
Text/Translation Rating: A
Age Rating: 13+
Released by: Kodansha Comics
Release Date: Jan 3, 2012
MSRP: $10.99
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