A fruitless love. A painful love. A one-sided love. Is that really such a wonderful thing?

It's all too common throughout the romance genre to follow the journey of an unrequited love. These stories are light hearted in nature and sparkling with color as characters fantasize about confessing to their unobtainable goal. What rarely gets explored is the emotional toll that weighs on the soul of a person who rests their hopes on the choices of another adolescent. To not be able to share yourself with the one you desire most in this world, even worse watch them grow closer to someone else, is an excruciating ordeal. One that can lead you to make terrible choices out of utter desperation and that is what Kuzu no Honkai attempts to depict in gritty detail - the darkness that can develop from an unrequited love situation and the depths one is willing to go to in order to fill that void in their heart.

In this story we encounter two seventeen year olds named Mugi and Hanabi who attempt to quell the pain from their own unrequited loves by using one another as substitutes, pretending as though the other is the one that they truly love in order to satisfy their raging desires. We witness the consequences they face from beginning such a disingenuous relationship and how it impacts the people around them for the worse.

For adolescents in a school life setting, our two main characters are unusually mature. They obviously make their fair share of mistakes throughout as any teenager would, but the way that they describe events that happen before them, rationalizing their ever changing feelings by referencing modern psychology and embracing their sexual proclivities make them appear as though they're older than they actually are. Maturity is a prevalent theme as our lead characters look to progress themselves in order to make the people that they love, both adults in their early 20's, look their way. They each have childhood friends who are in love with them and are understandably upset over the suspicious relationship that they share which serves as the root of much drama in this story. Even they begin to change drastically as the plot progresses. Character progression is a refreshing strong-point for this manga as everyone begins to develop before your eyes with the turn of each page leading into the next chapter. Kuzu no Honkai is also told from a variety of different perspectives with each central character getting an opportunity to describe the events through their own point of view, helping to keep the story from ever feeling repetitive or stale.

The art in this manga does a great job of depicting the emotional state of the characters especially during intimacy scenes. Despite the lewd premise however, this is not a very explicit manga as there's much more focus on the reasoning behind why the characters act upon their impulses, rather than the impulse itself.

Given the current events thus far its safe to say what this manga sets out to accomplish as intended by the author: Kuzu no Honkai is designed to make you feel. To evoke a reaction out of the reader that will range anywhere from lukewarm sadness to berserk anger due to the many painful decisions that these characters you grow accustomed to make. It can be quite the vexing read for many who are used to more predictable happy romantic outcomes but a strong quality of any work of literature is the ability to create a rise out of the reader. That was me as I sped through this manga upon discovery which compelled me to compose my thoughts into a review. Hopefully that is what will inspire you to continue on forth with this manga and witness the most oft ignored aspect of love that is human desperation and desperately sought after compensation for a broken heart.