For the past few years, Kangai has been a wanderer, but his return to his hometown has triggered a series of deaths linked to his past. He joins a group of psychic teenagers who solve mysteries under the watchful eye of the government. In Yousei, he and his group are sent undercover to a local university where they must dig up the remains of a top secret experiment. Upon arrival, they discover the project lead missing, and an old acquaintance racing them for the same information.
In the Jisei pentalogy, this particular chapter was inevitable. This is because, as I hammered repeatedly in the Yousei Top 3, the group barely knew each other. The Mizutanis had absolutely no reason to put Kan’s safety over each other’s. On the flip side, Kan had little reason to trust them or Li Mei or Gurski or, really, anyone. As for Li Mei…oh look butterflies. Sorry, distracted. Anyway, as for Gurski being the by-the-book type, his relationship to you and the others was set in stone relatively early so in the grand scheme of character development, where does that leave us?
Well Yousei’s themes are self-evident and it is confident in taking the reader on an emotional journey that isn’t often experienced in the medium. Overall the characters all have great writing attached to them and the entire Jisei series is better and more understandable because of what they go through here.
With the exception of Chance, the supporting cast are there to make sure you’re getting the real story that’s being told: a story only slightly associated with said death. From my small stool on the sidelines, this would’ve been solved easily if there were less endings because then some of the endings would’ve become plot points that would’ve brought a closure to the emotional story at least for now while deepening up the murder investigation; only now with the full understanding of the fascinating mystical component that is beginning to overtake the series as a whole.
To be clear, I fully respect the terrific writing young Miss Sakata has done on this project. Overall the story is great and 90% of it should be commended. But I couldn’t shake the feeling at that point between the second and third acts where I feel like I’m spinning my wheels and something better could’ve been put there. The simple truth is that it isn’t a balanced story.