23.45; Re Review

Mimori Seo had a hole inside him… A space where once, during time lost to him, something had existed. And still lives on in someone else’s memory.

Mimori Seo (25) has woken up after being in a coma for a year. After rehab, he goes back to work (sales at a international company) and when he goes to the local convenience store, he’s often served by a young cashier who looks at him with a strange intensity. One day, he forgets his umbrella and the young man runs after him and as they are separated by level crossing gates, the young man shouts out, “The truth is, after you got into an accident, you turned into a ghost and then you wound up staying with me while you were in a coma. We spent every day together and that’s how I fell in love with YOU!” He’s Iku Kurihara, a student, and he’s devastated, it seems, that Mimori doesn’t remember him. Is there any hope for Iku? Will Mimori ever remember?

23:45 © Ohana/Ichijinsha Inc.

23.45 – the preceding volume – showed mangaka Ohana’s skill in drawing her characters to good effect in presenting the story of lonely student Iku spending time with ‘ghost’ Mimori and falling in love. Except, Mimori was eventually revealed to be not a ghost at all but in a coma, so maybe the Mimori Iku gets to know is some kind of ghostly astral projection of his subconscious. Even though there were quite a few plot holes (‘ghost’ Mimori was able to pick up books and open doors etc.) the story reached a relatively happy conclusion in which the now-conscious Mimori found his way back to Iku’s flat.

23:45 © Ohana/Ichijinsha Inc.

Sometimes it’s best for authors to leave well alone and move on to another story. But Ohana returned in 2016 with this sequel which – to be honest – is a mess. Why is it a mess? The ‘curse’ or magic that allowed ‘ghost’ Mimori to get to know Iku and spend time with him was already stretching the readers’ incredulity but here, everything’s all over the place. It’s very hard to tell the order in which events are taking place, for a start. The viewpoint starts off with Mimori – but then switches to Iku in Chapter 2. Random characters appear who are maybe important or maybe not, such as Mimori’s male work colleague. Chapter 3 is back in Mimori’s head but jumps around in time. The narrative doesn’t flow well, as if the mangaka kept thinking that this or that plot point needed addressing right now rather than weaving it into a more cogent timeline. “Why are we up a mountain?” Mimori asks at the beginning of Chapter 5, and so does the reader. ‘Spiritual cleansing’ was briefly mentioned by Iku at the end of Chapter 4. Switch to a snowy mountainside! Obvious! I was still turning pages to and fro, trying to find the moment in which Mimori acknowledges that he might indeed remember Iku…

23:45 © Ohana/Ichijinsha Inc.

It’s disappointing to find that this sequel undoes much of the wistful, poetic atmosphere of the original story by trying too hard to explain ‘stuff’ and even if it does end up with a sex scene (hence the 18+ rating), that feels tacked on and is rather unromantic. In the mangaka’s illustrated afterword, we learn that it was the editors who insisted that Mimori should not be dead (the mangaka’s initial idea). So I guess we have to reproach the editors because in coercing Ohana into changing her original story, we ended up with this compromise which doesn’t honestly work, either as a supernatural story or a ‘recovering from memory loss’ tale.

Translation for Vertical is again by Mei Amaki and the letterer is again uncredited, which is a shame, because both translator and letterer have done a good job in delivering all the different communications from dialogue to thoughts. There’s also a colour page at the front.

The original volume 23.45 delivered an intriguing ghost story but the sequel is a disappointment. However, given Ohana’s attractive graphic style, I hope some of her more recent BL titles will find a US publisher, as I’d be very interested to see how she has developed as a mangaka since 2016.

Our review copy from Vertical was supplied by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).