Kreuz

Kreuz
By Takaguchi Satosumi

Overall: Crap
Smex Factor: Modest
Art: Generic
Status: 1 Volume; Complete

Review: I really cannot understand this manga, but here’s what I think happening:

So, there’s Akira. He plays the piano.

And there’s Yugou, who leads a biker gang. (Although all these “bikers” do is race and eat at family restaurants, so I remain unimpressed.)

Akira is pretty much obsessed with Yugou, so he neglects school. But apparently he is equally obsessed with playing the piano, bordering on fanaticism. (“I must play! Let me play!!”)

Akira and Yugou get…involved…somehow…but their relationship is tumultuous at best. At the breaking point, Yugou, whom Akira would willingly die for, orders Akira to “destroy his world.” I assume he means “quit school and give up the piano” because then Yugou goes and destroys all the pianos at Akira’s school. (Despite having earlier said, “you can’t quit school.” Whatever.)

Then…Yugou dumps Akira? I’m not really sure what happens exactly.

But Akira flips out and locks Yugou in a warehouse. I believe that there’s some implied sexual assault happening there too, but I couldn’t say for 100% sure. Akira goes on and on about how much he loves Yugou, but Yugou seems to be pretty apathetic about his whole situation, aside from remembering some guy that apparently “turned [Yugou] into a queer.” Apparently he treated this guy equally as badly/unlovingly as Akira, but the difference between them is, when vying for Yugou’s love:

Previous lover guy: got killed in a bike race because he was really stupid and listened to whatever Yugou said.

Akira: went crazy and assaulted Yugou.

So Yugou’s apathy means he sorta feels bad about inadvertently getting the other lover guy killed?

Anyway, while this is going down, Akira also has this new piano teacher at school who, in between telling Akira that he mistreats his hands and is therefore unworthy of playing piano, molests Akira. (Akira doesn’t seem very okay with all that.)

Yugou gets released (by his fellow bikers), and Akira gets raped (by his creepy piano teacher) and then kicked out of the biker gang. He tries to get Yugou to say that he loves him (although jeez, man, he never looked like he ever loved you, so you’re delusional), but obviously it doesn’t work. So Akira goes back to school, gets really good at the piano, and gets molested; and Yugou gets hit by a truck while possibly regretting not telling Akira he loved him maybe? Or maybe he just feels bad about being an insufferable asshole. (I cannot tell what is going on.)

Trust me, this is just a guess. The pacing for this story was incomprehensible. They never properly introduce characters, so it’s difficult to tell who’s important or what relationships they have with each other. Too many scenes and too much dialog served no discernable purpose to the plot, and ended up weighing down the story telling and confusing the reader.

The monologs are just…out there. Who knows what the dialog means on any given page. Non-sequiturs! Non-sequiturs everywhere! And the “free floating thoughts” are confusing because I can’t tell who’s thinking them. Which is sort of necessary to be able to tell what’s going on.

Which I can’t.

Tell what’s going on, I mean.