2 out of 5

A world of wizards that portals into another realm or location or city called ‘the Hole,’ whose inhabitants our sadistic wizzies use to practice their spells.

Not a bad setup for a wicked little tale that could offer a mix of fantasy hijinks, day-in-the-life slum livings, and potential social commentary, were one so inclined.  Or it could do none of those things – like, none, none at all – and instead rely on Johnny the Homocidal Maniac blood-spattered one-dimensional ‘musings,’ excessive weirdness without any grounding elements, and plotlines that would require characters which are never well established for us to care about.  There’s a lizard man in the Hole, who’s memory was wiped when a wizard morphed him into said lizard – he also has a man living inside of him and odd feelings about a particular alley – lizard man’s cook friend, who can fight the fights and maybe gets depressed in one chapter for unknown reasons; a rookie wizard who has a grudge against lizard man; two senior wizards who like to kill without using spells; and ‘En,’ the head wizard, who is maybe Satan and likes mushrooms.

The JTHM comparison extends to Hayashida’s art, with its black heavy, angled linework and lack of a sense of architectural space – going more for gothic mood than defining environments – and while the writing is, despite my grousing, enjoyable from page to page, it’s the lack of sitting on any concept or character for longer than Q’s whimsies toward any given violent interaction that amounts to the chapter collected in this tankobon from ever amounting to anything really all that interesting.  And I lost any hope for things growing into a possibly more cohesive whole when a part of the city was referred to as being located in “the right” of the city.  True: that might be translation, but regardless, it made an impression: that’s a very back-of-the-napkin way of explaining a layout, and suggests Hayashida just had a general idea and was going with it, which also aligns with the random additions to the wizard’s / Hole-inhabitants’ cultures throughout.

Some cool imagery, some cool concepts, and moments that work, but nothing that amounts to anything substantial beyond that.