Goth by Otsuichi

I really enjoyed this manga, it's one of my favourites. It has something of a morbid story line, focused around various cases of murder... but I wouldn't say it's primarily a murder mystery. There is definitely that aspect to the story, but because the main characters react as they do to these murders.. well lets say that the death helps to set the mood of the story more than drive plot (at the beginning of the story anyways). Both main characters have some connection to an obsession to death and are drawn to various morbid activity throughout the story. There is only one or two really graphic pictures, for the most part it's just the concepts that are kind of gruesome, and because of that the subject matter isn't as repulsive as it would be if the story was all guts and gore. It's more intriguing that repulsive, and in a dark kind of way you always want to know what happens next.
 
Something else that's kind of interesting about this story is how the character relationships are set up. I'll start of by saying in no way is this a romance... it's the opposite, but the way in which the characters relate to each other in conjunction with how the story progresses is reminiscent of a romance. The two main characters are a boy and a girl, the story is mostly narrated by the boy though, the girl always seems distant in this sense, as if we're watching her. Even the part where the girl is telling us about her past we see her through her eyes as something foreign... so we never really get into her head.
 
The boy is obsessed with death though. He was first drawn to the girl because he wanted to kill her (or wanted her hands), and for the rest of the story the girl and boy are what one could consider as friendship. Throughout the story though he's interested in her death, not plotting it per say, but interested in the possibility. The girl always seems to attract people who want to kill her and the boy always shows up, and at one part fights someone because he wants to be the one to kill her. It is kind of like a romance in that the boy is so obsessed with the girl, or the part of the story the readers are shown he is anyway... but just to restate, this isn't a romance.
 
The art is pretty nice and goes with the over all mood. I'm glad it's getting published in English.