Kagami no Kuni no Harisugawa Manga Quarterly Review

Man, I did not expect this manga to be anything other than bad.

But it was pretty good.

Kagami no Kuni no Harisugawa means ‘Mirror’s World’s Harisugawa’ in English. It deals with a person, Harisugawa, trapped in a place, the World, inside an object, a Mirror. Except it’s less of a world and more of an empty, dark void. Basically, he saved this girl from a car accident, but the girl DROPPED A MIRROR and thus the mirror IMPRISONS his SOUL. The only way for him to escape is if he finds somebody who mutually loves him, but, he only has one chance to confess his feelings to anyone. If he fails, he’s doomed to stay inside the mirror FOREVER, or at least until some other poor soul happens to save someone who happens to drop the mirror, which probably won’t happen for a long time.

However, he has a chance! The girl he saved, Satomi Mao, can talk to him through the mirror she dropped. By reflecting the light off other mirrors, she can also create ‘windows’ from the mirror world that allows Harisugawa to see what’s happening outside. Finally, they’re able to switch positions (no, not those positions) for a maximum of one hour each day (or week, or month, or something) – Mao will be trapped inside the mirror world, while Harisugawa does whatever he wants outside.

Cue lame misunderstandings and fanservice.

I can’t really say that I enjoy this manga – it’s somewhat entertaining, but not fun to read – whereas manga like, say, ST&RS, are SUPER EXCITING AND AWESOME AND SUPER EXCITING AND AWESOME AND FUN TO READ AND SUPER EXITING AND man I’m exiting

The obvious flaw here is its presentation to a shounen audience, which forces it inside a box. I highly doubt girls actually conduct themselves in the manner Harisugawa shows us – really, Harisugawa is sacrificing realistic drama for popularity and action. That isn’t necessarily bad, but when you’re expecting something that breaks normal shounen molds, everything else just feels bland.

Which isn’t necessarily bad, either. It’s just not great. The whole ‘man dude you don’t get it it was a misunderstanding’ talk during chapter 13 felt much better than what some other manga do – simply leave the misunderstandings unresolved. Furthermore, the whole rock-paper-scissors shtick made it feel like the author’s deliberately planning everything.

“A fatass? Where is she? I don’t see any fatasses anywhere!”

Yet, the author obviously isn’t. The story waddles around without a main plot point in sight. It could be intentional, but I doubt it – even if the author wants to get a popular series, dragging a series with a premise like this for too long just won’t work. Look at what happened to Yu Yu Hakusho, which could’ve been a decent series if it was less than a hundred chapters long.

Perhaps it’s going for the ‘single harem’ route. Instead of a normal harem manga, where the main character makes absolutely no romantic attachments, Harisugawa is already in love with Mao, and thus, all other characters will only support them. It feels like a cop-out to me, a way to make people think that the author’s planned everything in advance, when really, he’s just lazy and doesn’t want to do any planning.

I do like the side characters, though.

Actually, I can’t say much about them, as they’ve hardly developed in the past 13 chapters. Nevertheless, if the author does decide to go down that route, I’m hopeful that their development is going to be excellent.

Harisugawa doesn’t do anything great – everything’s cliché and done thousands of times before. However, it is solid, and I hope it’ll continue to be.

tl;dr: man my grandparents came back from China and man I’m writing this in like the ten minutes they aren’t watching me behind my back

even if they can’t read English they know I’m up to no good

nobody who reads chinese comics is up to any good

also this comic is not worksafe

do not read it at work

or else your boss

will fire you

with a gun

and fuel

and you

fired

dang