A Journey of A Thousand Miles:

In The End

…starts with one step. In the “A Thousand Miles” series, I’ll be taking a series each week that looks interesting to me and reviewing the first volume. Focused on, essentially, exposing myself to as many new series as possible, each will culminate in whether I think it’s worth continuing.

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In The End is a 2006 Drama manga by artist pair, Pink Psycho. It was published by Tokyopop

Cover Appeal

Pink Psycho – Well, THAT’S a eye catching name if there everwas one. Pink Psycho consists of artists Nheira and Heath. They co-worte and illustrated In The End together. They are also in a Visual Kei band together, with Nheira playing lead guitar and Heath playing bass.

Love, Hate – Pictured are the big pairing of the story: Kaito and Ren. This is pretty much all you really need to know about how the two get along. Ren’s domineering smirk, Kaito’s defiant looking away, the hand holding – this big ball of contradiction is their relationship in a nutshell.

The Gist

No one understands Kaito Niikura. His parents won’t get off his case and his boyfriend won’t stop pestering him. Then he meets Ren Ando. The two seem to be drawn to each other some inexplicable way. Can something deeper grow out of this?

The Cast

Kaito Niikura – High School student. Surly, emotional and defiant. He’s likely to come across as just wanting to be left alone at best or a plain old jerk at worst. Probably both.

Ren Ando – New guy around these parts that finds Kaito in his funk and relentlessly pursues him. Unlike the other people in his life that do so, Kaito responds somewhat positively to it – after a while. Did I mention he’s also his teacher?

Shingo – Kaito’s boyfriend. I think. Kaito makes it clear that he isnt’ interested in anything deep. From the looks of things, Kaito’s probably not interested in much of anything relationship related, period.

The Rub

Not gonna lie, folks. I almost gave up on this book – multiple times. Four pages in, In The End tipped its hand and I started having Loveless flashbacks. I love and hate both for about the same reasons. Aesthetics are on point. The relationship dynamics, not so much.

Kaito is a teenager. Let’s get that out of the way. That being the case, he’s in his feeling more often than not. That, unfortunately, means that he’s pretty insufferable to most of the people we see in his life and, as a result, his relationships are a mess. The real conundrum for Kaito is that he wants his space, but also wants validation. He wants people to leave him be, while also wanting someone to like him for who he is. Worse yet, Kaito doesn’t think anyone does – so much so, even he doesn’t like himself. The happiest, healthiest relationship he has seems to be with his friend Kyou. That’s because he seems to give him an acceptable mix of the space he doesn’t get from his boyfriends and the validation he doesn’t get from his parents.

Enter one Ren Megumi. Ren comes out of the blue one night when Kaito is staying in the subway station to avoid seeing his father at home. Ren inquiries into whether he was okay and why he hasn’t gone home to his (likely) worried parent. Needless to say, Kaito bristles at the inquiry and tells him to get lost. Ren, however, is captivated. He sees the pain in Kaito’s eyes despite his prickly demeanor. He wants to help Kaito – and by God, he’s going to do it. He physically acts as a barrier between Kaito and his present, uh, boyfriend, Shingo. He gives him a place to stay in lieu of his own home where his father’s waiting. The only problem? Ren is Kaito’s teacher.

Whoops.

Probably would’ve know that if he’d went to class with some degree of regularity. The crux of their relationship is the cloudy feelings they invoke in each other. But feelings are fickle things and most of those wrapped up in their relationship are NOT good. But even the few feel good moments didn’t resonate with me at all. I saw the same dysfunctional elements in this relationship as I did in the one with Shingo. But even that one had potential and some degree of longevity despite Kaito’s apathy – so there’s a fair bit of hope for this one, since Kaito might actually try this time. Not that I’d care, as I’d checked out by this point.

But that’s what made the result so surprising. I’m not going to ruin it, as it is the main hook of the story, but a decision is made that’s more mature than expected, for reasons that are about as immature (or more heartbreaking, really) as is par for the course with a little bit of self awareness that was just as unexpected. I don’t mean to oversell this – oh, by NO means does this retroactively make the whole experience any less unpleasant than it is. I just transitioned from “Oh God, not this shit again” to “Well, damn. That’s rough” by the end of the story.

The Verdict

The one consistently good part of this production is the art. You’re going to continually hear me point this out when talking about manga, but it can’t be helped in such a visually dependent medium. Nheira and Heath did a splendid job with the sleek bishonen art. Everyone looks great dolled up in the liberally applied punk rock aesthetic, though the inevitable deluge of black makes things look more Goth at times to my eyes. But I’m just an uncultured nitwit that doesn’t understand subcultures, so what do I know? I realized all too late that this is a self contained story and not a part of a series, but it’s going to get judged all the same.

Just find Nheira online, browse their gallery and save yourself the trouble.

Continue?: No, even if I could