I don't want to rate this because I still don't understand 20% of it but I've finally thrown away my idea that manga is only or people that are obsessed with manga. It has a few themes in common with far too many other stories from the same medium but for some reason was much more enjoyable (if you could call it enjoyable, it is most certainly not pleasant), perhaps because usually this kind of themed story is done in the form of a fantasy or one big metaphor whereas this story uses fantasy and metaphor only to tie things together. Characters that instead of alienating you with their impurities or having some kind of justification in the end, just make you feel dirty to be human. This is not a bad thing, it's amazing. It isn't easy to make the average reader look at humanity at its worst in the mirror and come to terms, hopeful that they'll be able to stick to the better side of human nature themselves and appreciating the beauty of lifes complexity regardless. Had I read this a few years earlier when I was more impressionable, I'd probably be completely obsessed with it but while it is definitely above average, I think I may have seen better in other forms of media (not manga, though I'm relatively new to manga).

I really like the way it fit together like a puzzle but I'd really appreciate it if someone could explain some stuff. Most of it, I had some guess as to what was going on. I was following perfectly up until the girl with the mask in the cafe, who is she? I also reaallllly didn't understand the relationship between Arakawa and the dude with the bad memory. I read it once in Japanese and once in English and those are the two things that I'm clueless about and something tells me they really effect the whole story.