I'll admit that I was pretty disappointed by this. The premise started fairly interestingly, but then we are presented with different vignettes featuring the same main characters and the initial chapter's premise is completely forgotten about. Each story features a different crime and criminal. Each has some interesting elements, and furthers the actually pretty great characterization of the main character. I say main character, singular, because I felt that the girl Yoru Morino was shallow by comparison despite getting the only backstory in the book. Instead, she is used over and over as the damsel in distress (the writer even compared her to Princess Peach in the afterword). The guy (whose name I forget since it is only mentioned once or twice) was one of the only good things about the book. I could actually feel his obsession with crimes and his willingness to commit them, and his sociopathic tendencies were depicted well.

The problems with this book stem in part from the small amount of chapters they have to resolve the story as a whole, and the fact that the authors only have so many pages to elaborate on each vignette. However, I do feel that there were ways to effectively create a cohesive story within that space, and that there were plenty of wasted pages.

The major root of the problems in this manga is the over-reliance in contrivances to further the plot. First of which is the huge amount of criminals the MCs run into in such a short time. Sure, they are looking for crime, but they are essentially crime magnets, especially Yoru who seems to always be the target, or presumed target. Even in the afterword, the author admits that this is a nonsensical series and that he must be stupid. He also admits that it is strange that the characters keep getting involved with a murder case, but that unless he wrote it like that, there would be nothing to write about, which I find to be a pretty poor excuse. It is a severe lack of imagination on the writer's part, and it shows his inability as a writer to have to rely on such a contrivance. I don't know if the original novel suffers from the same problems, but this is a review of the manga anyway. There are plenty of other contrivances in the plot, from small to huge leaps in disbelief. I would be more tolerant of this if the story was portrayed as surreal, or satirical, or silly; but the story is presented in a very serious manner, to the point where it could even be called edgy. There are some decent twists and concepts here and there, but they always fall flat due to the contrivances they rely upon and the lack of clarity in which they are presented.

As for the art, it ranges from great to mediocre. Some panels were phoned in, with a few even looking like preliminary sketches. The background art specifically looks pretty bad in general. The depictions of the crime scenes tend to look pretty damn great though, with a couple of scenes actually being pretty elaborate. So it's a mixed bag, but I do like it as a whole.

All in all, this was okay. I didn't hate it. It feels like the author only wanted to write about subtly eccentric characters with an obsession about murder, and wanted to implement some interesting concepts he had for said murderers' modi operandi. In that, I think he succeeds. That is the appeal of this book, at least to someone like me who does like sociopathic characters and creative criminals in my stories. However, the over-reliance in contrivances, pacing issues, forgotten plot threads, and occasional lack of clarity brings this down to a 6/10 for me. Overall positive experience, but I would not ever call this a good manga.