(There will be some small spoilers, but they won't interfere with the main plot.)

When I first picked up Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria, also known as HakoMari, I was shocked. I realized this guy's writing style was similar to mine. I was happy about it, too. I thought, "Wow, this guy's ranked #4 in the manga list, and it's not even manga, it's a light novel that's up here!" "My writing's so similar to his, too!" I've always wanted to start writing books, and I've always been good at poetry, so, well, put yourself in my shoes. I'm excited.

So I continue reading. The first volume was amazing, no doubt about it. You get your hatred for the antagonist, you care for the protagonists; I'll skip the individual explaining, but basically, the characters are great. Actually, this entire Light novel has one of the most amazing characters I've seen. Everyone's explanations are so in depth and detailed that I feel like I've met these people in real life, as if they were my best friends.

But that's really all there is to this story.

Now maybe it's unfair. I dropped HakoMari on the end of the 4th volume (It'll probably say something like 4 out of 40, but it's honestly a pain in the ass to count the chapters in this.) and the reason I did so is because the story is just aggravating. So maybe I should've gone the whole way through to rate this story, but I honestly couldn't even force myself to read any more of it.

Dude, it's bad. I felt like my own self confidence had taken a hit. I still stand by my statement that my writing is similar, which is exactly why it's hard for me to say exactly how much I despised the writing in this.

Everything is so god damn scattered that it hurts thinking about it. Doesn't help that I have constant headaches anyways, but this story intensified it by at least 5 times. As if calamity isn't a clusterfuck itself, this story offers a clusterfuck OF calamity, and every single volume leaves you with more questions than answers, and you're forced to just accept it.

Maybe they're all answered in the last volume, but no, FUCK that. I couldn't care less. If it was just one or two questions, then I would be waiting on hands and knees for the answer, but no, the list of questions is as long as Santa's in those Tim Allen movies.

I love cliffhangers. I love leaving the reader with a question, a reason to keep on reading, but I couldn't stand this. And, as if the story being filled with plot holes wasn't enough, the writer has this very strange outlook on people. There are a few characters in this story who act on nothing but "Because I can." Of course, many characters in this story CLAIM that they do something "Because they can", but really do have an ulterior motive; however, for some, it's not the case.

(Spoiler here) One of the side-characters claim that someone they liked was manipulated into liking someone, and that someone brought her to a hotel, then left, locked the door, and called all his friends over to that room to gangrape her. To this day, I have no FUCKING idea why the author felt the need to tell us this aggravatingly depressing story, because it literally had no impact on the main story, maybe aside from further tainting this side-character's morals. These kids are in high school. Fucking high school. If this high school was real, and I had heard of the kids in it, I wouldn't let any of my children go in a 100 mile radius of it, and I'd probably try and start a riot to get literally half that entire school behind bars.

Now I dropped the book at the start of volume 5 for a reason. Spoiler alert, but the main concept of the fifth volume is manipulation. More importantly, someone who has the power to manipulate anyone who has done even the tiniest thing bad, all while claiming to be a vigilante of justice. Of course, he's anything but, and it's his judgement of "bad" and "good", not a logical, moral, or ethical one. If he thinks you're a bad person and he wants you to be under his control, well, fuck you!

Thing is, I don't want to read anymore of this. Every single volume involves the legendary and my personal most-despised trope: "Break the Cutie". Every character who you think is good, kind, cute, or what the hell ever, will undoubtedly end up being crushed into oblivion, to the point where YOU'RE wishing they don't live anymore for their own god damn sake. Even when they get a good ending, they're so beyond screwed up that you can't help but think it would be better if they hadn't existed at all. And, well, seeing as Volume 5 is about manipulation, which is almost always the leading factor in "breaking the cutie", I'm calling it quits.

So maybe I'm just weakhearted, and that's why I don't like this. Maybe I should read it the whole way through because there's some "happy ending". But after playing G-Senjou no Maou and watching/reading similar animes and mangas, and reading many other books with stories involving tragic experiences which we see one displayed in every volume of this book, I'm done. This entire story is beyond too melodramatic for me. I was expecting a thriller mystery with a hint of romance and no comedy, but I get these super in-depth characters being crushed every single volume, who somehow can still give me wisecracks and smart-ass remarks that are genuinely funny.

The romance aspect of this story is literally fucking retarded, because for some reason, during the flesh and meat of the story, the romance is almost literally non-existent, but when they go back to their school lives, suddenly a typical high-school rom-com-esque romance takes place.

TLDR summary of this entire review

Story - 2. An absolute clusterfuck that somehow manages to pull itself together at the end of every volume, but still leaves a bunch of plot holes.

Art - 6. It doesn't really exist in this, since it's a light novel, but it's still a 6 because even though the drawings are good, I can't base the characters off of them. Someone that long haired walking around without tripping over her own hair every 5 minutes barely seems realistic to me.

Character - 10. This is undoubtedly the most painful thing about this story, because every character is completely mentally destroyed every end of the volume, and somehow they act "perfectly normal" at the start of the next one. I can't even imagine it being like that, though it's written that way anyways. If a character's gonna act some way or another, give me a reason to believe it.

Enjoyment - 3. I tried so fucking hard to enjoy HakoMari. I really wanted to. Like I said, the writing is very similar to mine, so it feels like I'm insulting myself when I say "It's just bad." But really, it's just bad. If anything, I feel like I could learn what NOT to do by reading this story.

Overall - 5. Pick up HakoMari if you can withstand all your favourite characters being emotionally raped, as well as a story so loosely put together it may as well not exist. It's like reading a story about two tragic characters, then putting them through a bunch of random missions that just tighten their bond, then giving them an ending. Fucking hell if I know how this shitshow ends, but I'm glad I don't, because given the way it's gone so far, I highly doubt the ending's going to rest well with my heart.

Also, you can notice how I get more irritated towards the end of the review. That's because this stupid story genuinely aggravated me. I can't give it less than a 5, though, which is even more aggravating, because without the characters, this story is a solid 1, and even then, I'm depressed that these characters even exist, because I just feel sympathy and pity for them.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, but this story tries WAAAY TOO HARD to be philosophical. Holy shit, it's embarrassing at most points. I liked the Monogatari series; though it was philosophical, it was the intention, and it was professionally executed (IMO), and it made sense from start to finish. Nobody acted outside of their character unless it made sense for them to. However, in HakoMari, the metaphor made no fucking sense, and the philosophy was so aggravatingly stupid that it genuinely hurt my head to think about it.

It felt like something I'd read from a scene 12 year old kid who somehow found a college-level philosophy course online and decided to write a story as a thesis. Don't read HakoMari if you're expecting a good story. I might read the last few volumes, and I might change this review because of it, but don't expect anything higher than a 6 or, MAYBE, a 7. Like I said, without the characters, this story would get an overall score of 1. Even with the characters, the story itself is just full of unexpected melodrama and pseudo-philosophical bullshit that it's painful to read anyways.

If, miraculously, that one last volume of HakoMari manages to make this story from a 1 to a 10, I'll go and learn sign language or something. Maybe get my friends to dig me up to my head and stone me. Maybe I'll jump off a fucking skyscraper, because I am 100% sure that there is no fucking way in hell 1 volume can save the absolute shit-tier writing in volumes 2-4. (Honestly, volume 1 was good. Good enough that it could've made a good anime. It should've stopped there, though.)