As far as I could gather, this manga is an adaptation of a Chinese novelette. And this fact of trivia is surprisingly relevant – you’d need to adjust your expectations accordingly to get the maximum enjoyment from this manga. What do I mean? Well:

A novelette is limited in volume, its story won’t and can’t explain everything, and the story in this manga is highly schematic as well. But thankfully its length is proportionate to the adapted content, 15 chapters, a read for one night, so you’ll hardly have time to ponder over background details. Anyways - mind it, you’re reading more of a poem than a saga.

A short literary work usually explores one idea and this manga is one-trick too, or, if we look at it positively, very focused. It is centered, as another reviewer aptly said, on misdirection – it changes the way we see the events in a series of well-calculated plot twists. Perception games are, probably, what you should read this manga for.

It’s very literary. The flow of the narrative is non-linear, as most of the modern prose is (so keeping track of things can be difficult at times). But the payoff is that the quality of the text is on a very decent, non-amateurish level. The manga starts with a poetic love talk, and I expected it to devolve in the usual stifling swamp of pretentiousness, but the haughty confessions were balanced into something palatable with lifelike mundane interactions and gory medical topics.

As far as for the art, the mangaka uses the interplay of semi-realistic detailed backgrounds and idealized main characters, especially the titular Du Ming, who is all fine chisel, white porcelain, huge black eyes and silky eyelashes (of course there’re gothic motives, see that Louis XIV sofa on the cover?). I also liked the less polished drawings on the covers of some of the chapters. The art may be not to everyone’s liking, but I find that it suits the story well.

The story is dark, one of the darkest manga I’ve read, and I am not new to disturbing comics. It’s subtly uncomfortable, and while it has some artificial, forced bits it compensates for it by finding a psychological angle rarely explored. The most unnerving thing is that it doesn’t bother with morals at all, even in the form of the jolly teenage denial – it just paints a dark picture as an artistic exercise.

Oh, and I have to disagree that this work has something inherently Chinese in it, I think the topics are universal.

All in all, on its own merit I’d rate this manga with a 7 – it’s good, but the plot is not entirely clear (there’re at least two explanations among the readers), it’s short and not groundbreaking in any way. But I also can’t help but feel that it is a manga I will remember and reference for a long time, simply because there’re few works like it, and it understands the strengths and limitations of its format well. So – an 8.