I knew nothing about this book when I started reading page one, and for the first 100 pages I found it slow going as we follow an elementary school latch-key kid. Nanoka doesn't have any real friends at school, so she wanders around her neighborhood and talks with the friends she has made there: an older woman, a cat with a cropped tail, and younger woman who lets ignorant, innocent Nanoka call her Skank-san from the graffiti on her apartment door . The biggest topic of conversation is Nanoka's school assignment to write about happiness and what it means to her, that is until the slice of life tone takes a darker turn when Nanoka comes across a teenager in a deserted building who is lightly cutting her forearms.

At this point, I had to stop and ask myself what was the point of this and do I really want to continue. I thought about where the book could possibly be going and suddenly made connections between the Triple Goddess and magical realism that laid out the rest of the book before me. I was eager to keep reading just to see if I was right.

And somewhere along the line as I conceitedly patted myself on the back for being right, I got caught up in the failures, successes and regrets of Nanoka's friends and her resistance to bullying and development of interpersonal skills. It's predictable and manipulative, but darn if it doesn't work.

It wasn't until I had finished the manga that I found out it that it was actually an adaptation of a novel and that it was by the same creators whose I Want to Eat Your Pancreas manga adaptation I adored a couple years back. I need to more actively seek out their other projects. ( )