Hoshin Engi, Volume 4 Book

Warning: This review may contain spoilers.

Circumstances bring a teenage boy and two teenage girls together, living under a single roof, searching for their own families. Each of them has an old photograph that shows a young boy and a young girl posing together. Both of the teenage girls believe that they are the young girl in photo. This leads everyone to wonder exactly just who is related to whom.

I liked this manga at first, with its unique story line and likeable drawings. But after reading a few chapters, I began to start questioning the plot. Just what was happening, exactly? I didn't like how the two girls started liking the guy so quickly. There was no build-up, which threw off the pace of the story and made it seem even more unrealistic than the story already was. I was left wondering why the girls were going to such lengths for this guy that they didn't even know.

I also wasn't a fan of the sub-stories in this manga. They were rushed and the minor characters were given little to no development at all. If the minor characters weren't going to be used much, I think that it would have been better if the mangaka didn't include the whole high school setting, and just focused on the three teenagers at home.

Just to be clear, I wasn't thrown off by the premise of this manga. The taboo concept of possible incest didn't affect my rating for the manga. I just didn't like this manga as much as I thought I would because of the really random back stories and the pacing of the story as a whole.