The Empty Box & The Zeroth Maria Volume 2

Source: http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Utsuro_no_Hako_to_Zero_no_Maria

Summary

Following the events of the “Rejecting Classroom” It is now The last days of April and Golden Week is around the corner.

Kazuki Hoshino, A second year student now on good terms with Maria Otonoshi as they continue to search for “O” and clues.

Maria Otonoshi, Now a Junior at his highschool after the previous incidents.

This time we deal with inexplicable happenings in the real world where things cannot be simply reset. What transpires will be etched within the memories of all.

Kazuki finds himself accused of actions he has no memory of committing, his “Everyday Ordinary Life” seems to be collapsing all around him as he loses track of greater stretches of time.

Undoubtedly there is a new Box at work. How will Maria and Kazuki deal with this when Kazuki himself can’t be trusted?

Interpretation

As with the second volume I found this gripping for the entirety and confusing at the beginning as we are unsure of what ‘method’ is being employed. As a miner spoiler, Although technically one could argue the first volume shared part of this theme… The key theme to the second volume is Time & Identity.

It doesn’t take long to figure out the causes for Kazuki’s behaviour, yet we are not so easily enlightened as to the rules governing it or the people behind it.

Once more the beginning gives us a roster of suspects, as we gain more information we are quickly able to strike some entirely from the list and others will continue to be “IT”S THEM OH MY GOD SEE THE TRUTH!” followed by the not so distant “Oh crap I guess not… OH WAIT IT MUST BE STILL!”

I thoroughly enjoy how the information is handled and that the author is able to so reliably make us shift our focus on different suspects, each time niggling that the new Prime suspect is the true culprit.

Yet towards the end a plot twist reveal allows us to put someone who was unable to be a Prime Suspect in that light occurs. The niggling feeling from the very beginning proved to be true (with complications and twists of course)

I can only imagine how much more satisfying it would have been if our language had the terms and words to identify people like the original language did. That small flaw does allow some of the ingenuity to fall short, however knowing just enough about the language I can fully envision how it would of read in retrospect and I find myself shivering.

I realise I didn’t touch upon the character development and relationship paradigms this time round. Lets just say that while there was progress in development, I’m unsure how I feel about it as a whole. Beyond knowledge that there is a battlefield brewing.

Once more I give this an 8/10, It didn’t take long to realise what all the clock symbolism and timestamps represented. It did take longer to understand the full depth and extent of the mechanism. There was also no problem in assessing from whom we shared the Point of View at any given time.

Final Score: 8/10

~Kanshisha13