This is the part where I would warn you that this is a FULL SPOILERS review you know if there was anything to spoil. Who cares Itoshi no Ko Charlotte is an axed a rushed 2019 horror romance manga by Tomo Nagawahttps://anilist.co/staff/135345/TomoNagawa. Sorry did I say horror romance manga? I meant action manga. 440https://i.ur.com/Hkv7b8M.png To be transparent with you the reader of this review Ill fully admit Im actually kind of bitter on this one. The premise of this manga was promising. Simple but promising. Two orphans confess their feelings for each other and oh no one of them dies in a traffic accident Whoops 440https://i.ur.com/NaYNXpS.png I will be a little nitpicky though and say that... like I know it was for a punchy opening but... couldnt the accident have gone on another page separate from the confession? NO WE HAVE TO RUSH TO GET TO THE ACTUAL MANGA. WE CANT BOTHER DEVELOPING THESE CHARACTERS OR THEIR RELATIONSHIP BEFOREHAND AT ALL. THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IN ROMANCE MANGA IS THE CONFESSION SCENE ANYWAYS. https://i.ur.com/KJDFNCb.png The survivor Will is struck with horrible grief. But he doesnt give up on his tragically cut short love Theres a way to make things right Just bring Charlotte back Death be damned 440https://i.ur.com/dhXj21G.png The confession the accident bringing her back from the dead... this all happens within the first ten pages of the manga. Forget rushing this is speedrunning. With this premise you have a manga that could go in all sorts of directions It could be a romance slice of life but you know with a zombie Or maybe Will actually had to do a bunch of dirty evil shit to actually be able to resurrect Charlotte and hes keeping secrets from her and the grief of losing her once has turned into an overwhelming obsession to keep her at all costs. 440https://i.ur.com/pcgIQsK.png You could do that one if you want to actually really lean into the horror direction. Hell you could even double down on tragedy and just have the manga be about people eventually finding out about Wills necromancy and deciding to burn both him and Charlotte at the stake 440https://i.ur.com/angz4XG.png These are just a few directions the manga could have taken from the top of my head. You want to know the direction the manga actually took? 440https://i.ur.com/4AQ8Pna.png A generic squad of action characters from the church show up and go oh no thats a zombie. You have to come with us to the church and Im not exaggerating that when these characters first showed up I fucking audibly groaned. Because I could already see what was going to happen next. They were going to take Charlotte to their church and there was going to be an argument about whether or not she should be allowed to exist because zombies are bad but oh she obviously still clearly possesses humanity Oh wait whats that? 440https://i.ur.com/pMPM1a5.png Theres monsters attacking the city Charlotte what are you doing??? Youre actually helping us even though we were considering destroying you??? I guess you can be allowed to exist but you have to help us out on our action filled adventures 440https://i.ur.com/qP1LwPy.png 440https://i.ur.com/W3HlUcE.png I was mostly right. Except they dont ever actually make it to the church because the manga got axed so the action squad just says fuck it and tells Will and Charlotte that they can just go home after they help them deal with the bad guy. I get it. The author himself was worried about even getting a third volume. 440https://i.ur.com/Fsl548w.png But you would think the characters would still actually at least step foot into the church. Why even have the moment near the beginning of the manga where like Charlotte scares some villagers with her zombie antics if youre not even going to bother playing up the danger of zombies? Oh well you helped people out on the train so I guess youre fine you can go ahead and just go home. Hopefully you wont go full rabid zombie and bite someone. Actually do the zombies even work like that in this series? Or can zombies only be created with the bullshit magical books? Whatever it doesnt matter. 440https://i.ur.com/l6xAB0c.png By the way that moment with the villagers was the first gigantic burning red flag. Because the fact that the villagers acted like a zombie was a common hazard was very noteworthy. I even remember thinking oh maybe its a zombie apocalypse But I also thought what if what if rather than zombie apocalypse its just generic fantasy world and zombies are a common thing because demons and monsters also exist? Oh no 440https://i.ur.com/aMHijGx.png To be fair the villager literally said when they were setting out that theyd shoot any monsters or zombies they came across dead. But I read that line as him bragging that he could handle anything they came across in the wilderness not that both of these things exist in this world to the point where EVERYONE knows about them. 440https://i.ur.com/2mCAdA6.png Look I know how this is coming off. its not that I hate action series. Quite the contrary. However if your manga is supposed to be about a guy bringing his loved one back from death then that should be the primary focus. At least give them a few chapters together before bringing in the generic action character squad. They were actually given a whole third of the manga. It just doesnt feel like it because the remaining two thirds of the manga just feel so much longer... For pretty much the rest of the entire manga Wills worthless. He may as well as not even be there. And I dont mean that in the sense of he doesnt fight 440https://i.ur.com/Wfmitip.png so he literally has nothing to contribute to the action scenes because Charlotte also doesnt fight but as in like after the church squad hijacks the manga he and Charlotte barely seem to even get a scene together without these fuckers also there. 440https://i.ur.com/ZTRj1V5.png The way he was acting at the start of the manga really made me think hed be wholly against the idea of letting Charlotte go even anywhere near the church considering they want to kill all zombies such as Charlotte but he sure did seem to give in to the church squad pretty quickly Almost like he needed to so the manga could happen Golly what a coincidence My favorite reason for something happening in a story is solely because the plot needed it to happen So after the train arc the church characters decide Charlottes a good zombie and Will probably wasnt doing all the nefarious shit they suspected of him. All he did was bring someone back to life and they werent a mindless shambling zombie. No big deal In reality its not that Will was unique or did any special shit to bring Charlotte back he just used a magic book which like I guess summoned a demon who is actually the owner of the book. And also theres five of these books for some reason. 440https://i.ur.com/Lhf0hgd.png Why? I dont know. Maybe the manga was supposed to go longer but the author was rushed to bring to an end so okay nevermind ONLY ONE OF THESE BOOKS CAPABLE OF DOING BASICALLY ANYTHING IS MISSING. Volume 2 was like... I wasnt pleased with the direction the manga was going. But I was like alright if were doing action stuff at least its on a train. Thats fun I guess. Volume 3 though is just like the church characters talking at Will and Charlotte SOMEBODYS STOLEN THE BOOK OF TABOO AND SINCE YOU USED THE BOOK OF TABOO TO REVIVE CHARLOTTE THAT MEANS YOURE IN THE BEST POSITION TO HELP US FIND WHOEVER HAS TAKEN THE BOOK OF TABOO AND IS MISUSING IT TO DO EVIL DEEDS 440https://i.ur.com/4OFovAb.png Meanwhile Gorilla who was like an asshole to Will when they first met because he thought he was the evil guy is like THIS BASTARD USED THE BOOK OF TABOO TO BLIND MY SISTER. MY SISTERS BLIND I HAVE TO FIND THIS EVIL PERSON THATS MY REASON FOR MY ACTIONS AND WHY I WAS AN ASSHOLE TO YOU EARLIER So you really think oh since this has basically been all hes been talking about hes probably going to find this evil person by the end. And big surprise they do. But then they get away and Gorilla just runs right past them because he didnt think to also look up. 440https://i.ur.com/iydxLxB.png So the immortal bad guys entire purpose of fucking around with the demons book is he just wants to fucking die already and he was going to try bully Will into trying to kill him by using a cursed magical rose to send Charlotte into a neverending nightmare... but Will was like nuh uh and then touched the rose instead... and then Charlotte goes into Wills dreams and sees Wills past and... Its already too late. The manga lost me ages ago. I just stood back and watched as this attempt at a lifeline just fell. NO IM SORRY. THIS MANGA REALLY IS PRIMARILY ABOUT WILL AND CHARLOTTE AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP. PLEASE CARE. PLEASE CARE. 440https://i.ur.com/i6SeV95.png Charlotte and Will live happily ever after. The immortal I guess undoes everything he did with the demons magical book because I dont know how else the Gorillas sister became unblinded. And oh look at that the other two church squad characters got together in the end... and everybodys happy. Look its a completely happy ending Everybody knows that a happy ending automatically equals a completely satisfying ending. 440https://i.ur.com/GFWz3E0.png ...WHAT ABOUT THE MONSTERS? WHAT ABOUT THE GIANT HULKING DEMON BEHEMOTH WE SAW IN THE CHURCH SQUADS INTRODUCTION? HE WAS LIKE TWICE THE SIZE OF A BUILDING. WHAT THE HELL SORT OF WORLD IS THIS THAT THESE THINGS ARE JUST ROAMING ABOUT AND OTHERWISE ITS A PERFECTLY NORMAL WORLD? WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER BOOKS OF TABOO? WHAT ABOUT THE FACT THAT APPARENTLY NECROMANCY IS A GENERAL THING IN THIS WORLD TO THE POINT THERE ARE TOWNS COMPLETELY OVERRUN BY ZOMBIES? WHAT ABOUT INFORMING THE CHURCH OF A ZOMBIE THAT STILL POSSESSES HER HUMANITY? WHAT ABOUT THE MAIN DEMON AND THE IMMORTAL? 440https://i.ur.com/1uqV2z1.png The mangas over but heres the backstory of these two characters who clearly would have probably been a bigger deal than they are in the actual manga if it could have kept going longer... and the backstories of these characters MAKE THEM MORE INTERESTING CHARACTERS THAN ANY OF THE ACTUAL GODDAMNED MANGA I JUST READ WHAT THE FUCK but actually no because if you read the authors afterword its not those characters you saw in the manga that look the exact same as these characters but a completely different set of characters and oh the extra version of the immortal man is raising a young Charlotte for some reason 440https://i.ur.com/u16nsur.png Conclusion ...I honestly wish I would have read the extra chapter of the demon and the immortal guy and just not touched the actual manga at all. I genuinely really liked their stories and they could have been part of a much more interesting manga. 440https://i.ur.com/KK4gG9a.png 440https://i.ur.com/BK8RiMg.png But with them coming after this manga... I was kind of overwhelmingly grumpy. Am I going to give this manga a horribly low score because of that grumpiness? Believe it or not but no. Its not really fair considering that its entirely me being... ugh this isnt the manga I personally was expecting or wanting it to be So Ill score the manga that I did read. And that manga is a 5 out of 10. Its not a horrible manga its just... not very good 440https://i.ur.com/LVoGJ9C.png My recommendation is if youre looking for horror its an absolute no. Theres barely any. If youre primarily looking for a romance manga its also a no. If youre looking for an action manga with demons and monsters and also sometimes the focus is on a weird and sometimes obsessive guy and a zombie girl who love each other... sure. And also you dont mind endings that feel super rushed. As for me though this is one of those manga thats going to be leaving my memory banks the moment I click save on this review. 440https://i.ur.com/kkqmGIO.png