charu-talks

[charu-talks]

God, I wanted to love this so badly.

As always, Lafebre's art is fantastic. I'm obsessed with the way he draws people eating like they're just stuffing their face like chipmunks. It's adorable. The character designs are amazing. The main character is, as someone on Goodreads described: "the most cunty woman I came across in a while" and that's always a plus in my opinion. The environmental art is sublime. It's a murder mystery. Lafebre's previous work, Always Never is one of my favorite comics. I should love this.

Why don't I?

In my opinion, the story has some issues. Mainly, the main character didn't seem to have much of a motivation to do what she did. I'm guessing this might have been a case of hyperfocus, but that still doesn't really feel right for me. She got herself into much deeper and deeper shit without... you know. Her having to. Characters would just sit around with her and share their deepest feelings with her without her having to pry much. Maybe Lafebre wants to imply this is because she's a psychiatrist so ofcourse people open up. I don't buy it. There's a scene in which the MC approaches the wife of the murdered man. Just a few days ago, that same wife suspected the MC of flirting with her husband and warned her not to fuck her husband. And then a few days later, they meet in a spa, this lady sees the MC in a spa, MC suggest the woman may have killed her husband and afterwards the woman just trauma dumps on the MC. That's not good writing, I'm afraid. And it's not the only one of this scene.

There is just so much more. Stuff that feels rushed, unfocused, overdeveloped. Sometimes, when you read a story, you can feel there were parts of the story taken out. That's a normal process with writing, but I really felt it here. Some scenes felt a bit contrived. The main character is haunted by three women from her family who give her advice on everything, but we don't know a lot about these three. Of the three of them, there's only one the MC shows to have a reasonable connection with and which makes sense that she would hallucinate her. The other two... I don't know. We see some background story of one of the other two, but the last one we only basically get a throwaway line of who she was. I honestly was expecting more background on her. I'm guessing it was cut during storytelling, but then why keep that character?

There are some more things like that, such as the relationship between the MC and her mother. Basically was just thrown out there in a line. It just feels like there was more story going on that Lafebre took out but realized he couldn't really take out so let's just tell, not show. That's good storytelling right?

I can tell this story was crafted with love, but I'm guessing it may have just been a little too ambitious. Which is weird because Always Never was literally a love story in reverse. But I think Always Never's biggest strength was that the MCs there had more going on. It was about two lives that occasionally crossed paths and the love they shared between them. They didn't need more motivation than that. But here... it just feels like it went from one situation to the next. Just a wild, whirlwind of a ride that unfortunately wasn't too fun to be on.

Man. I don't know. I'm just a little disappointed.