Some thoughts on Afterschool Charisma 2-5

"Most of the people in the world aren't clones.  Nobody knows what their destiny is." v. 4

Well, yes.  Wow.  I'll try to do this without spoilers.  The story of a boy who is the son of a scientist and his trials and tribulations in a school full of clones of famous historical figures gets serious.  There is a lot of stuff happening here, much of it disturbing.  Such brutality and wrong-headed insistence on biology as destiny right next to greed and politics and all manner of evils large and small. It can be jarring right next to the silliness of teenagers being teenagers.

"I guess this proves that just because we're clones doesn't mean we're geniuses!"
"I agree!"
"It's all our originals' faults!"
"Yeah!!"
"Way to bond over stupidity."

I am afraid of these flashbacks because I really don't want to see how a bunch of nice clones turned into the bitter and desperate (and desperately weird) people they were in the present.  And also, how could they do that?!  Some of them were probably trying to protect in their own ways, but others of them were just twisted and bitter and jealous.

There were a couple of moments where I wondered, "Is this a Japanese thing?" (Example, situation in 4 that ends with the line "You can't take someone's life over a thing like this" on page 145 and several bits in volume 5 that have me wondering, "Why do you lend yourself to this?!"  I tend to assume in these situations that there is some cultural thing I am missing.)

Sometimes the series is a bit clumsy with how it handles things, but the bits with Shiro and his "dad" growing up were stunningly nuanced, especially the more you find out. And the complex, older body-guard guy Kuroe is still a favorite.  I am more curious than ever about who he really is in light of recent events, but, as many critics have pointed out, sometimes you can't tell if the characters are supposed to resemble each other or if the artist just isn't always very good at drawing different faces.

This may be a series with high re-read value (and would definitely be if everything was as strong as the bits with Shiro and his dad), but it may turn too action/adventure-y with new twists and reveals becoming more important than long-term plotting and nuance.  In other words, it will be a "what happens next" kind of series rather than a "how do I need to go back and look again and reinterpret the past in light of this new information" kind of series.

Sometimes it gets all bogged down and confusing (the whole Kai flashback thing being a pretty good example because WTH).  I really want them to have chosen the name Kai because it is a homonym to the Greek letter Chi written X and often used to mean a variable.

In conclusion, the pacing and tone are sometimes uneven, but I reserved the next volume at my library as soon as I finished 5.