Ending and Beginning – Kagerou Daze Manga (Spoilers)

So, here we come to, for the time being, the last entry in KagePro I have available to review: The Kagerou Daze Manga. This is the most different of the versions, with more twists and turns and surprises even if you know all the other components.

You’d be forgiven for not expecting that, though, since it starts out with a standard opening: Shintaro’s keyboard is once again banished to the shadow realm by a soda, and going out to get a new one, his first time leaving his room in years, lands him in the middle of a hostage situation. That gets defused by Shintaro, his digital buddy/tormentor Ene, and some new folks with freaky powers his sister has made friends with. Then we follow Momo’s side of the story – having a bad day thanks to her unrecognized and uncontrolled superpower of drawing attention, meeting up with the Mekakushi Dan, and ending up on the other side of that hostage situation. The next day the gang goes to an amusement park, and we also get an extended flashback to the school days of Takane (who becomes Ene) and Haruka where they run an awesome shooting gallery video game for the school festival, meet Shintaro and Ayano (among others) and don’t quite get around to having a romance before tragedy strikes.

At the end of the afternoon at the amusement park, though, a dark figure (The Snake of Clearing Eyes in his Kuroha/Possessed Konoha form) appears and… slaughters the cast. Shintaro has some sort of flashback or dream of Ayano and we get a time reset not just at the end of the story but in volume 4 of 13. The remaining 9 volumes are all dedicated to a different timeline. And when I say different, I mean it’s like nothing we see in the other versions of KagePro.

This time, Shintaro is still a shut-in, haunted by the literally digital troll Ene, but the cola of doom doesn’t have its day. He’s still dragged outside, though, this time by Momo. He runs into Hiyori (a huge fan of Momo looking to meet her) and Hibiya (a huge fan of Hiyori’s, who would be happier hanging out with her if it were a little more personal), and the four of them get to spend some happy times together before a traffic accident introduces the kids to the Heat Haze, which Momo hears over the phone

If this doesn’t sound all that off the beaten path, wait a little. This timeline only diverges farther from the “script” we know. Even this far, though, it’s interesting to see because we’re getting different sides of the characters and different sorts of interactions. Hiyori gets almost no time in the light novels or Mekakuycity Actors, much less the songs, but here she’s a meaningful contributor to the story and we get to see her interact with more than just Hibiya and a little bit of Konoha.

After the accident, a search begins for Hibiya and Hiyori. Shintaro and Momo are looking for the kids because they’re friends and don’t understand what happened since Momo heard a scream and not what happened. On the other hand, it seems like the whole “mall held hostage” thing occurred in the background of this timeline, only to have Konoha superman his way through the problem. Presumably, that’s why he’s with the Mekakushi Dan also looking for Hibiya and Hiyori. Shintaro runs into Kido who helps the destitute NEET get a soda out of a vending machine, while Momo manages to find Hibiya… who was also found by Kano and Konoha. Since Hibiya doesn’t care much for Konoha, it looks a little hostile, and Momo’s first impression that her friend is in trouble is not helped by Kano’s BS making him sound like some kind of gangster. Momo’s power triggers and, helped by the confusion of a mob, Hibiya and Momo get away and crash into Shintaro. The two groups stay apart for the time being (despite a better – but still very Shuuya Kano – invitation offered to Momo) and we move to a slice of backstory that’s similar to most loops’ canon, but not one we see as often: the meeting between Seto and Marry interwoven with Marry’s past (including the events that lead to the death of her mother and death-and-revival of Marry through the Heat Haze). Ultimately Seto even brings the girl home – possibly ahead of schedule, since Marry and Ayano meet.

Back in the present and the real world, Hibiya struggles to search for Hiyori, but he’s experiencing blanks in his memory and dizzy spells. At the end of Volume 6, however, he’s greeted by a strange figure who would be very familiar to readers… Ayano.

She calls herself a monster and offers to teach Hibiya about what happened to him and… seems to not be in the Heat Haze in this version. Which leaves us a LOT of questions. If Ayano is fine, what drove Shintaro into his seclusion? Why isn’t she with the Mekakushi Dan and why does the Mekakushi Dan want to breach the Heat Haze? To get a little ahead of myself, Ayano is a much bigger character in this go around, and her story is extremely different, and tied in to most of the really critical stuff we’ll find in the Manga.

Ayano also has her Favoring Eyes ability (if you recall, the ability to telepathically send thoughts and feelings to others) and this proves to be a jumping off point for a backstory you might be familiar with, as Ayano is also in possession of the (full?) memories of Azami, and shares them with Hibiya. We thus get a pretty extended and well-executed version of Azami’s story. For those of you coming into it new, the brief version is this: Azami is an immortal being associated with snakes. She has many magical powers and has existed since the dawn of time, but didn’t understand herself or what she was and spent eons among humans attempting to work it out before deciding the world was rotten and retreating to a deep forest.

In that forest she ended up meeting a man who was not the same kind of trouble as other humans – quirky, and not judgmental or fearful. Eventually they fell for each other and started a family (Azami is, in fact, Marry’s grandmother) but Azami was troubled by the fact that her mortal family would grow old and die. One of the abilities within her spoke to her at that time (it has its own identity and personality it seems), the Snake of Clearing Eyes. It instructs her how to make an endless world, but thanks to disasters in the living world Azami retreats into it on her own. Turns out the never-ending world she created – The Heat Haze – is a hellish nightmare, which seems to amuse Clearing Eyes. The snake shows her Marry and her mother’s deaths years later, and goads Azami to bringing them into the Heat Haze to save them and into giving her core ability to one of them (it ends up Marry) to permit her to return to the living world. With her core ability gone, though, Azami could no longer issue commands to the Heat Haze at all, leaving it to continue to obey her instructions to gather up those who die and give them new life.

Ayano further explains that Azami possessed ten abilities: Her core, that was in Marry, is the Locking Eyes ability (also the “turn to stone with a glance” power, though Marry’s naturally inherited version is much weaker and can only paralyze momentarily). The others are Ayano’s own Favoring, Kido’s Concealing, Momo’s Drawing, Seto’s Stealing, Kano’s Deceiving, Opening (Konoha), Awakening (Ene), Focusing, and finally the evil mastermind that is Clearing. If you have an objection to this list, perhaps because like me you knew more about KagePro lore and felt it wasn’t quite right, please hold it until the end.

Ayano, from this information, has her mission: Clearing would escape into the mortal world, and once there would attempt to claim the lives of the other snake hosts (including Ayano herself, though she seems more worried for her siblings) in order to forge a new Medusa. Ayano suspects that Clearing Eyes has made it out of the Heat Haze, and in Hiyori to boot, which might be why they’re having trouble finding her.

That’s about when Shintaro catches up to Hibiya. He and Ayano meet and… it turns out this is for the first time in this loop. I’ll be honest, out of all the divergences in the second Manga route as opposed to the other routes, this is probably the one that tilted me the most. Maybe it’s because, to me at least, Ayano and Shintaro’s relationship (in every sense of the word) felt like the core thread reaching through KagePro. In general, KagePro media is a true ensemble cast, but if anyone is given extra weight in the present as a PoV it’s the fairly “normal” Shintaro… and if anyone is given big weight in the way the past casts a long shadow over the present, it’s Ayano. I went on about Lost Time Memory for as long as I did both because the PV is so detailed and laden with worthwhile notes and because it’s something of a pivotal experience. So getting a world in which Shintaro and Ayano never met? We’ve gone past “This is a little more different than normal” straight through to “Check the Divergence Number for this World Line and find it’s an imaginary number” territory.

Or… maybe not. There’s actually some really good play with this turn of events. When Shintaro and Ayano first meet as strangers, there’s naturally some trepidation between them: Ayano has business with Hibiya and Shintaro is trying to look out for him, while Shintaro has to face this stranger telling a fairly incredible story about Medusas and magic powers. However, they share a deep care for their siblings, as shown when Shintaro changes his tune on connecting the dots that Momo’s ability must be one of the storied ones and that means her life is in danger, while Ayano is still looking out for the Mekakushi Dan despite seemingly not being with them. Ayano’s acknowledgment that they’re not so different even gets a little blush out of Shintaro, and in general they’ve got really good chemistry. It’s not the same exact story with folded cranes on Shintaro’s school desk, but in this different light you do still see how the two of them work together, including their association galvanizing Shintaro into being a better person.

Meanwhile, the search for Hiyori has kind of become the search for Kido who was searching for Hiyori. The good news is that Kano, Konoha, and Momo find the both of them. The bad news that they find them in an alley, covered in blood – Kido murdered and Hiyori running off shortly after, suggesting that Ayano might have the right of it with her suspicion that Clearing Eyes has emerged in Hiyori’s body.

It’s volume 8 where this happens, so we are a little more than halfway through, but all the same we’re getting our true villain much earlier than in most other versions. Recall, this route runs basically as volumes 5-13, so really Clearing Eyes is appearing just before the halfway point of this loop’s story, much earlier than is typical, and presaged by the end of the previous loop where we saw the snake’s iconic Outer Science/Kuroha form even if we didn’t understand what was going on at that point. The pacing issue that was mild and survivable but present in the light novels and really dragged down Mekakucity Actors where we don’t really know what the plot or point of any of this is until the final act is totally absent here in the Manga.

As if eulogizing Kido, the Manga tells the story of the Mekakushi Dan characters in their youth: how Kido, Kano, and Seto met at the orphanage, the trials they went through, and their adoption by the Tateyama family. In some very real scenes, it’s not all sunshine and roses. The adults, particularly Ayano’s mother, are researching the eye ability phenomenon, and in one of their early interactions Kido even takes out her frustrations on Ayano. Ayano for her part is pretty understanding about the situation. She knows that Kido and company are going through a lot and wants to try her best to really be a big sister to them. After that, we see quite a bit of the lot of them bonding and really becoming a family. But, as Kano (telling the story to Ene) says, things weren’t to last. The telling is paused by Kano (carrying an unconscious Momo) and Ene running into Ayano, Shintaro, and Hibiya.

In the exchange Hibiya is determined to have Focusing Eyes by process of elimination and goes with Kano to help find Hiyori, while Momo is handed over to Shintaro. The exchange between Kano and Ayano is especially vitriolic, even before Kido’s recent demise comes up, and after he’s gone, Shintaro finds that as hard as she tries to conceal it, Ayano’s been pushed well past her breaking point, left hurt and crying by the bad blood that come between them. How did this all happen? Ayano’s willing to tell Shintaro, so we get to see it in another flashback. This to the time, it’s to the events around Ayano’s ‘death’ (that left her with the Favoring Eyes). In this timeline, Marry even moved in with the Tateyama family while their mother was still alive. Ayano’s mother (and through a little eavesdropping, Ayano) learns that lives may be in danger, based on accessing Azami’s journal and getting the Cliff’s Notes version of the facts of Azami that Ayano was able to communicate to Hibiya a few flashbacks ago.

Unfortunately, the landslide car accident that kills off Ayano’s parents and leaves Kenjirou Tateyama as Clearing Eyes in the orthodox timeline still comes. Only this time, Ayano and Marry are in the car. Marry seems to survive legitimately, and Ayano is the member of her family to emerge from the Heat Haze, having had to relive Azami’s sad memories time and time again before they were etched into her along with the Favoring Eyes. The experience drives Ayano a little nuts (quite reasonably) but she sees another way to defuse the coming doom: eliminate Locking Eyes from the world or, in other words, kill Marry. Proposing such a monstrous course of action, as furious as she was (blaming Marry for her parents’ death since the car ride was following Marry’s clues) and as disturbed as she was, horrifies the others, and the Mekakushi Dan chose to protect Marry and abandoned the Tateyama house, and have been living in their hideout ever since.

Ayano’s regrets over this run deep, and the interplay of her and Shintaro (who, despite being a NEET for so long, is trying seriously to protect his sister and friends when Ayano is guilty over contemplating killing someone she once called a sister) is really dynamite. However Momo wakes up and runs off looking for Hibiya and Hiyori again. As Shintaro chases after her, he gets a call from Kano, who has found Hiyori.

Hiyori protests her innocence, saying she found Kido nearly dead, and Kido told her to run. She adds an odd detail: she was led to Kido by a weird sight beyond normal vision… the effect of Focusing Eyes. If Hiyori is Focusing, that means Clearing Eyes was in Hibiya. Shintaro learns this all too directly when he arrives to the sight of Momo plummeting to her death, having been pushed off a roof by an entirely overtaken and evilly grinning Hibiya.

The climax there has some hangtime, though. We move to Konoha and the (remaining) Mekakushi Dan as Konoha heads into the night to protect his friends. He finds Kano and Hiyori about at the same time as Ene shows up on Kano’s phone to deliver the bad news about Momo. Ene, of course, recognizes Konoha as Haruka while he (being the Snake and not Haruka, since Haruka rejected him) doesn’t know her, prompting our Haruka/Takane flashback.

Except this time, it’s not Yuukei Yesterday. Haruka and Takane meet in the hospital and become close friends, bonding over video games being a great escape from the tedium of such an existence. Takane develops something of her Tsundere crush (though she oddly seems to show a little more Dere) and then Haruka gets a new roommate: Shintaro! Yeah, Shintaro’s an inpatient for a while in this one thanks to receiving quite a few broken bones. Shintaro (who also seems to have quit school early for reasons of being a generally sour misanthrope, perhaps explaining how he never met Ayano) manages to befriend Haruka, who’s been feeling much better emotionally since befriending Takane.

This causes a surprising rift: Takane sees Haruka having fun with Shintaro, bonding over the things they bonded over, and feels like she’s been replaced. She can’t bring herself to face him directly, despite visiting the hospital multiple times. Not realizing that Takane has been around, Haruka feels abandoned as his time approaches and his condition worsens. After Shintaro is discharged, feeling like he’s lost everything and has only death to look forward to, Haruka commits suicide, shattering both Takane and Shintaro. Shintaro turns his back on having been convinced to try in life again, a crumpled admission notice thrown away as he retreats into his room, having opened up and been convinced having a friend wasn’t so bad only to suffer for it. Later, Ene appears on Shintaro’s computer, seemingly at least a little by accident this time, and while you can doubt her definition of friendship, that’s what she introduces herself as.

Back in the present, Shintaro is having to face death again, Clearing Eyes doing what Clearing Eyes likes best, taunting and tormenting him as he faces his little sister’s demise. The cavalry arrives in the form of Ayano, who battles Clearing Eyes Hibiya in a very cool war of words where we get more motivation for Clearing Eyes (turns out the horrid serpent has layers) – if the Snakes respond to wishes, it’s Clearing Eyes’ self-selected purpose to never let the despair that causes people to wish run out. Now, it might seem like Ayano is not exactly the best challenge to Clearing Eyes who, despite his host, has already murdered two larger and stronger teen girls, but Ayano has another layer of Cavalry of her own… Konoha. In a very brief sequence we learn that in this timeline Ayano was the first person to show him kindness when he entered this world, and his superpowered, indestructible body is the result of Haruka’s wish to have a future he could share with his friends.

For a brief moment, it’s a rousing and triumphant scenario. Konoha restrains Hibiya and gives Clearing Eyes a good talking to. However, by releasing Hibiya momentarily (or impersonating his mannerisms really well) Clearing Eyes gets out of Konoha’s grasp and, ultimately, suicides Hibiya to a passing truck and overtakes Konoha with his snaky essence. Yeah, we weren’t going to get through this loop without Kuroha, so the Project vets like me expected it, but the pacing through here is dynamite, as is the imagery. Kuroha vanishes into the fiery wreck, letting them know that he simply wants to orchestrate an even more impressive tragedy, and in a short turnaround that’s perfect for the material, we’ve gone from the heroes feeling like they have things under control to being helpless (if not hopeless). And if Clearing Eyes escaping for further villainy wasn’t enough of a hint, we’re not even at the end yet.

In the aftermath, Hiyori brings Ayano to meet with Kano and Seto and she sort of patches things over in light of the tragedy that’s unfolding. Marry is not taking so well to the abilities she’s picked up from the dead, and spirits are of course at a disastrous low. Hiyori has been trying to use her Focusing Eyes to find their enemy, but can’t, causing the four of them (Kano, Seto, Ayano, and Marry) to come up with a plan to use Marry’s power to stop Clearing Eyes. Shintaro, thirst for revenge for his sister keeping him working for days without rest, has better luck, finding Clearing Eyes by, seemingly, hacking into security cameras throughout the city in order to catch a glimpse of him. Ene stops Shintaro from charging off to probably his doom with the fact that she’s dying, and she and Shintaro manage to have one last real, earnest, friendly conversation as life slips away from her comatose human body and her digital existence evaporates, sending another ability into Marry, who manages to emerge ready to try facing off against Clearing Eyes with the number of snakes she has in the meantime.

We get a fairly cool chapter where Clearing Eyes monologues about his motivation (talks to Konoha, really, coincidentally explaining why he’s able to take over his fellow snake’s human body so effectively), revealing that his wish-granting existence began with Azami’s first wish to know herself and his spite began with Azami’s abandonment of that goal for the love she found with her husband. Clearing Eyes, a twisted incarnation of forgotten desires, takes on a new humanoid form (now with less Konoha as Konoha’s will falters and fails) and makes ready to begin the end, heading for the Mekakushi Dan hideout.

The clock turns back again for our narrative… but not far, to Shintaro’s arrival at the hideout. Ayano talks with him away from the others and honestly this is one of my favorite scenes in the Manga. Maybe not #1, but it’s up there. Ayano points out that Shintaro has no reason to get involved, but Shintaro gives his reason. After his failure to protect Momo and his parting with Ene, he’s resolved that he won’t sit idly by if he can save anyone… and the anyone that came to his mind was Ayano. Even though they don’t have a history in this version, the connection they’ve formed in the Manga itself feels very genuine, founded in understanding over their similarities and a mutual sense of respect and support. Each of Shintaro and Ayano sees their own inclinations in the other, but they have different strengths and weaknesses that make them far stronger together than they are on their own.

This sequence is also probably the best display in the whole project of Shintaro’s potential. Because, in the background and start of most loops, Shintaro is a slothful person: he squanders his superior abilities and leaves his deep wellspring of kindness and nobility to rot. When a crisis occurs, he usually steps up to it, becoming the red-clad hero Shintaro we see in the Route A half of Lost Time Memory, but here in the second Manga route he’s had a lot more time and a lot more investment. This Shintaro has really overcome his flaws, and steps up to be a hero even when he could have stepped out.

And, in terms of what’s going on presently, if there’s one thing Shintaro is good at, it’s making plans, leading into the next confrontation with Clearing Eyes.

When he arrives at the hideout, he finds Marry. Or, rather, Marry using Ene’s ability to astrally project into the meeting and Momo’s to have lured him there at all. With Azami’s memories from Ayano and some deductions, she takes apart who and what Clearing Eyes really is, and why he’s acted the way he has, and uses her abilities to funnel him into a final confrontation at Marry’s old home. They have Shintaro’s plans and the others’ powers, but the final battle isn’t easy. What it is is dynamic and engaging. KagePro, by in large, doesn’t have “Action” in its genre makeup, but the final battle with Clearing Eyes would fit in with some exchanges that do. There’s struggle, sacrifice, and the occasional big movement like burying Clearing Eyes under a landslide with the help of pretty much all the forest animals (or, on the clever rather than spectacular end, Kano laying down his life as a diversion, and to troll their enemy something fierce).

It all leads, though, to Marry calling the Heat Haze to swallow up Clearing Eyes and bind him “for good”. I put that in quotes because Clearing Eyes himself disappears gloating in triumph. He knows Marry can’t accept this ending, with the vast majority of her friends and family dead (most notably including Seto, who she loves, at the very end). In the mind of Clearing Eyes, there was never any hope to begin with for this loop, this timeline this world.

And you know what? He was right. With only Clearing Eyes steady through past and future incarnations (though it’s a little fuzzy whether he remembers or simply is inevitable and doesn’t care about disappearing into the reset), there wasn’t really a chance to outplay him. Ayano, though, has an idea. This ending needs to be rewound, but the thoughts and feelings of those who reached the end, the memories of this tragedy, can’t be sacrificed in that. However, Azami once created whole worlds, in possession of powers meant to grant any desire. And if a snake can serve as a replacement for a human life… then a human life should be able to be formed into a snake. Ayano asks Marry to transform her into a new power, one that was never part of Azami, that can retain the precious and painful memories of the past, and to give that ability to Shintaro. Ayano and Shintaro have a final conversation in which she admits budding feelings for him (words the versions of her that knew Shintaro from school never managed to say) and the deed is done.

Ayano Tateyama, the Ayano of this timeline, becomes the Snake of Retaining Eyes dwelling inside Shintaro. And with that, so many mysteries fall into place. In my investigation of the Kagerou Project, I’ve called out quite a few: Why Retaining (a known factor from the Project’s infancy) never appears in Azami’s list of powers, such as the ten named earlier in the Manga is probably the most basic. However, it’s also clear that this twist (and I do consider it a twist – a really good one at that) was planned and seeded deep into the Project’s makeup. For instance, in Mekakucity Actors, we see that the Snake of Retaining Eyes is different: Clearing Eyes retains a consciousness because that’s the nature of its wish-granting aim. Konoha only has a mind of his own because Haruka remained in the Heat Haze. The other Snakes are silent, nothing more than surrogate life forces with cool powers attached… except Retaining Eyes, who can speak with Shintaro and does so in a kind, feminine voice. Shintaro has an eye ability, Retaining Eyes, but it doesn’t seem to have the same origin as the others since he never reports any near-death or Heat Haze experience, and it doesn’t operate in the same always-awake uncontrolled way. It clearly became part of him on a previous loop since we see Marry bestow it on him in Mekakucity Actors, but we didn’t have a concept then of what that entailed.

In the novels meanwhile, there’s a moment I highlighted where Shintaro speaks to Ayano in his dreams, and at the end she calls him “Master”. It’s easy to write off as dream weirdness, given Shintaro is hearing that from Ene, but it’s not like his environs were bleeding in since Ene was nowhere nearby. “Master” is also how the Snake of Clearing Eyes refers to its hosts, particularly Azami and Ayano’s father, so it would seem to be the address of choice for snake to human, Retaining Eyes to Shintaro. And all the way back in Lost Time Memory, when Route A Shintaro finds Ayano in the Heat Haze, his eyes turn red, indicating the presence of an ability.

Speaking of Lost Time Memory, we kind of create a medley of that and Additional Memory (logically given Ayano’s point of view and the title of the final chapter being the same) to round out the Manga. The sequence where Ayano says goodbye to Shintaro (though promising that she’ll be waiting for the day when they can really be together, on the other side of this summer) mirrors the Route A ending of Lost Time, including fading to Shintaro waking up at the correct time and in the outfit for the start of Route XX. Finally, we have Ayano’s testament as Retaining Eyes – while she exists inside Shintaro she also seems to exist in the Heat Haze (or something like it), gazing out onto the world he sees, holding onto it all, loop after loop, even the surreal experience of her younger self meeting Shintaro and talking to him, her initial hesitation, his then-sour attitude. All for hope, until the cycle can be broken. And, on the very last page, her faith and perseverance is rewarded as Shintaro (in his Route A-styled glory) opens the door on the empty classroom Ayano inhabits, having reached her at last. Like Mekakucity Actors, and possibly depicting the exact same incarnation, the story ends with the connection between Ayano and Shintaro, making a decent argument that you could consider KagePro to be something of a romance, especially given how critical the Takane-Haruka and Marry-Seto pairings are as well along with Azami’s past, Hibiya’s interactions with Hiyori… I’d say it’s more of a drama with strong romantic themes, which I very much appreciate when the relationships are as well handled as they are.

With that final page, though, we’ve come to the end of KagePro. At least, that is, the end of all the KagePro material that I can really take a look at. There’s a one-episode anime that I haven’t really been able to source, ARGs that I couldn’t play for reasons of not being located in Japan much less the correct corner of Japan, and loads of tie-ins and merchandise that probably doesn’t bear analyzing anyway. And unlike most of the stuff I review that’s “in the can” so to speak, KagePro is very much still a living property, with announcements of new novels, manga, anime, and of course songs on the horizon, some of which may even tell a properly new story outside the bounds of the one we’re familiar with, letting us catch up with these characters in the future and introduce new ones.

In any case, if you’ve made it here and haven’t been fully convinced of what I’d say yet, here it is: I’d really recommend hopping into KagePro. Just do it at your own pace. Because of the amorphous nature of the multi-timeline story, it’s very friendly to you picking up whichever version you like best, whether it’s the novels, the manga, Mekakucity Actors, or just listening to some of the songs, even covers of the songs. I think it’s the kind of property that has at least something for most viewers without failing to establish an identity of its own. Not every incarnation is without issue, but in my mind they’re all worthwhile in their own rights, so go on out there and dig in for yourself.