 Hey everybody, welcome to another exciting episode here at A Week in Geekdom and today we're going to be reviewing Spirit Circle. That's right everybody, welcome back to another installment. Today we're talking Spirit Circle by Satoshi Mizukami and here I have with me all six volumes looking pretty spectacular. I love the spines on these books and they're really awesome. They are smaller than your regular sized manga. For example, here we have a volume of Black Clover and as you can see they're just a tad smaller than your manga. So you're probably wondering what the heck is Spirit Circle about? Well I am here to inform you that this series is actually quite good, quite awesome there. I saved you all the trouble. Spirit Circle is the story about Futa Okeya. He is this high schooler which you can see right here. He can see dead people, spirits and all that stuff and one particular day in high school he meets the character of Koko Ishigami. She can see right there and he falls for her. When she, when he tries to talk to her, however, she finds out that he is hiding this birthmark and immediately denounces him as her rival and her mortal enemy. So what soon follows is these characters finding out that they are reincarnated versions of themselves. They have lived previously seven lives and this feud has been going around for what seems like an eternity. So the characters are really fascinating because through the concept of reincarnation you get to explore different aspects of them, especially Futa with his different past lives. There is a character called Fortuna which is, he serves as the main antagonist of the story and it is the first incarnation of the character from a very long time ago. This character did something in the story which set everything in motion for Ishigami to have this feud with him across all eras and as you progress through the story you find out why that is. I'm not necessarily going to spoil that here because that is the whole point of the story but when you start reading this book at first it starts off as this comedy action comedy if you will with these two characters linked in a heated battle as you can see right here in the opening pages in wonderful colored illustrations. But as you soon find out there's a lot more to that. The character of East which you can see here on the cover of Volume 2 and the character of Rune which you can see in Volume 1. These characters play a crucial part to the story and basically these four characters have been around for a very long time and with the concept of reincarnation for a character like Futa you get to explore different aspects like I mentioned earlier. You see characters like Fortuna, Fone, Van, Floors, Fuko, LaFelle. I think that was the name I'm probably butchering it and Hotaru. Different versions in different eras like one of them like Hotaru will be in Fudo Japan another will be in the future or in the past because the book establishes or the author establishes the concept of like this time stream of souls which is like this cosmic river it gets kind of trippy this cosmic river and souls aren't necessarily bound to them like time is where time goes forward a soul or a spirit residing in this grand river they can move to either side so while the character that you're reading about Futa Okeya you think he is in the present which he is a reincarnated life can be from far into the future from far into the future or far into the past so Okeya can be a reincarnated past self to a future version of himself I know it's a little bit weird and Satoshi when he writes his book at certain points he does get a little bit too technical with the terminology and talking about spirits and how to acquire them and the process or how the universe is supposed to work and different planes of existence the concept of parallel dimensions gets explored and then thrown around it can be a little bit confusing if you're new to the whole sci-fi manga realm but overall a fantastic story with very heartwarming beautifully drawn and written characters these are living breathing people that have gone through so much without them realizing it I love the idea that you get to explore different aspects of Futa because like a trait that our main character might be missing you might see that in a previous life and it carries over and it forms sort of like this chain where the character is constantly evolving and progressing without you noticing it I thought that was pretty smart pretty awesome same with Ishigami she is a wonderful character and the reason for that few to begin you're like man why is she so hell bent on killing Futa but when you do find out it's a wild ride like I fell in love with this title it plays a lot with the concept of nostalgia and if you've ever had like dreams before where you see yourself in a different time or a different life and sort of the notions for example that that you get when you dream something very vividly and then you wake up and you can't remember what it was and it sticks with you and sometimes it affects you emotionally I thought that was one of the greatest things about spirit circle and some of the stories especially um uh floors which was in ancient Egypt that was I think that was my favorite out of out of everything because you know it teaches you stuff it teaches you to uh treasure friendship and and loved ones and to not take them for granted and to live out your life as best as you can because you only get one shot at it and you don't want any regrets and you see these characters that for whatever reason they were lacking something and they I don't want to say pay the price in a negative way but like at the end they were sad because they couldn't fulfill everything that they wanted and that is a universal problem that we as a human species can go through right when we uh when we take a look at how short life can be and what we could be doing or what we haven't done it can affect you emotionally and psychologically and I think the manga explores that in a very unique way I love the idea that a protagonist can also be the antagonist and even though there's this massive world building the story is actually pretty self-contained aside from a few characters I'm going to say like eight or nine of them you don't really see a lot of characters in this story but it definitely feels heavy especially with Futa acquiring what is the spirit circle itself this hula hoop looking thing which can entrap circles out of the river that I mentioned earlier out of the stream or whatever and allows him to view his previous lives in a dream and when he wakes up he still has like uh like he'd live through that life so he still have characteristics from previous selves so I thought that was pretty interesting um and you know it helps the character evolve and by the end of the story it's it's full circle you know uh there are a ton of sci-fi concepts concepts involved from time travel to ghost and parallel dimensions and aliens and gods and uh just a whole assortment of craziness that happens but the author Satoshi is able to round everything up and provide us a very solid conclusion to this story I do think in my honest opinion I do think that the story does stick the landing and you get a very satisfying conclusion a very heartfelt honest conclusion to a story about fate love and uh interwoven fates I should say and star crust lovers and the whole concept of past lives all that stuff I think he really did a good job of tying everything together in a very satisfying way every character gets explored they get decompressed you get to learn about their stuff and I wish at the end we could have gotten a little bit more maybe like a prolonged epilogue with the series far into the future I guess with the characters and all that stuff but what we got was pretty solid I loved it and uh just a fantastic ride overall uh one of the aspects that most intrigued me about it and it's very silly because obviously when it's a manga or a comic or whatever art is such an important part of the experience and the art in spirit circle is pretty fantastic I gotta say you know when you can go from a little bit silly and cartoonish to beautiful scenes of characters just walking with very minimal backgrounds I gotta say that threw me for a loop I was expecting a more detailed background but it doesn't really need it because the standout of the story like I said it's very self-contained are the characters themselves and I mean just this is actually one of my favorite pieces this right here and it's not even part of the actual story you do get some colored pages at the beginning of each volume which was nice but like yeah you do get some backgrounds but for the most part it's very empty a lot of white space which you think might be a determinant to the series but it actually you know it reinforces the strength of the characters and the way they look and behave it can look very anime-ish if that's a thing but it works when you read it you fall in love it's very charming a very beautifully drawn series with very rich detail like the present stuff you will see a lot of white backgrounds but when you do go to the past lives you will see detail like this this is a van with the medieval setting and all that stuff really awesome stuff that I think is going to be worthwhile if you do decide to pick it up it's out of context so you don't know why what is happening in these images but if you've read the story you probably know but when there are action scenes it is very fluid and dynamic and really awesome to look at here is more of that spirit circle action with the past lives and stuff just really heartwarming story in my honest opinion there is a critique in this series when it comes to the human species how we you know the dangers of a society that uh wants to prolonged life as long as possible and I think Satoshi does a good job of reminding us that you know life is finite there is a purpose to what we're doing and upsetting the balance and and doing the things that these characters are doing can be a little bit sacrilegious to the way life is meant to be lived if you catch my drift which I thought was pretty cool there are a couple scenes where I'm still trying to figure out I don't know what the heck was going on with the whole future stuff with the aliens and stuff a tiny little spoiler there I still don't understand everything 100% but it's still awesome and worth a reread to get a new perspective this is actually one of my favorite panels of the whole series this is a good moment in the series where you can sort of understand the comedic tone and how awesome these characters look it can go from something like this to more trippy to more trippy stuff like that and more dramatic elements so yeah fantastic heartwarming characters a really interesting take on the whole concept of reincarnation fantastic writing heartwarming series that really does stick the landing fantastic artwork that is very expressive can be a little bit minimal but when it wants to it ups the ante and gives you fully detailed backgrounds and just full people you know looking pretty freaking fantastic on page just a wonderful overall experience that I do recommend if you want to read something different if you want to read something a little bit more dramatic filled with sci-fi heart romance comedy and action spirit circle might be it for you have you read spirit circle what did you think of the ending let me know down in the comments below I'm very interested in your opinion on the whole ending and the concept of the reincarnation and the seven lives and all that stuff guys as always thank you so much for liking commenting and subscribing to a week and keep them it's it's a privilege that I get to do videos and talk nerd talk with you guys whether it's books anime whatever it may be thank you once again you can follow me on your favorite social media platform facebook twitter instagram all that fun stuff you know what to do thank you once again I will catch all of you on our next video