This is a tense and introspective story reminiscent of Misery (1990), a domestic horror in a house that feels as dark, narrow and bleak as our characters' lives and futures. The artwork is a knockout, the sprites have a wealth of micro-expressions that flit backwards and forwards even over the course of a single line of dialogue, which makes them eerily alive. The mystery plot and carefully chosen imagery is slow to emerge and worked to pique my interest whilst the main story moved along.
The main themes are of course fascinating and through the excerpts from interviews and essays over the decades I felt the love, knowledge, and the dedication of the author. What fascinates me especially is the appearance of Anita's conscience, true/authentic self, inner child, whatever model you want to choose to name it - and the conflict, abandonment, and anger the two share together. The story starts to suffer from a classic problem which is that passive and downtrodden characters are easily dull to read about, and this feeling for me peaked at the spiral monologue in part III. This character starts to find her feet again after this point, but overall she is outshone by the dynamic and erratic Sunny.
Sunny's behaviour and dialogue is bizarre and disturbing and provocative, the paradoxical "the straighties can go elsewhere for their yaois" truly killed me and will be hooked in my brain for days, maybe weeks, or months. And this is the thing that gets me about seeing characters like this, and living alongside people like this: they are addictive to think about, because they are so confusing and repulsive and pitiful and all these other complicated things. Their ambivalence is maddening and captivating. This is an interiority and a humanity that Anita lacks; textually, one she doesn't allow herself, but also one that the writing seems hesitant to give to her. It doesn't surprise me to see a victim spend all her time inside the head of the perpetrator. In the same way, this work does as well.
I really enjoyed this work and these are just some of my thoughts! Amazing work at creating something with so much to chew on! 💓💓💓