Spirit Circle

Spirit Circle, in my opinion, is an example of a story that has an incredibly interesting premise and carries itself well for 2/3rds of its run, but comes crashing down in the final third with a very contrived and banal conclusion. It really soured my experience on the series as a whole, and what could've easily been a 9 or 10/10 series instead ended up as a disappointment, although it was still enjoyable.

Story: 7/10. Easily a 9/10 up until the final act or two, but once the story started tying itself up it was a huge let-down. The story was building itself up so well only to fall flat, and do it in the most cliche way possible despite originally being a series built on nuance and ambiguity.

Art: 9/10. It's pretty charming and very consistent.

Character: 8/10. For the most part, decently done. Each character is unique and memorable, and there is a good interwoven connection between them.

Enjoyment: 7.5/10. I did enjoy Spirit Circle as a whole, but my interest waned substantially around the end. I'd say my enjoyment was at its peak during the first 70% of this series.

Overall: 7/10. Spirit Circle is an interesting manga that fails to deliver in the end, but still has some things worth reading. It helps that in addition to being an overarching narrative, it also has smaller subplots that take shape within the overall story, so even though I was disappointed by the ending, I still liked how some of those subplots were handled.

If you like story that is told in a none-linear fashion where stuff from the beginning is relevant or symbolic to the stuff that's going to happen later on, I would highly recommend Spirit Circle for you.

Spirit Circle is quite clever in that it is able to crunch in multiple stories into one coherent story. We're basically getting five to six different stories with different backgrounds and genre in just one story. And despite the cast being small and there really being only one hero and heroine, due to the nature of the story, we're in fact getting a huge casts of characters. What's even more amazing is that these intertwine stories makes up the character's growth and development so we don't need to get into the nitty and griddy details of every character's life to be able to sympathize and empathize with them at a personal level.

Going into a little bit of the story content, I'd say Spirit Circle goes beyond your typical Reincarnation manga in that the story is told in a fashion where time is not linear. Sometimes, the future comes first and the past comes later. And reading the story, you can gradually and significantly feel the change in each character. The way you view them at the beginning is totally different by the time you finish the story. And this happens in a way that is least expected because you know the characters not through their present self but their past selves. It really gives the idea of how people are shape by their past and alter by their future.

One thing that I am particularly negative about when it comes to Spirit Circle is that it is told from a male perspective. In that it's probably a story mainly for a male rather than a female despite the content of the story. Don't get me wrong. Although Spirit Circle is told from a predominantly male point of view, it is definitely different from the mediocre and redundant Shounen manga that you see nowadays. It may not be a manga for everyone but it is a manga that's unlike any.

I'm no fan of short stories. Usually they fail to create a world deep enough to delve deep enough into to really enjoy yourself, or sympathise with it's heroes. So when I began the lecture of Spirit Circle I frankly wasn't expecting much, a typical "boy has inherited a chakram made of soul from his previous incarnation, meets a pretty girl that's bound to him by fate of vengeance, and they fall in love".

It is with great pleasure that I found out this work refused to throw another "villain that actually wants to be friends and is throwing a tantrum because is lonely" at us whenever it exhausts the plot, but rather consistently added more depth to the small cast of it's characters.

I'll debunk a likely misconception you might get: it is NOT an action manga. in fact, action is very scarce, and used only to empasize the relations between characters, and it treats mainly about mistakes that human is so prone to commit, the grudge they incur, and finally, forgiveness so that all can return to the natural state.

I'd like to make this review objective, if it's at all possible, so I'll stop singing praises now, but i sincerely encourage anyone who wants to read a manga leaving an impression of serenity, peace and... wow, this sounds dumb, but, enlightement, to give this manga a go. I gave it a try for the romance tag, and when it ended, I was actually sad that that's it, depite the fact I couldn't find a more fitting ending if I tried to. This work is bliss.

Spirit Circle was absolutely beautiful.

When I started reading this, I didn't really expect much. Before, I wasn't a big fan of the whole past lives thing but this one really got me. Following their experiences of each past life and seeing how each exploration causes the main characters to slowly change their views of each other was the best part. Each of the past life experiences made me feel like I was in a totally different world, but the end of each past life story would always bring me back to the main story and continue to add to my understanding of what was going on as well as the feels. The way the stories were presented, I felt like I could understand the characters thoughts and how each iteration of a past life would change them. I felt like I was growing with the characters and that's what makes this a 10/10 for me.

Good Points : The length of this series was perfect for the story it wanted to tell, and the ending was also very satisfying. Past life stories are done well and complement each other as well as the main plot.

What I Didn't Like : Pretty much nothing.

TLDR; Past lives done right. Worth the read.

There aren't many that I'd rate as a 10/10.
I'm not the type to rate that high for the big popular ones either.
This is super underrated!
It's sooo good!
It's violent, but not to the point where it's distracting, just enough for when you see it, it's used well to elicit emotion.
It has romance, but just enough for you to get the feels, not enough to bog down the story or turn off those who don't like romance.
It's tragic, but again, just enough for the feels, you get attached to the characters and root for them, hoping for the best and watching them grow.
It's never slow, but the pacing isn't fast to the point that you can't keep up.
I wish I could reread this again having never read it before, it's totally rereadable, but that joy and excitement that I felt the first read through is a rare treat.
This manga is a rare treat.
I'd honestly buy it to have irl, and I REALLY don't buy manga.
Now I have to read everything by this mangaka, he must have some genius for this wonderful treasure.

When I first read the description of this manga, I immediately thought of Kekkaishi, but that was not the case. This manga went far over my expectations. It was very amusing and interesting to see how the main protagonist live despite having all his past lives incorporated into him. It was also kind of cool to see the past lives of the main protagonist and the female antagonist fight against each other.

Satoshi Mizukami is a great storyteller with a clear vision of what he's creating. Maybe you're already familiar with his other works (like Samidare and Sengoku Youko) before you read Spirit Circle, so you probably noticed that already, but if that's not the case, you'll certainly like them and recognize this aspect. It's really cool when all the dots in the plot connects in a convincing way, because you can feel how everything presented was, to some degree, an important part of the overall structure of the story. You can tell that he has a goal in mind from the beginning and even likes to mess around with the reader and plainly tell what’s gonna to happen in the future.

Spirit Circle is not a complex story, but somehow you’ll feel that way. It’s about souls and reincarnation. It's about vengeance, but it's also about making up for past mistakes. There's a mixing of emotions in every arc, which goes from something very comic to something very dramatic. Mizukami can play something serious in a very silly way, which can be anti-climatic, but it can work better this way because of how it can break your expectation, and it’s supported with his skills of portraying emotions so good and with a lot of impact. Otherwise, it would be a more parodic manga without any weight. Mizukami knows how to handle both his comedic and emotion side very well and creates a very charming, comic and yet dramatic story. And that's how I felt for the most part of the story, except for the Fortuna's story arc, which is unfortunately the most anticipated and important one. It's really the Achilles' heel of the manga and show how the author's style can be a dual-edged sword. I didn't feel any of the dramatic curves because everything seemed more comic when they should be tragic.

That said, everything else still works great. The relationship between all the characters is something that it’s developed in a clever way, as everything is a result of a past interaction. What it’s being told is not just the past tales of Fuuta and Koko, the main characters, and their circle of mutual destruction, but how their relationship with everyone around them is being shaped with every interaction and choice.

Even though the last story arc is not a winner, the overall story is still great and can cover any flaws that it has near the end. Mizukami knows how to evoke a lot of emotions from his readers and his characters are very likeable. Spirit Circle is a epic journey of self-discovery, but also of forgiveness and friendship. It’s beautifully presented and, for the most part, well executed.

If you are looking for a journey through a time to another time,
If you are looking for a bittersweet story, a romcom, but not at all,
A wisdom like, loveable, then, I think you will be suited to read this manga.

The story will make you fresh for each arc that you have read, "When is this arc will come out?" "Who is this?" "Ah, so that what it is". Read it all and the after taste will be good in your mouth I think.

Childish but not too childish at the same time, it fit the story really good. Yes the art really fit this manga and there is no in between.

Each arc grow the character and give the reader feel "Ah, so this is what will be like if a person like that in the present time" even it's just a glimpse. Nah, overall the character development is good, even a slight romance growth really so sweet to see.

Like the second paragraph, the enjoyment I can get from this manga is repeatable and it's stacking and giving a really good feeling after reading it all.

*Insert the first paragraph again

A rather mature story that's trapped into a juvenile love story between two teenagers.

Characterization is solid. Every character serves their purpose.
Plot is about the main character travel in his past lives and every life is an entirely different arc. So it provides a way to have different kinds of narratives in a same story while it's not jarring. The manga artist managed to make almost every story (except the transsexual one which is fairly simple) emotional and memorable.

However the main storyline doesn't appeal to me a lot as it traps other pretty good individual stories into an abusive relationship between two middle schoolers. It feels like I was reading two different manga with those individual stories being the relatively mature shonen/seinen story while the main story being a shojo love story.
This contradiction is frequently a turnoff and makes it hard to enjoy the story fully.

Spirit Circle is a work that implements a complicated timeline but manages to tell it in an understandable, non-confusing way.

Now, mind that the start is kinda weaker and might even make you question why this has such a high score. It's not bad, but this manga certainly isn't great right off the bat. The art isn't exactly helping that, as it can appear to be somehow bland at the start. Thankfully, both the art and the story improve. Well, about the art it's more like you'll get used to the artstyle, but it still offers some great pages through the series.

Coming into this expecting another Phoenix might get you disappointed - even with all the reincarnation and deeper themes in its core it's still a highschool-y romance. And I'm not saying that as a bad thing, in fact it is a nice change of pace that such themes are combined with some degree of wholesomeness, albeit reserved. The narration style is enjoyable to read as it makes reader explored different pieces of the timeline together with the protagonist, getting to see how new plot points affect him too.

Where this really shines and where I got convinced to give this 8/10 instead of 7/10 is the final volume which ties everything together. It's not easy to explain without spoiling it, obviously, but the characterisation, the development of said characters and the whole story is done really well in this finale as everything clicks together. Yes, even that thing you might have thought has been forgotten. It's satisfactory enough to deserve that one up in the score. Definitely give this a try and try to continue even if you don't like it at first.