This is probably the first manga I have ever read that actually uses sequential art to its inherent advantage to the point that it may be impossible to translate faithfully to any other medium*. Most mangas, either by uncreativity, too much serialization, its close connection to anime or light novels-- SOMETHING-- are held back a bit and rarely use the same techniques that top-tier Western comic books have mastered over the years. Qualia the Purple, though? It gets it.

This manga makes heavy utilization of things like image repetition, panel layout order, and nonlinearity, the sort of stuff only sequential art can pull off, all to tell a fast-paced huge-scope story, and it just plain works.

That may be out of necessity though that it does all of this-- Qualia the Purple is telling a MASSIVE story here, and has only 18 chapters to go from beginning to end! The first six chapters (the first volume) are a bit decompressed, giving us the characters and their interesting predicaments-- Manabu, the everygirl tomboy falling in love with her classmate; Yukari, a girl who sees all living things as machines; and Namani, the aloof and bitter former friend. These first six chapters may seem slow, but once the second volume kicks in, things rocket foward.

And that's where the manga stops being an interesting concept and becomes something truly special. It's seriously impossible to elaborate on what makes this story so good without major spoilers, and even if I were to spoil it, it wouldn't make much sense anyway.

Just know that even when this story is a mere 3 volumes long, the plot, the characters, the themes are expansive to the point that it could not possibly be adapted into a series without being something like 26 episodes long. The main problem with the story itself is definitely that it feels rushed, and yet it's only rushed in a couple minor, fleeting places; for the most part you'll feel like every single moment has exactly as much impact as it needs to. It was either 18 blazing-fast chapters or 250 pages turning this into a shounen slog; I'm glad they chose the former, for sure.

Jump into this series. Try it out. Wait-- don't just try it. Read the whole darn thing because it takes like three hours to go through it all. You will not regret it.

*Even though the comic is so steeped in visual and sequential storytelling, this was actually based on a novel! I have no clue how that novel was written and I can't imagine it was half as good unless it was much, much longer.