I've just finished reading Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria, and I'm still in shock, this is most likely the greatest thing that I've ever read. There's hardly anything mainstream about this light novel; it's full of settings and situations that I've never encountered before in any other manga or novel.

Story

The story is truly captivating, there were so many times when I just burst out laughing because of the author's twists and totally absurd ideas that I wouldn't have imagined happening. It's the uniqueness of the story that really made me fall for it. I absolutely was not expecting such a well planned and beautifully executed storyline. Once you get into it, you will think, 'wow, this author is a genius'; and it's no wonder HakoMari is such a highly rated novel. You will cry (if you have a soul), and your jaw will drop. As the synopsis for HakoMari suggests, the story has to do with time repeating itself. What if you were stuck in a loop, and the same day just kept repeating itself thousands of times, and you and one other person are the only ones to keep their memory after each reset? There would be an immense bond shared between those two people. What if you had to endure 400,000 repeating days alone and in absolute solitude, and had gone mad after the first couple of centuries? Oops, I've said too much. This novel isn't a plain love story as one might think, it's got plenty of blood and guts as well.

Art

I won't comment too much on the art, because there wasn't much of it. The art that we did receive was great, though. It gave me a basis for my mental images of Maria, Kazuki, Daiya, and the others. Maria is drawn as beautifully as she is described.

Characters

The characters were fleshed out so well that I'm sincerely going to miss them in my everyday life. Speaking of everyday life, this is our main character, Kazuki Hoshino's obsession. We're shown that this man will do anything to protect his everyday life. It's a bit silly, why would someone go so far to protect their everyday life? What even is this, "everyday life"? Well, it's probably not what you're thinking it is. We eventually find out that there's much more to it than that. We find out that it's definitely not an exaggeration to say that Kazuki will do anything to protect the person most dear to him. I still get chills when recalling what he endured to be with the one he loves.

The other main character, Maria, is so perfectly fleshed out that I don't need any drawings to picture her appearance, thought process, and personality. I probably fell in love with this character who only exists in written words. When she was in tears, I was in tears, when she was happy, I was smiling.

Every single character got a lot of attention, one could even grow attached to the side-characters. There were no useless
characters. No one was there simply to fill up space, and every character had a purpose and personality.

Enjoyment

Needless to say, I was extremely sad when I finished HakoMari. That's not to say that the ending wasn't satisfying, though. I just didn't want something so interesting to end. I'm not sure how the author was able to have such a "random" story, but have everything make such perfect sense at the same time. I've never read anything like it, and I won't forget about this light novel for some time.