From the preview I thought this was going to be awesome. I was wrong. This is on the level of epic.

The same with pool #1990. Touhou characters becoming children is a cliché'ed moe-centered topic but Mori no Hon managed a story that is funny, cute, heart-warming and badass all in one.

What I feel Mori no Hon really did a good job in is that Hourai was shown to be mentally immature from the start despite seemingly capable of acting normal and thinking straight. And as she claims several times during Eins, she wants to be the special one for Alice and shows hostility towards anything Alice seems to care for. I thought those and several other issues I noticed in Eins and Zwei might be foreshadowing some hardship for Hourai in the form of painful realization, but I didn't count on it because I never saw Mori no Hon deal with anything heart-breaking. I definitely didn't even imagine things to come to this bad. The way he built up things all the way till now is just amazing. I'm really glad I started paying attention to him as soon as I saw his comic. Yet another kudos for Mori no Hon.

That face is going to give me nightmares. Hope things get resolved happily in the next release. Hourai needs a hug.

Lick King said:
Hourai needs a hug.

And Shanghai better deliver lots of them.
( ^_^)b

Man that expression of absolute despair in the last panel is heartbreaking.

i cried ;_;

poor Hourai....

I'm still unsure about ”成ってくれたんじゃなかったの” on the 1st panel -> box. I could be dead wrong, but is this related to "being made unique/special"? Since she's one of the two dolls that Alice named?

More-emo Hon, LOL.

@Natural-log: I'm trying to decipher it in Korean (as I said before it's very similar to Japanese), but it still doesn't much sense, both grammatically and the context. I'll have to wait for a Korean scanlation in a website I use and see if they have better ideas.

styles_miner said:
More-emo Hon, LOL.

Actually, you've hit the mark correctly. Hourai is despairing over something pretty trivial which, if the strongly emotional depiction of this is ignored, is actually quite silly. And that's the point, Hourai's mind doesn't work the same way. She came into existence with the sole drive for making Alice happy and now that gets denied in the face by Alice herself. I feel the emotional depiction kind of masked that point, but it also made it possible for the sense of seriousness to be conveyed properly, so I guess it made up for it.

this is why i am an advocate of Emmerson(?)'s "solitude is the best company." this world hurts too much.

Holy- I'm weeping.

Lick_King said:

From the preview I thought this was going to be awesome. I was wrong. This is on the level of epic.

The same with pool #1990. Touhou characters becoming children is a cliché'ed moe-centered topic but Mori no Hon managed a story that is funny, cute, heart-warming and badass all in one.

What I feel Mori no Hon really did a good job in is that Hourai was shown to be mentally immature from the start despite seemingly capable of acting normal and thinking straight. And as she claims several times during Eins, she wants to be the special one for Alice and shows hostility towards anything Alice seems to care for. I thought those and several other issues I noticed in Eins and Zwei might be foreshadowing some hardship for Hourai in the form of painful realization, but I didn't count on it because I never saw Mori no Hon deal with anything heart-breaking. I definitely didn't even imagine things to come to this bad. The way he built up things all the way till now is just amazing. I'm really glad I started paying attention to him as soon as I saw his comic. Yet another kudos for Mori no Hon.

That face is going to give me nightmares. Hope things get resolved happily in the next release. Hourai needs a hug.

After getting caught up in the emotions from all the other comments, thank you for unpacking that Hourai is actually being quite immature and has a lot of growing to do.