It was only after the last page posted a couple days ago that I realized the phrase which sprang to mind for a title was less likely a Werwolfe original (despite the apt illustration bringing it to mind) rather than encountered as the title of a webcomic I read a year or three ago. Favoring it with a quick re-read reinforces the naivete which relegated it to my less frequently accessed memory banks, but also the honest charm which prevented it from being wiped completely.
On the plus side Beneath the Clouds feeds you a pretty constant stream of references to Heian-period Japan (fake eyebrows: hot or not?) (Not.) filling but not glutting you with place and occupation names and the like. Also, ghosts are real. Sure, fine. And the art style, albeit nothing too ambitious, does a nice impression of old-timey Japaneeziness.
On the minus, the plot's construction carries a hopelessly artificial feel lifted from any introductory creative writing course. You can practically hear the various building blocks like "introduction" and "foreshadowing" and "twist" clattering against each other with every new stage of the heroine's journey. Characters fare little better, with a stock love interest and his counterpart decoy popping up like cardboard cut-outs right on cue, with an equally bland garnish of generic girl power, etc. Worse yet, the author makes no effort to portray social interactions in traditional societies. When dialogues manage not to sound like disinterested summaries of an actual conversation, they sound instead like middle-school cliques sniping at each other.
Still, I can't help but like these sorts of unsophisticated but honest efforts, at least when they stick to an interesting core theme. Classism and envy in centralizing, pre-samurai Japan qualified as quaint enough for at least the title to stick in my sulci.
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