The Girl from the Other Side: Siuil, A Run Vol. 6 by NAGABE

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Other creators involved in the making of this manga include: Translating by Adrienne Beck and Lettering by Lys Blakeslee

Content/Trigger Warnings: Death/loss of a loved one, grief, talk of mass murder/democide,talk of abandonment, impalement, possible torture

“We are all capable of searching for and finding souls…but we are not quite sure how to go about getting them back.”

We dive back into the dark and divided world of The Inside and The Outside. We last saw our two main characters going through a lot of emotional and internal struggles. Near the end, Shiva and Teacher have finally stopped their argument to final start discussing about leaving the cottage. We last saw Teacher encounter some strange soldiers that caused great worry and now it seems our two heroes must now find safety in another location. Will the soldiers end up tracking them down? Will we receive more details that surround the history of Shiva or Teacher? And will Teacher finally say “to hell with this” and finally make physical contact with Shiva? Step inside, for some tea is about to get poured in this Volume Six review!

Divided Land
🌻The Inside – Where all the humans, like you and me, ruled by the King and the Church, patrolled by armed forces
🌻The Outside – Where the Cursed Ones exist, abandoned villages, also where Teacher and Shiva exist

Factions
🌻Humans/Mortals – Like you and me, live on the Inside
🌻Cursed Ones – Beast like creatures, plagued with The Curse, feared by mortals, roam the Outside
🌻The God of Light – Creator of happiness and peace
🌻The God of Darkness – Trickster, plays pranks on the God of Light, steals away happiness, cause of The Curse

Characters
🌻Teacher – Main character, horned Cursed Child, guardian of Shiva, either a scholar or doctor when mortal
🌻Shiva – Main character, child of Light, protected by the most holy, innocent, companion to Teacher
🌻Father or Head Priest of the Church – Orders for constant capture of Shiva, believer of the “prophecy”, orders soldiers to cause democide, aid of his royal majesty
🌻Mother – Intentions unknown, creator of the Black Children
🌻The Black Children – Created by “Mother”, similar to Teacher, wish to obtain Shiva’s soul

“Souls are the very essence of our hearts. It can also be said that they are our emotions.”

Volume six takes place directly after Teacher and Shiva leave the cottage to find their new home. Things have returned to normal, Teacher and Shiva set out to find this new and mysterious home Shiva’s Aunt has told her about. However, we still have these strange soldiers lurking around and danger seems to be lurking around every corner for our two heroes. And of course, it only takes for one thing to go wrong before a snowball effect soon starts taking place.

I say this all the time since starting this series, I love it to pieces. I really do love this with all my heart. This series has definitely made it into my top five manga. And if you haven’t picked this series up yet, then what are you waiting for?! NAGABE brings to life such a unique world that laces history and dark fantasy together to beautifully. Plus, the play of light and dark for the illustrations in this book will set an unforgettable mood. And you better believe I have a playlist in the works!

My Thoughts

What’s interesting about volume six, we no longer get just one panel of the Church from the Inside. We end up with a nine page panel showing us His Majesty and The Holy Father of the Church. These are both the wild cards in this series and I’m loving the dark, ominous vibes that keep coming from them every time we get these glimpses. We don’t know anything about them, what their plans are, all we’re given are these little bread crumbs of; His Majesty seems to be falling ill or being consumed by exhaustion, The Holy Father is basically running the whole army of soldiers, there’s some really dark, shady things happening that no one outside of the Church knows about, and they want to capture Shiva and sacrifice her to obtain her soul. Other than this, we have no idea what the full intentions of the Church truly are. All we know for certain is the Church isn’t as innocent as they’re pretending to be.

On another note, I’m loving the escalation of the relationship between Shiva and Teacher. Their dynamic mirrors a similar dynamic between the characters of The Ancient Magus Bride, but there are some differences. I love it though! Teacher and Shiva haven’t had it easy and they’ve both been fighting a lot of eternal struggles as well. But they’ve reached a point where they’re slowly starting to truly communicate and express their feelings with one another. It’s very obvious that they care about on another deeply, but it’s nice to see them trying to navigate expressing their emotions and thoughts better. Not to mention, the extreme amount of tension Teacher has for wanting to physically comfort Shiva by wanting to hug her nearly broke my heart. I can understand why he doesn’t want to do, but also why he wants to do it so badly. And it just breaks your soul because it’s the purest thing (aside from him loving her enough to protect Shiva from literally everything) Teacher has shown us and it’s horribly painful to watch him struggle. Bouncing off of that, vice versa! Shiva desperately wants to hold Teacher’s hand and give him hugs, but Teacher constantly turns her away or rejects that. It causes her pain just as much as it causes him pain and it’s the most purest thing in this entire series, you will feel like your heart is being crushed!

Also, I haven’t talked about it in my volume five review, but I do want to mention it here as well. Those “special” soldiers are also another wild card. We don’t know how many of them there are, all we truly know is they still work for the Church from the Inside and two of them fought Teacher. That’s about all we know, other than the obvious (them wanting to capture Shiva to take her soul). These guys are insanely persistent and they’re on a whole other level that I wasn’t anticipating seeing in this series. So, we also see a little more of them in this book and just how far they’re willing to go to track down our main characters. I’ll admit, their tactics put me on edge and even made me cringe a little bit.

I also really enjoyed how we received little more bread crumbs about Teacher’s past in this book. I feel like the last two volumes, all we got was background information about Shiva and a little background on her Auntie, but I’m so glad that we finally got a book that gave us some more detail about Teacher. I have been waiting for more details and I’m so glad that the journal and pocket watch are coming into play especially since it’s giving us little bread crumbs about his past. I knew those two pieces held significance, but I was completely blown out of the water the details each item was holding. I wasn’t ready and I definitely don’t think anyone else is going to be ready for these major details either.

“There must be a clue of some sort here. We’re going to find that clue…and then…We’re going to capture the creature.”

And as always, I have to applaud NAGABE for delivering a frightening, chilling, and highly climactic ending. This author has cliff hangers for days because all I want right now is to have the next volume in my hands to know exactly what will happen next. As I said before, all it takes is for one thing to go astray before a whole snowball effect takes place and oh my, did NAGABE deliver on that snowball! I’m not ready, I don’t think other readers are ready, this ending was a brain ninja assaulting the mind with grenades of despair and anticipation. So if you just picked up this volume, get ready for it because it’ll leave you shell shocked.

Overall, this series is fantastic and so addictive. I truly say this all the time, but I love it so much. If you’re a fan of The Ancient Magus Bride or even Wicked Saints, this is definitely a manga series you want to pick up. I’m highly anticipating volume seven to deliver more details, action, and just everything I’ve been loving in this series to appear once again. And as I said before, this has made it’s way into my top five manga series that I have come to love, but this one has completely taken me by storm. It’s just a really amazing series and if you have been thinking about picking this series up, just do it! You won’t regret it and I have no doubts that you’ll become addicted to this dark fantasy!

Side Note

The cover for the seventh volume in this incredible series has finally been revealed! It’s absolutely stunning and I’m obsessed with the cover! The seventh volume releases August 27th, 2019 and if you’re a fan of this series or if you just became addicted to it, please make sure you pre-order your copy of volume seven and support this very talented author!