I don’t usually feel compelled to write a proper review of every volume of a given manga series. There are too many of them, to be honest, and I’m usually too lazy. I have to make an exception for Astral Project (CMX), written by marginal (Garon Tsuchiya, an Eisner winner for Old Boy) and illustrated by Syuji Takeya. For one thing, the series is only four volumes long, which is well within even my parameters for sloth. For another, it’s amazing and constantly surprising, right up to the finish.

To summarize, a young man’s sister commits suicide. He finds a CD of little-known jazz music among her belongings and takes it as a keepsake. When he plays it, his spirit leaves his body. When he leaves his body, he meets a motley crew of other astral travelers, finding companionship, suspicion, and the possibility of romance. As Masahiko tries to understand the circumstances of his sister’s death, he finds that Asami’s suicide was just a small part of a much larger mystery.

After reading the third volume, I had no idea how Tsuchiya was going to wrap things up with so many narrative elements in play – mysteries, conspiracies, secrets, complex relationships, and so on. He manages it with an unexpected display of economy. Everything that really needs to be explained is explained, though it never feels like it’s being explained, if that makes any sense.

So many plot threads in play could come cross as frantic, and that’s not always bad. I often find Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys (Viz) a little on the frantic side, and that’s one of the things I really like about the series. But Astral Project takes its cues from its spiritually adrift protagonists, floating from one thread to another, seeing what there is to be seen. (I should note that I don’t think Takeya is nearly as good an illustrator as Urasawa is, but the pages are never less than competent, and Takeya can hit some nice highs along the way.)

The potential for hubbub is also mitigated by the philosophizing, which ends up being refreshingly character-driven. The underlying theories that inform the work as articulated in this last volume are a little chilling, more than a little scathing, and unexpectedly hilarious. It’s all about real versus virtual life. Having witnessed one online platform clogged to dysfunction by people responding to a short-term failure of another online platform just yesterday, Tsuchiya’s conspiracy theories also seem unnervingly plausible.

But whether you agree with Tsuchiya or not, Astral Project is just a joy to read. It’s smart, rangy in its interests, funny, suspenseful, and even a little sweet when circumstances demand it be so. If your resistance to manga is rooted in its sometimes juvenile concerns and the daunting length of some highly regarded series, then I can’t recommend this book strongly enough.

The thing I like best about Astral Project (CMX) is that it’s only kind of about any of the things it’s purportedly about. The first two volumes introduced the mystery of the death of the protagonist’s sister, the protagonist’s newfound ability to leave his body behind to float above the city, the fellow astral travelers he meets there, and his budding romance with one of them. In the third volume, author marginal (also known as Garon Tsuchiya of Old Boy fame) sustains all of those elements while adding new ones in the form of deeply cynical conspiracy theories and, better still, deeply cynical conspiracies.

This addition might lead you to suspect that the series is building in momentum. I’m happy to report that Astral Project has maintained its feeling of apparent aimlessness. It’s one of the least aggressive stories I’ve read, particularly in the suspense genre. It’s more absorbing than arresting, and the pleasure of it is in seeing marginal drop a new bit of absurdity or outrage without really raising the narrative’s volume. That’s an awfully neat trick.

Though we learn a bit more about the characters, they still aren’t especially sympathetic. Mashiko, the lead, is still no closer to figuring out the cause of his sister’s death. His romance with another young traveler garners investment without that visceral feeling of wanting them to be happy together so much as the vague sense that it would be nice if they could be less unhappy. And while astral travel may have been the story’s trigger, it’s telling and a little perverse that Mashiko’s most trusted astral advisers encourage him to give it up to focus on his equally aimless earthbound existence.

Writing about Astral Project is strange. The things I want to praise about it – its ambling storytelling, increasingly bleak world view, and generally flat emotional affect – aren’t things I’d automatically consider praise-worthy. They cohere into something very intriguing here, though, and I’d really recommend this odd, offbeat series.