Content warnings for physical abuse, attempted suicide, and stalking/harassment.

Rika injured herself a while back and took some time off the track team as a result. She's now in her third and final year of high school and, although she's technically all healed up, she's left the track team and keeps resisting the pleas of her former coach and teammates to rejoin. What one of her former teammates doesn't realize is that her new boyfriend used to be Rika's boyfriend - he dumped Rika not too long ago.

Rika feels depressed and disconnected from her school life but is intrigued when someone in an anonymous school chat room suggests blowing up the school (why this isn't an immediate red flag for school officials, I don't know - I find it difficult to believe that a school chat room wouldn't have some form of monitoring in place). Following some clues, she eventually ends up meeting and getting to know several people from the chat in real life.

I recall Setona Mizushiro's After School Nightmare being an interesting series, albeit not really one I enjoyed (although, looking back, my reviews say otherwise, huh). It was a little too dark and unsettling for my tastes, and the character relationships made my skin crawl.

So far, X-Day seems to be a bit more straightforward. Rika, who goes by the name "11" in the chatroom, appears to be an accomplished student with no reason to hate school, but in reality she feels like her former track teammate is taking everything from her. She desperately wants to stop feeling anything about track team and her ex-boyfriend. The various visitors to the Ursa Minor chatroom, controlled by a girl who uses the name "Polaris," also have things in their lives that are stressing them out and depressing them and have decided that blowing up the school (at night, when no one is around to get hurt) will somehow help.

Part of my problem with this series is that the characters' motivations seem so weak. Okay, so they're all having problems for one reason or another. However, only one or two of them are having problems that are directly linked to being at school (and whether blowing up the building would actually fix their problems is a whole other issue...). The rest of them just seem to be going along with the idea for some reason. Is it the social aspect? They all finally found someone they could talk to and be their true selves with, and since one or two of them want to blow up the school, they all decided to go along with it? I don't know. I suppose I could sort of understand it if the whole chatroom group were composed of teens, but one of the members is a teacher. It boggles my mind that he got involved in this too, even considering his situation.

Well, one more volume to go. Will they actually manage to blow up the school, or will they get found out before they do anything too drastic? Will Rika's actions drive a wedge into the group? Will that one teacher manage to get a job someplace else or will his obsessed stalker push him over the edge? I guess I'll find out soon.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

3 troubled students and a teacher meet in a chat room, and are brought together by their mutual desire to destroy their school. The story is centered around their meetings, in which they plan out how they will create a bomb, but in truth this manga (and for the characters, these meetings) are more about the participants learning more about what is troubling the others, and being able to come together and find solace in those with similar struggles. The artwork isn't anything memorable, but it works and isn't too generic. The mood is generally dark and oppressive, with the occasional lighter parts. However, it mostly stays away from getting over the top melodramatic and angsty.

Not one for high school angsting, but I try to read things outside my direct interests, as you never know when you might find something that transcends it's category or genre. Plus, I just like to get something a little different from all the fantastic, supernatural stories, maybe something a little more human. For me, X-Day was a decent helping of the latter, but it wasn't anything profound enough to actually make me keep reading more. There was something missing here that kept it from really drawing me in, for some reason. Maybe it was the way the characters were likable, but we barely get to know them outside their desire to blow up the school, and the problems that lead to it. Not to say we necissarily need all the intimate details of their lives and interests, but the narrow view of them I think flattened them out somewhat for me. Maybe it was that though these sorts of problems are real, and I'm sure they might drive some students toward a desire to destroy, I couldn't really see here how, for these particular students, the jump from mere depression and desperation was made.

In the end, it's a pretty decent if slightly shallow exploration of the kinds of things that might bring teenagers or others down in their lives, but nothing deep or profound enough to serve as more than an acceptable change of pace in my manga reading. For those feeling similar to these characters, or for those who have before, I think one very well may, like the characters, find something comforting about being with these people and hearing their problems. Not to say all my high school career was filled with rays of sunshine, but I'm not the other extreme, either. And to me, a really great manga can bring those who do not relate into its world, help them understand it, as well as help them see bits of their own. Superficially I see similarities, but I'm not really connecting. If this sort of thing IS your cup of tea, though, I think you could do a lot worse. I may have even read on if I had easy access to the rest of the series, only now that I know it's only two volumes, I highly doubt it will be able to flesh itself out properly or even keep the pacing and quality on par with the first and still wrap it all up in that time (and some reviews seem to confirm this assumption), so I think I'll pass. ( )