The Spring 2025 Manga Guide

23:45

What's It About? 

New Tokyoite and college freshman Iku is living the otaku dream—except for the fact that he can now see ghosts. One day, he bumps into Mimori, a super friendly spirit that haunts a local bridge, and reluctantly lets the lonely specter into his home. But every night at 23:45, Mimori is drawn back to the bridge and forced to replay his downfall. Will Mimori be stuck in this loop forever, or can Iku find a way to save him from an eternity of unending tragedy?

23:45 has a story and art by Ohana, with English translation by Mei Amaki. Published by Vertical (March 11, 2025). Rated 16+.

Content warning: Suicide

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Is It Worth Reading?

Dee
Rating:

23:45 blends rounded characters, grounded romance, a touch of supernatural mystery, and exquisite artistry to form a BL one-shot that's full of emotional heart and thematic depth. Also, it made me cry—big, gooey, happy tears. And if you can get me to full-on cry in a single volume, you get five stars. Them's the rules.

Iku and Mimori are an intriguing pair, and half the suspense and joy of this manga comes from teasing out the histories and emotions they don't want to admit, even to themselves. 23:45 allows its characters to have messy, complex feelings about the messy, complex business of life and death, while still believing that most people are basically good and trying their best. We see people at their lowest, but that lowest is about despair and self-harm rather than cruelty. It's a kind manga without being bland, which is not an easy balance to strike.

As our co-protagonists sort through their feelings and past traumas, the story grapples with some tangly ideas about what it means to be a good person and whether it's possible to live without hurting others. The ghost story is mostly metaphor (like all the best ghost stories), so readers looking for paranormal lore may want to look elsewhere. But as a character study, emotional romance, and musing on the risks and rewards of human kindness and connection, wow, it really shines. In a story so focused on memory and introspection, art is essential for setting the atmosphere, and 23:45 is exceedingly well-staged. The character and background designs are simple, clean, and attractive. However, where the manga really stands out is in its use of paneling and spacing to control the pace and set the mood.

Vibrant dialogue and expressions clutter social scenes; blank spaces convey silence or isolation in melancholy moments; sharp angled panels express tension; and throughout, the manga uses small, overlaid panels to establish the setting while also zooming in on character actions and expressions. The art masterfully conveys when to read quickly and when to slow down, encouraging the reader to sink into Iku and Mimori's world and feel their emotions with them.

There's artistry in both the writing and the drawing, with a clear distinction between the more naturalistic dialogue and the more poetic, meditative internal thoughts. I want to give translator Mei Amaki a special shoutout for some gorgeous work here. It's a good thing the manga's pacing encouraged me to bask in the script, because phrases like “churning with chagrin” and “itching to outrace my mouth” fully require a good basking.

Simply put, I loved this manga. Content warnings for (implied) attempted suicide, but beyond that, big recs for anyone in the mood for a strong character drama and bittersweet-yet-hopeful love story. This one's a treasure.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Both time travel romances and ghost romances have something of a beautiful impossibility about them. Stories in those genres need to capture the fear that things won't work out for the couple while still allowing us to hold on to hope that they will. 23:45 absolutely pulls that off in its quietly lovely volume, delicately balancing hope and despair before ultimately guiding us to a cathartic ending.

The story is primarily a ghost story, or rather, a ghost love story. Iku's sudden realization that he can see ghosts – or rather, a ghost – upon moving to Tokyo is what brings him to Mimori, the ghost in question. Mimori is always standing on the same pedestrian bridge, and despite Iku's attempts to ignore him, he discovers that he can both see and touch the spirit. As their relationship develops, it becomes clear that the two young men met because they needed each other: both were stuck in a loop, with Mimori's rather more literal: the book takes its title from the fact that each night at 23:45, he returns and acts out the events that landed him in a spectral state in the first place.

But Iku is suffering from an emotional loop, one brought about by guilt over something that he really isn't to blame for. Their interactions with others trap both him and Mimori and how those tie them to their pasts. Mimori may be constantly reliving one specific moment in the physical (or maybe metaphysical) sense, but Iku's brain is a closed circuit, constantly reminding him of the one moment he feels he screwed up. It's only through getting to know each other that they're able to move on, to get past the witching hour that is 23:45. It's subtly done – we see Mimori beginning to find interest in things off the footbridge while Iku slowly begins to open up to the people around him, letting his coworkers engage with him. Both of them have to realize that they aren't inherently bad people, and the way the story conveys this without telling is one of its greatest strengths.

Emotional and endearing, 23:45 is a beautiful story. It succeeds as both a romance and a ghost story, gently engaging with what it means to be stuck and how there's always hope that moving forward is possible.

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Lauren Orsini
Rating:

Enjoying 23:45 requires a level of turning your brain off and accepting several far-fetched premises. It's a generally normal world, but regular student Iku can see ghosts for some reason. Equally strange, he recently met a ghost named Mimori who he can't only see, but touch. It's all a set-up for BL reasons, but is it worth it? The story of two college-age boys who bond over manga and a mutual goal to determine what befell Mimori last year, it doesn't have the romantic chemistry or dramatic tension required to convince me to go along with its science fiction plot.

Despite his power, Iku is an ordinary student meant to be the reader avatar. His main characteristic is that he likes manga, just like the reader presumably does. Unfortunately, the handsome ghost who has started haunting him is also an ordinary student who likes to read manga. There's not a lot of allure or mystery when it comes to two ordinary guys bonding over manga, even if one of them happens to be spectral. Unlike me, however, Iku is entranced by Mimori and determined to figure out what happens to him every night at 11:45 PM when he seemingly relives the moment of his alleged death. The truth is a lot more complicated, though not necessarily that interesting. But to get to the bottom of it, our normally reserved protagonist finds himself outside of his comfort zone, talking to strangers and attempting to connect the dots. These brief moments of character growth are the most interesting part of the story, more so than the lukewarm snuggle sessions.

There's nothing at fault with this story's pretty line art or its vanilla story about falling for a boy and figuring out how to save him, but the heavy subject makes it a somber read. Despite B-plots about Iku's estranged mom and Mimori's mercurial ex-girlfriend, I never resonated with either of its romantic leads. I didn't find it to be very memorable, but if you're a fan of bittersweet love stories with happy endings, you might want to check this out.