So--So Sunday: Curve (manga)

Curve
Written and Illustrated by Noriko Tsubota
Trans. by Allen Laney, and The Knights of the Eastern Calculus
Publisher: DMG
Rating: T

The art is nice.
I have no idea why Curve is the title...
it has absolutely nothing to do with the manga.

I feel bad about submitting this as a So-So Sunday post, but Curve really is just so-so. The artwork is beautiful, the translator seems to have done a great job (well-written), but...it's almost like the story isn't all there.

Tatsu works at at detective agency during the day and an art gallery at night, but he gets thrown for a loop when his two jobs collide and he ends up working for a sculptor. This manga has a lot of stuff: angry dads, jilted women, mistaken identity, cons, rich people, espionage...Hooray!

There's also a Ghost-esque clay throwing fantasy (which I highly disapprove of). 

You'd become a jug, or a vase, or a bowl, most likely. 

Oh, and neither one knows they are in lurve.

I tease, but in a lot of ways this story, despite the ridiculous mistaken identity trope, is pretty simple, and doesn't have a single scene that feels squee-worthy. It isn't the art or the translation that makes this so-so...it's the story itself. The plot is weird. There are some early hints about the main character's dark past that never resurface at all. There seems to be little motivation for some reactions, like the main character running away to America. All in all...I'm left wondering why characters are behaving the way they're behaving, and not in an interesting way.