If you go into Red Colored Elegy expecting an easy, comfortable read, you very well may be disappointed.If you open your eyes up to the sparse beauty and emotional forms that simple lines on paper can convey, you can read through this book in an hour and feel changed forever.Red Colored Elegy isn't for everyone -- its an artsy, underground manga that abruptly begins and ends with lots of hills and valleys in-between. The two main characters are very much in love, yet bound together through a sense of apathy and wanting for something more that they can't quite express. Instead, Seiici Hayashi does it for them -- bringing their inner turmoil out through pages that (sometimes) literally leap from the book. His style is so unique, you'll want to read it again and again just to try to understand the authors innermost feelings more so than the characters; and that's something that you can't say about all manga.No, this book isn't for everyone. But it is a beautiful, abrupt work that has the ability to deeply move you if you let it. I suggest reading through it as fast as possible, and then going back and studying each panel to appreciate the lines and manga conventions that Hayashi carefully dismantled and put back together again.Give it a chance. If nothing else, it'll give you a nice juxtaposition between Tezuka's classic works and the factory-farmed mangas of today. No offense to either (I enjoy them both), but Red Colored Elegy is an incredible product of its time.