Oh Sekai... Sekai Sekai Sekai. This is a fairly niche light novel series. Like everything Ive reviewed so far whilst Nisioisin is a popular author for sure this mystery series is usually overshadowed by most of everything else hes written like Monogatari Zaregoto Medaka Box Katanagatari and even Boukyaku Tantei. It actually reminds me a TON of Zaregoto v1 in particular. From the long witty banter between two characters to the nonsensical plot twists that really test your suspension your disbelief theres even similar character archetypes. To me personally. However the key difference between this book and Zaregoto is that it is much more grounded in reality. The school setting allows for a decidedly different feel from Zaregoto that lets Sekai stand on its own. The book is also extremely self referential but not in a fourth wall breaking sense as much as it is commentary about mystery novels and media consumption in general some people dont like this kinda thing but I absolutely love it. Besides that this book is about fucked up toxic relationships and a love triangle between Samatoki his sister and his school mate. Samatoki gets accused of being a siscon constantly because of his attachment to his sister Samatokis school mate Kotohara goes to extreme measures for her crush on Samatoki and his friend Hakohiko goes to extreme measures to help both of them. Which eventually leads into an insane climax. This book actually starts out quite slow with most of the over 120 page first chapter spent on conversations between the characters a confession of love and just establishing the setting fairly normal stuff this isnt to say the book gets good after that because I was very engaged from the beginning but it is a slow burn... until someone gets murdered that is. Kuroneko and Samatoki are the ones teaming up to solve the mystery and theres also an entire subplot about Samatoki and his... close relationship with his sister. Kuroneko is one of the coolest characters Nisio has ever made and according to Nisio himself she seems to be his favorite character of his. Kuroneko is an outcast who is the victim of a ton of rumors due to a bombshell related to her that I will not spoil. But shes actually extremely talkative to the point of having extremely long rambles that arent even divided into paragraphs. Shes also obsessed with solving mysteries to the point where shed rather die than leave something unsolved. Samatoki does a fine enough job as the protagonist and has great dialogue but I dont find him too interesting overall. I do really like Yorutsuki though she is this shy highly intelligent bookworm girl who speaks in first person and honestly reminds me a lot of Kunagisa. While Im talking about Yorutsuki I might as well mention that I dont really mind all the references to incest in this book that much it makes sense for the theming here I did get a bit uncomfortable at a certain scene late in the novel that feels reminiscent of the kinda thing in Nisemonogatari. So if that bothers you keep that in mind I suppose. Besides that Kotohara is okay and I like Hakohiko the Kendo club leader quite a bit. To be honest a big reason I procrastinated on this review so long is because it was the one I was the least interested in reviewing despite being the one I needed to review first so I could review the others. Codifying my feelings into a review of this and the entire series for that matter that also doesnt spoil too much about it is quite the challenge. I initially wrote a review of all 4 books in one but I was absolutely not satisfied with how it turned out the lesson I learned is dont do that because thats biting off way more than you can chew just split them up. Its not to say Im not passionate about the book enough to be motivated to review it its moreso theres already a review out there that does a much better job than I ever could. Needless to say this entire end section purely exists to shill that review by Jared E. Jellson JellyJar of the orient express. It is incredibly long and very in depth but what Ive read of it so far has been extremely great. However that review is made as a deep dive for people who have already read Sekai 1 whereas this one is a more casual look at it aiming to get people interested in reading so I hope I was able to do that The review in question: https://blog.psychopopular.com/literature/oursekaibreakdown