“Crime equates to poison, and once you have poison on your hands, no one will reach for them.”

• Chapter 3

i tell c was a series that had the writing on the wall for the latter half of its run. It took a while to get on its feet and this was its death sentence. When the core premise is ‘woman falls in love with criminals’ you need to work fast to establish confidence in the reader while walking a very tricky line. Especially when it comes to the potential romanticisation of kidnap, assault, stalking, and murder.

Outside of the issues that arise from i tell c’s premise, one of the other difficult elements to overcome was the repetition. One of the most notable instances was the motif of poison which would appear a lot in the early chapters. There needs to be a little bit more faith that the reader understands your intentions because it began to feel more like a miniature lecture. The other is that all of the cases taken followed a similar pattern that i tell c struggled to break away from and meant that there was a lack of stand-out moments that would make a reader want to continue.

Some of the characters were interesting and set the foundation for growth, but many more felt a little lacklustre. The supposed main villain added a bit of danger to the plot but was only around for a few chapters before disappearing so it was difficult to really establish him. This is especially true since he has already had a big impact on the character’s lives.

The character designs, however, were really interesting. Some were pretty creepy while others were absolutely ridiculous… I mean one character’s mohawk was so tall that it never fit in the panel; regardless of the angle (which was really good, I promise). This disparity in design does highlight another one of i tell c’s flaws. It doesn’t quite mix the more slapstick moments with the darker themes. I admire Inaoka’s attempt as it is something difficult to do and, especially in the later chapters, they seemed to be growing in confidence.

The art itself is able to move between a wide variety of moods and this flexibility will definitely leave Inaoka’s options open for any future works. Hopefully, they will be given another chance as the potential beginning to appear in i tell c shows that there could be a promising future for them.

It is a shame that they weren’t given a little more time to wrap up the loose ends of i tell c though as a couple of the plot threads were interesting and they could have it be a bit more satisfying. But there isn’t much that can be done about this.

Overall, i tell c was a series that took too long to establish its potential while dealing with concepts that could quickly turn its readers away. I hope that those who worked on it are able to move on to new series because there was definitely potential that could be improved upon.