PLOT, SETTING & CHARACTERS
Soloist in A Cage is unfortunately a very unknown manga that deserves much more love and praise.
I discovered it by chance from a small youtube channel, who often recommends unknown manga; mostly horror manga, but also some others.
I just wished it was longer since I felt it has been finished too fast, although the pacing is alright and the ending is really touching.
The setting of this manga is Prison City, a very bleak underground world, where criminals get deported into. Most people, who are eventually forced to live there, didn't commit serious crimes, and they lived in the underground city for so long, they got children on their own.
The manga shows that most of these people aren't bad by nature, but the environment they live in makes them apathic and hardened. There is all kind of cruelty down there, but we also see support and love for one another.
One night the protagonist Chloe, a young girl back then, tries to escape with her little brother, but loses him on the way out.
Chloe herself is the most important element in this manga to me. She's very caring towards others and overall a kind and even quite mild-mannered girl.
But she also goes great lengths to get her little brother back, including murdering on the battlefield of enemies standing in her way and is ruthless in battles. How the manga portrays Chloe slowly losing her humanity and struggles in a visual, symbolic way, is very heart-wrenching, but also visually beautiful to look at.
I let you see for yourself how this ends and if she loses herself in the blodshed on the battlefield and can tell I loved her a lot as a main character, because there is this humanity to her and she reacts so human and believable to the events around her.
It's quite amazing how much development she got in just 20 chapters.
ART STYLE
The art itself is absolutely gorgous. It's easily in my top 10 art styles I've seen there in any manga and sometimes you would just stop and take some time to take in its beauty and impression it has on you. It's emotionally touching and I just love to look at these pages for the art itself as well.
I want to include pictures of panels, so you can understand where I'm coming from.
There are a lot of manga with stunning art out there, but this one is even more memorable to me than some others (that undoubtly had great art too, don't get me wrong here).
I highly recommend you this short, beautiful dystopian manga for all of it; the plot, the setting, Chloe as protagonist, and the art.
