I wanted to like this more. The cover is so elegant and intriguing and the blurb on the back definitely made it sound like something it wasn't. But the storytelling was so clunky I had a hard time understanding it. Certainly not the musical game of cat-and-mouse I was promised. First of all, there's a lot of exposition in the first few pages that isn't really well-explained. Everything is thrown at you all at once with no time for build up--much like the romance that follows. As the story develops, it becomes harder to follow the central conflict, and it's not really clear at timeswhat that conflict is supposed to be. If Lorenzo dislikes being taken advantage of by performers, why does he do it? What does he get out of it? Is he just really weak-willed?

And why does Kenzo care enough about him to continue doing as he asks, even though he knows Lorenzo is breaking his part of their deal? The two don't seem to really have a lot of chemistry or believable interaction. There's hardly any build up to their first encounter and Kenzo especially seems to have feelings that come out of nowhere.

The plot is quite jumbled and feels confusing at times, which is unnecessary, because all the parts for a good story are there, they're just arranged in a really odd way and often don't feel like they really fit together. In the second half we're introduced to a part of the story that really should have been made more obvious all along, and that's Lorenzo's drug habit. It's a shame that this was brought up so incredibly late and not used to its full potential, because it could have brought a lot more to the story than just "Lorenzo doesn't play piano and no one knows why". In fact a lot of Lorenzo's relationship to the piano doesn't make a lot of sense, which seems important in a story largely about the character's relationship to music.

This really had potential to be an emotional and elegant addition to a genre that is often decried as being crass and cliche, but the story is just too jumbled and confusing. I did enjoy the lovely artwork though, so there's that. (Besides the few panels where 3-D renders were obviously employed for objects and looked out of place. But it was 2005, so I'll give it a pass.)