Narutaru, or Shadow Star in the NA translation (the official translation is not, or will never be? completed) appears at first to be a cute story about a tween girl who finds a powerful, but oh-so-cute, magical critter and the adventures she has. You know the sort. Well, Narutaru is kind of an apocalyptic-psychotraumatic-environmentalist exploration of this theme (although the environmentalism is a muted part, and more part of the worldbuilding than the same old ‘polluting is bad m’kay?’ stuff we often get). The main character, Shiina, is a wholesome, energetic, positive and friendly girl who lives largely happily with her beloved father, a pilot. While staying with her grandparents on an isolated island, she finds a weird little creature shaped like a giant starfish, which she names Hoshimaru. Hoshimaru can’t talk, but he quickly attaches himself to Shiina and shows that he can turn himself into a kind of flying skateboard. Shiina soon meets others who have become linked to similar beings. However… they are not as wholesome, energetic, or as positive as Shiina. To put it mildly.

Readers of Bokurano, let us say, will find the later plot familiar territory, as the rocks really begin to fall, and as things get more and more confusing. Kitou does get points, though, for at least having the worldbuilding be coherent, which is possibly a result of him having, he claims, planned out 80% as the story started (Kitou says that he was told by his editor that maybe he should try coming up with the characters, and then doing the plot, but it turned out he couldn’t do that, and so ended up coming up with the plot and then the characters… His work, though, seems pretty character based, in the sense that the characters change and undergo development and transformation).