Oboreru Knife - 溺れるナイフ

Oboreru knife (v10+) is a shoujo series by Asakura George. In my opinion, this is one of the best current mangas, but it's a little hard to explain why.
Of course, the art is amazing; Asakura's style is undeniably unique, but more impressive than the pretty pictures, are the well thought-out angles of the shots that the reader is afforded. This manga reads like a movie - zooming in and out to really highlight the significance of certain scenes, off-center shots to show one character's sidelong glance (rarely a full-on shot of a character)...beautiful and rather fantastic images of the rural environment, which appear to change mood with the story (dynamic ocean and woods which shift from calm to powerful and cold).

The story explores many dramatic and serious themes:

Power
Natsume and Kou are powerful individuals in their community: Natsume with her beauty and ability to inspire people and Kou with his charisma, his physical power (very athletic and strong), his family's political and financial power, and also his intellectual power (he is definitely a very smart kid who is able to see what drives people and their motives). To everybody around them, they are a perfect match, and these two with their naivete of youth, feel invincible. This feeling of invincibility, however, is shattered when Natsume is nearly raped by a 20-something-year-old man. As is often the case with rape victims, Natsume feels dirty and no longer special, and also partly blames Kou who wasn't able to protect her, even though he was at the rape scene. Kou on the other hand turns to violence to escape from his feelings of guilt and weakness. In volumes 9+10, both begin to slowly recover; Natsume through the nurture of Ootomo, and Kou on his own in a little shack in the woods.

The Supernatural
The myths of the countryside supply the backdrop for this manga. According to these myths, there was a powerful female Goddess who was extremely jealous of other females and also quite ugly and violent. Then one day one of Kou's ancestors built a little shrine for the goddess in a moonlit spot, claiming that even the ugly goddess would appear beautiful in the moonlight. Ever since then the goddess has been calm and has brought prosperity to the Hasegawa clan (Kou's family).
Natsume appears on the scene, a beautiful young girl and Kou's apparent partner. Perhaps the goddess is jealous of Natsume and angry at Kou for being with her, and has caused their calamity (rape) and their downfall. There is an underlying implication that perhaps it was the gods' will that the rape happened, perhaps as punishment for being too arrogant in their power.

This is all for now. There is so much to think about in this manga.