It all started with a livestream on a bottom-tier YouTube prophecy channel. The message was simple—the world is ending.

Was it true or a hoax? No one knew. But then people began to see strange things that no one else could, and as belief in the prophecy spread, so too did a creeping madness. Convinced the end was near, people began to act.

A high school girl who's always played the “good kid,” a teacher who secretly claims to be a demon, a college student who self-destructs in front of his childhood friend, an office worker learning to cook from his senior at work, a young man playing a song of love for his wife, and an innocent girl as wild as a beast.

To tear through this crazy world, staying “normal” is no longer an option. Unleashed and unrestrained, each of them charges toward their final destination—no matter the cost.

Distorted I Love You has a story by Yoru Sumino and illustrations by ITSUKA. English translation is done by Sarah Moon with an adaptation by Melanie Kardas. Published by Seven Seas Entertainment (July 7, 2026).

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Yoru Sumino is, simultaneously, an author of diverse works and an author who always does the same thing. It's not as much of a contradiction as it sounds – Sumino's books all trade in the same sort of wistful disillusionment that comes from feeling like you're on the outside of society, just transplanted into very different plots. This particular book takes for its conceit a YouTuber's prophecy that the world is about to end. Her reasoning for this is that she's suddenly seeing Pikmin-like creatures, and that's what they tell her. The novel is bookended by her streams, and those are easily the weakest piece of the story. The streamer is obnoxiously busy dropping pop culture references, and while I can understand why that is – it speaks to the only way she can connect with the world at large on an emotional level – it's also truly annoying to read.

The rest of the novel is a series of short stories, each from the perspective of one of the streamer's watchers. You can piece together who's who based on her responses to their comments during the streams, but the mere fact that they are watching is what's important. They, too, begin to see the strange creatures, which becomes a reason to believe what the streamer is saying about the world's impending doom. But as you keep reading, it starts to become clear that the fact that they share the streamer's potential hallucination is either proof of a shared delusion or learning a new way of seeing from listening to her. Are the creatures real? Or are they part of a desperate attempt to connect with someone?

That idea of “connection” is central to the book. Each of the short stories traces its narrator's attempts to connect with someone in their circle – a childhood friend, a teacher, a stranger. The stories all delve into the various ways that can happen with differing results, from the positive to the unsettling. The strongest are “Hellish Parkour,” “A Demonic Obligation,” and “A Fetish Bolognese,” with the first two standing out as stories of people who feel freed by the upcoming apocalypse and the third just a good example of unsettling horror. Sumino, unfortunately, isn't great at writing distinct character voices, and everyone does sound pretty much the same, which is a problem when a story has multiple narrators (like “Hellish Parkour”), but the writing is strong otherwise and the plots solid.

This isn't my favorite of Sumino's works (that would be At Night, I Become a Monster), but it's still a good book that digs into some interesting topics. It may still follow the basics of their writing, but even if Sumino always harps on the same themes, they at least write them well.