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In 1954, Albert Einstein is overcome with guilt about the role his work has played in the development of the atomic bomb. Two young boys, Hikaru and Haruhi (yes, we are still in Princeton, NJ, and no, I am still not entirely sure if the boys are Japanese-American or White-American with Japanese names), come up and tell him that they've been dreaming of the future, and in that dream, the world tree is dying, and it is protected only by a woman they know as Skuld. Skuld has told them to find a girl named Ruika, and to help them with that, Einstein gives each of the boys a pill that will make them age more slowly.
All this, by the way, is the set up.
Fast-forward to Japan 2005, and we meet a young boy named Robin, who cannot speak, and we finally meet Ruika. But instead of being the savior everyone thinks she will be, Ruika is a deeply hurt teenage girl who is living as her brother Masato for assorted reasons. And her will to be Masato is so strong that it has changed her body: she is as flat as a boy, and she has not yet menstruated. Soon, Hikaru and Robin find her and try to convince her that she will become the Skuld they've met, that's she's the key to the global garden in which the world tree grows. But Ruika has to heal her mother and herself before she can even begin to think about the world.
Although I tored through Hiwatari's Please Save My Earth, I'm still not entirely sure if I liked it, thanks to disliking several of the central characters. This series, on the other hand, I love. The first half largely concerns itself with Ruika and the ways in which she is both broken and not, and it takes the time to show Ruika's developing relationships with Hikaru and Robin, both of which are crucial to the series. I also love that much of the beginning is about Ruika's relationship with her mother, who is the reason why she has been trying to subsume herself and take on Masato's role.
There's a lot in here about pain and self-hatred and the desire to completely erase yourself from the world even as a tiny part of you wants to stay alive, and it's connected throughout with the atomic bomb, the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the slow death of the world tree. Saving Ruika is central to the plot, because if one girl cannot love herself enough to survive, how can she turn toward the world?
Even though the language I use here is all about "saving" Ruika, much of what actually happens is Hikaru and Robin empowering Ruika to save herself, to want to save herself. And though there is some of the gendered depictions of peace vs. war in the form of the male scientists who created the bomb and the female Skuld who guards the world tree and the global garden, the manga very clearly shows quite a few men also on the side of peace (Einstein, Hikaru, Robin). We don't get as many views of destructive women, although I'd argue that the destructiveness is embodied in Ruika herself, along with the promise of healing.
Hiwatari manages to bring it all together in a cathartic conclusion, and only weeks later did I notice that the focus shifts away from the bomb completely. I wish the conclusion were more tied in with the atomic bomb, but ah well. There's also one aspect of the ending that bothers me a little on the feminist side, but I am still deciding if it only invokes a trope and does something with it, or if it simply invokes the trope.
Still, highly recommended, although it may work best to binge on it (I still can't believe I read 8 volumes in two days... in Chinese! In Chinese with complicated ideas about time travel and clones and whatnot!). Also, because I am picky about art, I note that the art here is very different from that of Please Save My Earth, and that I liked it quite a bit.
All this, by the way, is the set up.
Fast-forward to Japan 2005, and we meet a young boy named Robin, who cannot speak, and we finally meet Ruika. But instead of being the savior everyone thinks she will be, Ruika is a deeply hurt teenage girl who is living as her brother Masato for assorted reasons. And her will to be Masato is so strong that it has changed her body: she is as flat as a boy, and she has not yet menstruated. Soon, Hikaru and Robin find her and try to convince her that she will become the Skuld they've met, that's she's the key to the global garden in which the world tree grows. But Ruika has to heal her mother and herself before she can even begin to think about the world.
Although I tored through Hiwatari's Please Save My Earth, I'm still not entirely sure if I liked it, thanks to disliking several of the central characters. This series, on the other hand, I love. The first half largely concerns itself with Ruika and the ways in which she is both broken and not, and it takes the time to show Ruika's developing relationships with Hikaru and Robin, both of which are crucial to the series. I also love that much of the beginning is about Ruika's relationship with her mother, who is the reason why she has been trying to subsume herself and take on Masato's role.
There's a lot in here about pain and self-hatred and the desire to completely erase yourself from the world even as a tiny part of you wants to stay alive, and it's connected throughout with the atomic bomb, the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the slow death of the world tree. Saving Ruika is central to the plot, because if one girl cannot love herself enough to survive, how can she turn toward the world?
Even though the language I use here is all about "saving" Ruika, much of what actually happens is Hikaru and Robin empowering Ruika to save herself, to want to save herself. And though there is some of the gendered depictions of peace vs. war in the form of the male scientists who created the bomb and the female Skuld who guards the world tree and the global garden, the manga very clearly shows quite a few men also on the side of peace (Einstein, Hikaru, Robin). We don't get as many views of destructive women, although I'd argue that the destructiveness is embodied in Ruika herself, along with the promise of healing.
Hiwatari manages to bring it all together in a cathartic conclusion, and only weeks later did I notice that the focus shifts away from the bomb completely. I wish the conclusion were more tied in with the atomic bomb, but ah well. There's also one aspect of the ending that bothers me a little on the feminist side, but I am still deciding if it only invokes a trope and does something with it, or if it simply invokes the trope.
Still, highly recommended, although it may work best to binge on it (I still can't believe I read 8 volumes in two days... in Chinese! In Chinese with complicated ideas about time travel and clones and whatnot!). Also, because I am picky about art, I note that the art here is very different from that of Please Save My Earth, and that I liked it quite a bit.